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On Friday, Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist announcement He will join stablecoin-focused blockchain startup Tempo, which was incubated Through a partnership between fintech giant Stripe and crypto investment firm Paradigm. In response, some crypto purists on social media, most notably and understandably those who build Ethereum, have shared their frustration, while others see it as a sign of the times in terms of where the industry in general is headed.
Dankrad leaving Ethereum is a dire look for open source vs. corporate blockchains.
Big L for the whole community tbh
— Andy (@ayyyeandy) October 17, 2025
Fist’s reaction to this latest move is an illustration of the larger cultural divide that has grown in crypto over the past few years as much of the technology is built around increasingly centralized vectors of control. when The Original Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto And Other early writings Discussing the need for a new system built on “cryptographic proof rather than trust” and the problems with traditional systems related to “all the trust necessary to make it work”, much of the recent activity in crypto has involved issuing centrally. stablecoins As poker chips in one Meme Coin Casino.
Is Big Tech Taking Over Crypto?
Much of the growth around crypto networks like Ethereum has centered around stablecoins, which operated in somewhat of a legal gray area in the US. Pass the Genius Act Earlier this year. With greater regulatory clarity established around these digital dollars, various developments around so-called “stablechains” have grown, focusing on these bank-backed dollar tokens rather than crypto-native, permissionless assets.
A fundamental problem with ETH valuation is that Ethereum’s primary use cases are largely outside the market value of ETH. Ethereum can be very useful, its apps can generate great revenue, and ETH can still be cheap – or vice versa – with little link between them. OTOH,…
— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) October 7, 2025
Circle and Tether are the two largest stablecoin issuers with their respective USDC and USDT tokens. Earlier this year, Circle He announced the creation Their own layer-one blockchain is called Arc. Additionally, Tether and its partners have supported the development of at least two blockchains where USDT is native Gas tokensnamely stable And plasma.
More well-known players in the fintech industry are also getting involved, too CoinbaseStripe (Tempo), PayPalAnd robinhood All are either announcing or have already launched their own blockchain platforms or other expansions into the crypto market. Google Cloud And Cloudflare They also have their own blockchain offerings in various stages of development that focus on payments for artificial intelligence agents. Some of these platforms are being built as a secondary layer on top of Ethereum, while others are entirely separate blockchain networks.
Cypherpunk use cases are not popular
As big tech giants and other notable players get involved in building their own blockchain networks where they can exert more control and extract more value, the cypherpunk values Satoshi wanted to instill in Bitcoin, such as privacy and censorship resistance, have struggled to win the hearts and minds of ordinary people. Of course, the price of Bitcoin recently reached a new all-time high again (before subsequently dropping more than 15%); However, much of the recent bull run has been built around centralized, regulated financial products from the likes of Bitcoin treasury companies like BlackRock and Strategy to publicly-traded exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
There are still pockets of activity in crypto that are relatively faithful to Satoshi’s vision. By building everything around centralized stablecoins for all use cases, trusted third parties don’t reintroduce or throw away privacy by putting too much financial data on public blockchains. It’s becoming an increasingly small percentage of overall activity, though, compared to speculation about questionable token offerings or the further empowerment of financial institutions with new technologies that keep their customers in a database they call a blockchain that allows them to avoid strict anti-money laundering regulations.
Bitcoin itself remains somewhat resistant to corporate influence at the protocol level, as shown by Its internal block size is war resolution Back in 2017. However, Ethereum’s reliance on stablecoins is becoming an increasingly hard-to-ignore problem that is worth watching, as these token issuers have an incentive to use their centralized point of control to extract as much value from this technology as possible.
Recently seen “stablechain” In fact, this may include a desire to cut the open Ethereum network out of the picture entirely. Conversely, Bitcoin’s main problematic centralization in terms of third-party custodians still requires those custodians to use the Bitcoin network.
While people are still able to use these technologies in a permissionless, non-custodial manner as Satoshi intended, the crypto industry as a whole is increasingly becoming a means for centralized financial entities to empower themselves rather than individual users.
