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If I Were King of Ethereum

#ethereum#staking#decentralization

Original Appearance: Twitter

A Home Staker’s Crisis of Faith

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed my beaconcha_in home-screen widget wasn’t working. And so, on Jan 21st, I realized my Ethereum node had been offline since Dec 31st. Crap.

The first thing I did was pull the ripcord — I immediately called on Rescue_Node to bail me out. This service essentially takes over for your node (without taking over your signing keys) during times of crisis or maintenance. I’m a rocket_pool node operator, but this service is available to all home stakers. With my node on life support, it was time to figure out what went wrong.

It didn’t take long: my computer had run out of storage space. Back in Jan 2022, I had shelled out $1,351 for an Intel NUC, two sticks of 32 GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD. I’d heard you could run an Ethereum node on a Raspberry Pi, so I was pretty proud of my setup. I thought I’d be set until the components started to fail. Wrong.

But okay, whatever. I checked Amazon, and upgrading to 4TB would cost $350. Frustrating, but acceptable. I procrastinated for two weeks and finally bought the upgrade. A couple of days later, the SSD arrived. I figured reinstalling everything would take a few hours while I watched YouTube. I even had Linux ready to go on a bootable USB. I unplugged my node, turned it over, and opened it up.

Problem #1: The tiny screw holding down the SSD. How did I do this three years ago? I stripped the hell out of it, but I got it out. I replaced the SSD, put everything back together, plugged in the USB, patted myself on the back, and hit the power button.

The light turned blue. The fan started running… and then it stopped.

As I started thinking, “Wait… if I messed up the hardware, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fix it,” the computer powered back on — only to shut off again. And then the cycle repeated.

The next few hours were spent opening up the computer, pulling out the SSD, putting it back in, wishing really hard, and getting nowhere. Eventually, I gave up. And because the node was completely offline, I couldn’t call on Rescue Node. I was bleeding.

Attestation Missed

This happened last Sunday. Frankly, I just didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it during the week. So I spent all last week ignoring notifications from my beaconcha.in app. Every six-ish minutes: bzzzz attestation missed.

But, if I’m being honest, these notifications weren’t ignorable. Every six minutes, my phone forced me to think about Ethereum. At first, the notification said, “this is something you care about.” But eventually, it started asking, “Is this something you care about?”

In 2025, I think that question weighs heavily on everyone who joined crypto during the 2021 cycle and fell in love with Ethereum. Everyone has their own way of explaining how we got to where we are today. For me, it was: 1) the collapse of the restaking narrative and 2) the rise of memecoins which now define Ethereum’s sentiment. The prevailing view? That Ethereum was first, but it’s old. That it has lost its way. That it dropped the ball by failing to focus on scaling execution.

Maybe I’m not capturing the sentiment quite right — feel free to critique. But I think we all recognize there’s a growing consensus that Ethereum needs to increase gas limits and scale the L1.

I just think that consensus is completely wrong.

The Wrong Consensus

To me, Ethereum is ideological. It goes back to Satoshi Nakamoto’s words: “What is needed is a system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.” We are here to build a better financial system — one where everyone plays by the same rules. Credible neutrality means a system that treats every participant fairly, using the same deterministic, transparent rules — one that cannot be corrupted by a single actor for their own gain.

Here’s how I understand the history of crypto. First, in 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto gave us Bitcoin, an application-specific prototype of a blockchain computer. Then in 2015, vitalikbuterin delivered on Satoshi’s promise and gave us Ethereum: the first credibly neutral, general purpose blockchain computer. The first trustless computing environment. The World Computer.

Every six minutes, my phone buzzed. And every notification brought me one step closer to my crisis of faith.

Do I Even Believe in This Anymore?

During the week, I started thinking about alternatives. First thought: Buy a new computer. dappnode had options, but everything was $1,500+. The Rocket Pool guides had builds as low as $700, but they required hardware-level technical skills. I’ve read thousands of times that you can run an Ethereum node on the computational equivalent of a toaster. I had no idea that was the starting point.

Next thought: Set up a cloud node while I figured out my home setup. The cheapest option I found? $1,100/year. At that point, I might as well buy a new computer.

And then I thought, What if I just stopped home staking? The yields are low. The fees on LSDs are negligible. Maintenance is annoying.

And then the thought morphed into: Do I even believe in this anymore?

The moment it all crystallized was when I was searching through the Rocket Pool Discord for cloud options. Someone said they were shutting down their node after three years — they’d lost too much money on $RPL. Someone responded: “Rip. Sorry for your losses, fren. We’re all in the same (sinking) boat.” Seeing my own doubts reflected back at me hit differently. I realized: That’s not why I’m disappointed.

I’m disappointed because I worry that Ethereum is losing its way.

The Missing Word

You know what’s missing from every conversation about what Ethereum is doing wrong? Decentralization.

Running a node fucking sucks. It requires massive capital and hard-earned technical skills. The implication of every call for a gas increase is that fewer people will do this. I’ve built my entire career around Ethereum, and even I’m ready to quit.

I joined crypto in 2021. The Rollup-Centric Roadmap was already the plan. Since then, I’ve only become more bullish. Once you wrap your head around:

…any doubts about Ethereum’s ability to support a global (and virtual) economy disappear. Everything that makes Ethereum cheaper, faster, and easier happens in the layers around Ethereum.

Ethereum’s job is to export credible neutrality — which comes directly from its decentralization. And we are failing to protect that.

When I started staking, there were ~6,000 nodes. Today, there are ~6,000. We are not putting any effort into growing decentralization. In fact, we are making decisions that explicitly work against it. If we prioritize L1 performance at the cost of decentralization, we’ll become just another bad version of Solana. And then we’ll both just be bad versions of aws.

If I were the King of Ethereum, I wouldn’t really mess with the technical roadmap. But I would focus the vast majority of my attention on individual and small scale stakers. Improve the experience, reduce ETH requirements, drive down costs, educate, incentivize new stakers, etc.

We would leverage Moore’s Law to reduce the barriers to staking, not increasing the performance we demand from home stakers.

I still believe in Ethereum. If anything, I’m more convinced the world will embrace a financial system that isn’t controlled by billionaires and politicians.

But I can’t ignore the creeping doubt… that we’re walking down the wrong path.

Back Online

Yesterday, I finally sat down to fix my node. Long story short: one of my RAM sticks had fried when I replaced the SSD. I removed it, booted up Linux, and was back online. Tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be securing the World Computer again.

My conviction has been tested, but it has held.

And now I know what it’ll feel like when it breaks.

It’ll feel like it’s not worth it to be a home staker.