Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued in a post that ETH’s store-of-value properties offer a stronger economic foundation than maximizing transaction-fee burning. He said Ethereum should keep EIP-1559, which burns base transaction fees, but should not make burning central to its model, even if it stays below 10% of the break-even level for a long period.
Buterin said past fee burning did not establish a reliable price floor because much of the demand came from within the crypto economy and could fall if ETH’s price fell. He warned that funding a model built around maximizing fees could push Ethereum toward more centralized governance and higher costs for users. He instead prioritized security, privacy, resistance to censorship and infrastructure that lets people operate their own nodes, while acknowledging that some network improvements could create tensions with decentralization.
