Historical source snapshot: The Block published this report on November 8, 2026, at 23:51:15 UTC+8. Prices, year-to-date figures and roadmap references below reflect that reporting date.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued that ETH’s store-of-value case deserves more attention than its transaction-fee burn. His argument was not to remove the burn mechanism, but to stop treating it as the central basis for ETH’s valuation.
In an X thread reported by The Block, Buterin said EIP-1559—the 2021 upgrade that burns part of every transaction fee—“is fine and good.” But holders “should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely,” he wrote, arguing that ETH derives value elsewhere.
Fee burn: a weaker valuation floor than it appears
Buterin questioned a model associated with the “ultrasound money” thesis that gained traction during the 2021 bull market. Under that model, annual token burn divided by a discount rate produces an implied valuation: $1 billion burned annually at a 4% discount rate would imply $25 billion.
The weakness, he argued, is that this is not necessarily a floor. Much of Ethereum’s fee burn in 2021–2023 came from crypto-internal activity whose revenue could decline alongside ETH’s price. “The floor argument only works if the backing of the revenue stream is external,” he wrote.
He cited a speculative sale that burned $180 million in fees in one day. The Block clarified that the event was Yuga Labs’ Otherdeed digital-land sale for the Otherside metaverse, rather than a sale of digital monkey collectibles. Users paid as much as $10,000 in transaction fees for Otherdeed NFTs, which the report said were selling for around $150 at publication.
The Block’s data showed a sharp decline in burn:
- 2022: approximately 1.48 million ETH burned, worth roughly $3.6 billion.
- 2026 through the reporting date: approximately 19,200 ETH burned, worth about $43 million.
These are a full-year figure and a year-to-date figure, respectively—not matching observation windows.
Buterin said tokenized real-world assets give Ethereum a better claim to externally backed activity. However, he argued that a mature business of this kind is unlikely to generate the same fee spikes as speculative crypto activity.
The cost of optimizing for burn
Buterin put ETH’s market capitalization at roughly $270 billion; The Block reported $273.3 billion on Sunday morning. He argued that supporting such a valuation through fee burn alone would make Ethereum comparable to a large company such as L’Oréal, with substantial ongoing spending required to maintain its position.
Citing an AI estimate, he said L’Oréal spends about 0.58% of its market capitalization annually on research and development. Matching that rate, he argued, would “bankrupt the [Ethereum Foundation] almost immediately.” His alternative calculation involved approximately 700,000 ETH a year in protocol funding, cutting validator revenue by two-thirds. These were Buterin’s comparisons, not an adopted funding plan.
He also argued that maximizing burn would require long-term, highly interventionist governance and, to some extent, higher gas prices. In his view, those priorities conflict with decentralization and capture resistance, while potentially excluding users who most need privacy and security.
The funding discussion sits alongside existing scrutiny of the Ethereum Foundation. The Block reported that the foundation sold 20,000 ETH, worth about $47 million, to Bitmine over two weeks in April and May. It also began staking part of its treasury earlier in 2026. In March, it described itself as “one of many stewards” of Ethereum; amid senior departures in May, Buterin said it would become “a smaller ship,” sell less ETH and concentrate on work that would not otherwise happen.
Store of value: survival and utility
For Buterin, Ethereum’s stronger proposition rests on decentralization and what he calls CROPS: censorship and capture resistance, open source, privacy and security. For a store-of-value holder, he described survival as the first and most important metric.
He connected that objective to post-quantum security, partial ossification of the base layer and a high bar for adding new precompiles or protocol rewards. He also pointed to multisig wallets, the Kohaku privacy project, the FOCIL censorship-resistance proposal and lightweight nodes. As a personal example, he said his laptop node synchronized in under six hours and occupied one-eighth of its hard drive.
Buterin argued that assets issued natively on Ethereum’s base layer, including real-world assets, complement the store-of-value case by expanding ETH’s uses, such as collateral. He described Ethereum as a hybrid architecture combining blockchains and modern cryptography. The report also noted that, in September, he outlined a roadmap through 2030 and said Hegota would likely be the network’s last “normal” fork.
Reaction and the issuance debate
Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko supported the distinction, saying that “you can’t focus on fees as the product.” MetaLeX attorney Gabriel Shapiro called the thread a “‘nature is healing’ moment.” Moonrock Capital founder Simon Dedic described the store-of-value narrative as a major bull case and an easier story to present to institutional capital. Those comments represent their views, not evidence of institutional demand or future returns.
The discussion followed the withdrawal, about five weeks earlier, of EIP-8363 from consideration for Hegota, the upgrade scheduled after the delayed Glamsterdam hard fork. The proposal would have burned a rising share of validator rewards as more ETH was staked. Its authors cited risks to ETH’s monetary role from a high staking ratio; opponents included SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom and Aave founder Stani Kulechov. The authors planned a separate issuance process running through EthCC in April.
For market context, The Block reported ETH at $2,236 as of 9:23 a.m. ET on November 8, down 0.3% on the day. The report did not establish a causal connection between that move and Buterin’s comments. The central distinction is between fee burn as a measurable supply mechanism and the broader, less directly quantifiable case for ETH as a durable store of value.