Vitalik: ETH Should Center on Store-of-Value, Not Rely on Fee Burning

Nov 8 — Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a post that ETH should center on being a store of value (SoV) rather than positioning itself as a "fee-burning token." He said EIP-1559 and its burn mechanism should be retained, but there is no need for concern even if the burn amount stays below 10% of the break-even point over the long term. Vitalik noted that burns in 2021–2023 came mainly from use cases inside the crypto circle and were never a true valuation floor. If the roughly $270 billion market cap were to be supported by burning, Ethereum would need about 700,000 ETH per year in in-protocol R&D funding, and would also require interventionist governance, which conflicts with the goals of decentralization and censorship resistance.