Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has challenged the long-standing narrative that ETH’s value should be driven primarily by its fee-burning mechanism. In a post on X on Sunday, November 8, 2026, Buterin said the fee-burn story “never was as strong as it seemed,” and argued that Ethereum should instead be treated as a store of value.
Buterin emphasized that he is not calling for an end to EIP-1559 or its burn. “EIP-1559 (including its burn) is fine and good, we should keep them,” he wrote. However, he said the community should not feel concerned if the burn remains below 10% of breakeven for good. EIP-1559 changed Ethereum’s fee market through the London hard fork on August 5, 2021, introducing a base fee that is destroyed while validators receive optional tips.
To justify Ethereum’s market capitalization of roughly $270 billion through fee burns alone, Buterin estimated the network would need about 700,000 ETH per year in protocol funding. That level, he argued, would cut validator revenue by approximately two-thirds. He compared such a fee-funded model to a global company like L’Oréal, which spends about 0.58% of its market cap on research and development. That path, he said, would require heavily interventionist governance and constant investment, making it difficult to square with decentralization and censorship resistance.
Instead, Buterin pointed to decentralization and CROPS — censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security — as the true source of ETH’s stability. These principles were listed in the Ethereum Foundation’s mandate published March 13, 2026. He said that in an era of AI disruption, stability will be highly valued. Among his priorities for a store-of-value Ethereum are post-quantum security preparation, partial ossification, a high bar for new precompiles, better tools for holding ETH safely and privately, and inclusion lists such as FOCIL.
At the time of writing, ETH traded at about $2,237 with a market capitalization near $273.4 billion, according to CoinGecko. The comments are an opinion, not a protocol proposal, and EIP-1559 remains active. They arrive as developers debate the Glamsterdam upgrade, which some warn could break existing contracts.
