"Ethereum (ETH) Doesn't Collapse... The Real Issue is Leadership, Not Technology" [BUIDL Asia 2025]

"The Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem does not collapse technically. Rather, it is excessively strong. The problem is that there is no strong leadership to guide that strong technology into a single flow."

Pedro Gomes, founder of the WalletConnect Foundation, emphasized this at the 'BUIDL Asia 2025' held in Songpa-gu, Seoul on the 16th, participating in a panel discussion on 'The Era of Multi-Chains, Evolution or Chaos of Blockchain'. The discussion was chaired by Josh Lee, co-founder of Kepler and Osmosis, with Firat Sertgoz, co-founder of MoreMarket, Charles Lu, co-founder of Espresso Systems, and Pedro Gomes, founder of the WalletConnect Foundation, focusing on Ethereum trends and the blockchain ecosystem.

The panelists pointed out that while the Ethereum ecosystem is technically solid, it fails to present a future direction. Founder Gomes said, "Issues such as non-standardized bridges or wallet interfaces stem more from a lack of leadership than technical limitations," and added, "What is needed now is not technology but a decisive leader." He also emphasized, "In fact, the reason rollups have taken root in the Ethereum ecosystem is due to the strong vision presented by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum." Recently, concerns have been raised that the blockchain ecosystem has become more complex with thousands of networks and fragmented technologies, and important technological advances are actually being delayed.

Rollup is a technology to enhance the scalability of layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum, operating by processing transactions on a separate network and summarizing only the core data to record on the main chain. A bridge refers to a blockchain service that supports the exchange of tokens by connecting heterogeneous blockchains.

The speakers agreed that Ethereum will continue to maintain its central position in the smart contract ecosystem. Co-founder Sertgoz said, "The greatest strength of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is its high compatibility and rich ecosystem," and evaluated, "The foundation is so solid that there is no disagreement in the industry that EVM will continue to prevail." He explained that the blockchain development environment, including Ethereum's development language Solidity, is already being used as a de facto standard across various chains.

Founder Gomes also said, "EVM is similar to JavaScript," adding, "JavaScript is not the best programming language, but it is the language with the most developers. EVM is the same. It is not technically perfect, but it maintains its central position thanks to its strong ecosystem and practicality." EVM refers to a virtual machine that executes smart contracts, which are automated contracts on the blockchain, and processes transactions on the Ethereum network.

Meanwhile, it was also diagnosed that as user experience (UX) is distributed across multiple chains, enhancing the finality and security of transactions has emerged as a key task. Co-founder Lu said, "The blockchain industry can no longer handle the entire demand with a single chain. Each application has different requirements, and different conditions such as fees and throughput are needed," but added, "Recently, as thousands of rollups have different structures and standards, risk factors are also increasing when transferring assets or using bridges."

Minseung Kang, Bloomingbit Reporter minriver@bloomingbit.io