Look – I don’t like the prices right now either.
Sub-$2,000 ETH in 2026 is not what I thought would happen.
Instead, what’s happening is a macro environment that Ethereum has explicitly built defenses against.
Two things are defining this moment:
When the tide washes out, things die.
Gone are the days of easy money, persistent interest in new L1s, and the speculative fervor needed to bootstrap otherwise unnecessary projects. We are no longer in one of those eras, and the industry’s malaise reflects a growing fear that they may be gone for good.
Things may never be easy again.
But Ethereum was never built with a dependency on easy times. Ethereum is built around resilience, and we are in an era in which resilience is paramount.
If a blockchain is not relevant by now… it's probably too late.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have made it… and probably Solana too, but even Solana depends on strength in retail and consumer crypto to protect its fiefdom. Memecoins represent >50% of Solana Application revenue and imo the durability of memecoins as the thing that supports a chain doesn’t exactly exude ‘resilience’ to me.
And then there's Hyperliquid, which deserves credit as the only ecosystem still growing.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s L2s are protected by Ethereum’s resilience. As we know, the L2 business model is the greatest business model in the industry. Ethereum pays for your security, and all you have to do is ensure you're providing some market value – the bare minimum requirement to survive.
Lately, I’ve been focused on ZKsync's progress – especially its Prividium design and its work with banks on an Ethereum-settled intranet, along with a BitGo partnership for tokenized deposits. Prividium gives the banks all the banky stuff they need (privacy, control, scale), without compromising on all of the blockchain stuff.
The point I want to make is: Ethereum’s L2s have the flexibility and sustainability they need to build the “blockchain-not-bitcoin” tech stack that TradFi is historically so obsessed with – while still remaining on the public, permissionless, interoperable rails of Ethereum.
This L2 narrative sits alongside a notable surge in Ethereum L1 adoption over the past few months:
• 2026 Thematic Outlook: “Ethereum underpins 65% of tokenized assets and could become a "toll road" to blockchain-based markets.”