TechFlow, September 21 — Vitalik published a long post on social media stating that the Ethereum community has long faced a contradiction between application revenue and ecosystem goals: high-revenue applications (such as NFTs and memecoins) often diverge from fundamental value objectives, while non-financial applications, though aligned with the vision, struggle to support a $500 billion economy.
Vitalik pointed out that low-risk DeFi (payments, savings, synthetic assets, and over-collateralized lending) can be likened to Google's search business, serving as Ethereum's core revenue source. These applications support the economic ecosystem through high transaction fees and ETH collateral demand, while aligning with global inclusive finance values and avoiding the ethical issues of data monopolies inherent in traditional advertising models.
Vitalik noted that the current stricter regulatory environment and improved protocol security have created favorable conditions for low-risk DeFi development. It may evolve toward undercollateralized lending, prediction market hedging, and diversified stable-value assets (such as currency baskets and inflation-linked tokens), forming synergies with Ethereum's experimental applications.
