Developer Blames Ethereum Execution for ETH’s Drop vs BTC

Developer Reid published a detailed critique attributing ether’s roughly 65% decline against Bitcoin since the September 2022 Merge to execution failures at the Ethereum Foundation. He cited the ETH/BTC ratio peaking near 0.085 at the Merge and falling to about 0.028 by late May. Ether trades below $2,000 and is down roughly 21% over the past year.

Reid, an ICO-era developer who still builds on Ethereum and works on credit and real-world assets at firms including Figure and Securitize, identified several product and timing decisions he says drove the relative underperformance. He highlighted the lack of a first‑party staking interface three years after the Merge. Direct staking still requires running a validator with a 32 ETH minimum, which Reid says pushed many retail users toward liquid staking providers. He pointed to one provider holding about 24% of staked ETH and warned of centralization concerns. “‘We don’t pick winners’ is what an organization says when it does not want to compete,” Reid wrote.

Reid argued the network’s rollup-centric roadmap reduced fee revenue at the base layer. He noted the activation of EIP‑4844 in March 2024 introduced blob fees and drove many layer‑1 data costs down to near 1 wei through 2024 and 2025. According to data Reid cited, quarterly transaction fee revenue has fallen roughly 95% from a Q4 2021 peak of $4.3 billion. He said layer‑2 networks have captured much of the new transaction volume and economics, pointing to rollups that have marketed operating margins around 90% to 98% and to a settlement layer that had captured close to 70% of rollup profits by mid‑2025.

Reid contrasted Ethereum’s pace with Solana’s earlier rollout. He noted proof‑of‑stake spent years on Ethereum’s roadmap before the Merge and that Solana launched a mainnet beta in March 2020 and moved quickly to ship wallets, decentralized exchanges and lending markets.

In his critique Reid linked specific dates and missed product opportunities to ether’s relative decline, and he disclosed that he remains long ether. He said the future path of the ETH/BTC ratio will depend on whether the Ethereum Foundation alters its product cadence or product strategy.