The Secret of the "Wide Moat": The Value System Ethereum Has Maintained for Ten Years

Over the past period, the Ethereum ecosystem has been filled with an interesting contradiction. On one side are intensive discussions about advanced technologies such as Rollup architecture, ZK, PBS, Slot shortening, and more; on the other side are ongoing questions about “Is the Ethereum Foundation arrogant?”, “Why not be more aggressive?”, and “Why is the token price performance mediocre?”. These seemingly disconnected debates actually point to the same fundamental question: Why did Ethereum choose to build its moat with “width” rather than “speed”?

In fact, many criticisms stem from a misreading of Ethereum’s “value premise.” Only by understanding what Ethereum is truly defending can we see why it appears to lag in efficiency races but continues to attract the most long-term believers.

Beyond the Efficiency Race: Ethereum’s Strategic Choice

While Solana pursues extreme TPS and Sui optimizes for user experience, Ethereum repeatedly discusses architecture splitting, outsourcing execution, and interoperability issues. This may seem unintuitive and unappealing.

But behind this lies a often-overlooked fact: Many emerging public chains take a shortcut—reducing node count, raising hardware thresholds, centralizing ordering and execution—to achieve maximum performance. The Ethereum community believes that such speed often comes at the cost of system resilience.

A compelling data point is that, over nearly a decade of operation, Ethereum has never experienced a network-wide shutdown or rollback event, maintaining uninterrupted 7×24×365 operation. This is not luck, but a design philosophy. From its inception, Ethereum prioritized a more difficult problem—when the network scales larger, with more participants and external pressures, can this system still operate?

In other words, Ethereum may seem slow today, not because it cannot be faster, but because it chooses to prioritize “trustworthiness in the worst case” over “maximized efficiency.” This choice determines the “width” of its moat—not just in raw performance at a given moment, but in long-term stability tested over time.

Multi-dimensional Alignment: From Value Premise to Ecosystem Contract

The second step in understanding Ethereum is to accept that it is not a system driven by a single goal. In the Ethereum context, many seemingly technical issues are fundamentally value choices. Should decentralization be sacrificed for speed? Should powerful nodes be introduced for throughput? Should security assumptions be handed over to a few users for better user experience?

Ethereum’s answers are often negative. This also explains why the community maintains an almost instinctive vigilance towards “shortcuts”—“Can it be done?” always yields to “Should it be done?”

The recently controversial concept of “alignment” exemplifies the importance of these value boundaries. Some worry it could become a form of moral coercion or a tool of power. In response, Vitalik Buterin explicitly states in “Making Ethereum alignment legible”: If “alignment” means whether you have the right friends, then the concept itself has already failed.

His proposed solution is not to abandon alignment but to make it explainable, decomposable, and discussable. In his view, alignment should be broken down into three reviewable attributes:

Technical Alignment: Does it use Ethereum’s security consensus mechanism? Does it support open-source and open standards?

Economic Alignment: Does it promote long-term ETH value capture rather than one-way extraction of ecosystem nutrients?

Spiritual Alignment: Does it pursue building the public good, rather than just predatory growth?

From this perspective, alignment is not a loyalty test but a mutually beneficial social contract. The Ethereum ecosystem allows chaos, competition, and even fierce rivalry among Layer 2s; but ultimately, these activities should feed back into the core that provides security, consensus, and settlement. This “width” is not boundaryless; it is an inclusive space with clear value boundaries.

Deep Logic of Decentralization and Censorship Resistance

Supporting the widest part of this moat are Ethereum’s long-standing pillars: decentralization and censorship resistance.

Many misunderstand “decentralization.” In the Ethereum context, it does not mean more nodes are always better, nor does it mean everyone must run a node. Instead, it means the system can operate normally without trusting any single participant. This implies that the protocol should not rely on a specific proposer, coordinator, or company; at the same time, node operation costs should not be so high that only professional institutions can run them, leaving ordinary people unable to verify the system’s adherence to rules.

For this reason, Ethereum maintains long-term restraint on hardware thresholds, bandwidth requirements, and state bloat—even if this slows down some short-term performance metrics. In Ethereum’s view, a system that runs very fast but cannot be verified by ordinary users has fundamentally lost the core value of “permissionless.”

Another often-misunderstood value is censorship resistance. Ethereum does not assume the world is friendly; rather, it is designed from the start with the assumption that participants may seek profit, power may concentrate, and external pressures will occur. Therefore, censorship resistance is not about “never being censored,” but about ensuring that even if someone attempts censorship, the system does not fail.

This is why Ethereum emphasizes mechanisms like Proposer/Builder separation, decentralized construction, and economic game design—not because they are theoretically elegant, but because they enable continued operation under worst-case scenarios. Some ask whether such extreme situations could happen in reality. The answer is straightforward: If a system is only safe in an ideal world, then it is not trustworthy in the real world.

Ten Years of Uninterrupted Operation: The Data Behind the Persistence

It is noteworthy that currently, the PoS staking exit queue on Ethereum is nearly empty, while the staking queue continues to grow, with over 1.57 million ETH waiting to be staked. Despite various controversies and doubts, many ETH still choose to lock in the system long-term.

The deeper implication of this data is: The market is voting with real actions, supporting Ethereum’s commitment to long-term stability rather than short-term performance competition.

Many critics say Ethereum is always “discussing philosophy after others have already started.” But from another perspective, it is precisely these seemingly slow discussions that have helped Ethereum avoid repeated rebuilds. Whether it’s the roadmap centered on Rollups, the gradual introduction of ZK, or interoperability, fast confirmation, Slot shortening, and other plans—all fundamentally follow the same premise: All performance improvements must be compatible with existing safety and value assumptions.

This also explains why Ethereum’s evolution often appears “conservative yet steady.” Ultimately, it is not that Ethereum does not pursue efficiency, but that it refuses to exchange current systemic risks for short-term gains.

This is the underlying spirit that has supported Ethereum’s ecosystem for a decade—also the most scarce and valuable aspect of Web3 in an era obsessed with “efficiency.” That “wide moat” is built layer by layer through value choices, decentralization, and censorship resistance.