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Opinion: Institutions are challenging Vitalik's influence, Ethereum may be transitioning to a more "Wall Street-friendly" posture
BlockBeats News, November 20th, according to Arkham Data, Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin's ETH holdings currently amount to approximately 244,000 ETH (including AETHWETH), worth about 7.4 billion US dollars, ranking second in individual ETH holdings, second only to Ethereum ICO investor Rain Lohmus's holding of up to 250,000 ETH. However, his ranking faces a dual challenge from the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies and spot ETF.
The three largest Ethereum Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies have surpassed Vitalik, with Bitmine holding 3.56 million ETH, SharpLink holding 869,000 ETH, and The Ether Machine holding 496,000 ETH. As for spot ETF, BlackRock holds about 3.94 million ETH, accounting for approximately 3.27% of the total supply, with Fidelity and Grayscale spot ETH following closely behind and continuously rising.
The community is beginning to worry that Vitalik's influence or governance power may be weakened due to the decrease in his holdings percentage. The founder's governance influence is crucial for the future development of Ethereum. Vitalik himself recently issued a warning at the Argentina Devcon conference, stating that if institutional Ethereum holdings continue to grow, Ethereum will face two major threats. The primary risk is the potential alienation of those who truly care about decentralization and core developers, leading to community attrition. The secondary risk is the possibility of making wrong technical choices; institutional pressure may drive improper technical decisions, such as a 150-millisecond block time that benefits high-frequency trading but hinders regular users from running nodes, causing geographical centralization. Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum should focus on its global, permissionless, censorship-resistant protocol features, maintain a strong core community, and uphold the values that differentiate Ethereum from traditional finance.
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