Buterin Says ETH’s Value Should Not Depend on Fee Burning

By Daniel Okafor

On Nov. 8, 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said ETH should be valued as a store of value, not as a token whose investment case depends on how much gas the network burns, according to a U.Today report. He said EIP-1559 would remain and gas burned could stay below 10% without invalidating Ethereum’s purpose.

The comments came as developers prepared Glamsterdam and faced criticism that its gas changes could disrupt deployed smart contracts. Buterin linked two questions: what gives ETH lasting value, and how much protocol change Ethereum can absorb safely.

U.Today placed ETH at $2,240 and put Ethereum’s estimated value at $270 billion in its Nov. 8 report. Buterin rejects making ETH’s investment case depend primarily on large burn numbers. He views historical EIP-1559 burn peaks as less durable because they depend on cyclical speculative activity; building the investment case around those peaks would make ETH too dependent on market cycles.

His alternative framework, CROPS, means censorship and capture resistance, open source, privacy and security. Those properties, he argued, support a durable, neutral base layer rather than a financial product designed to maximize fees or token scarcity. EIP-1559 is not being removed; the dispute concerns how ETH should be judged.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko supported the premise, writing on Nov. 8: “Vitalik is absolutely right that you can’t focus on fees as the product. That’s absolutely meaningless. You need to pick a product, the thing that brings value to people, and do that really well.”

His support does not create a shared Ethereum-Solana roadmap, but it extends the debate beyond Ethereum: whether blockchains compete through fee extraction or through usefulness, resilience and security.

The comments followed the October 2026 withdrawal of a proposal to burn a larger share of validator rewards after more ETH was staked. Pushback led to its withdrawal; it had tied more validator economics to the scarcity narrative Buterin questions.

What does the gas-limit plan change?

EIP-8037 would increase gas costs for creating new state, including storage entries and new contracts. Some deployed contracts use fixed gas amounts for those operations or inspect gas remaining during a transaction. BeInCrypto reported developer warnings that calls could fail if repriced operations consume more gas than expected.

Deployed contracts cannot simply be patched, so an unchanged design could prevent applications from completing actions and could lock users out of funds held by affected contracts. The warnings concern the proposal and its interaction with deployed code; they do not establish that user funds have already been lost.

Core developers delayed a Glamsterdam test on the Hoodi testnet in October after security researchers flagged risks. Concerns then surfaced around the Sepolia testnet and the fee-recalculation mechanism. DeFi developers, an Ethereum Foundation board member and community supporters who initially wanted faster activation criticized the process.

One advocate who had urged quick activation reversed course. He said the problem was more serious than generally understood and that the community had fallen short on design, due diligence and public communication.

EIP-8037 and EIP-7928 are linked to plans to raise Ethereum’s gas limit to 200 million units. More blockspace could make transactions cheaper, while lower fees could reduce ETH burned through EIP-1559. The intended tradeoff connects capacity, user costs and scarcity.

A developer cited a list of 200,000 potentially affected contracts and said methodological problems could mean the actual number was higher. That is an exposure estimate, not a confirmed tally of contracts that would fail or funds that would become inaccessible.

Developers must identify affected gas assumptions, determine whether the network can accommodate them and establish how much testing the pricing change needs before mainnet activation.

What changes for ETH holders?

Cheaper transactions can improve usability, but they can also reduce the activity that feeds EIP-1559 burns. Ethereum’s developers would have to evaluate the network as a platform for users and applications, not only as a mechanism for producing scarcity. Buterin’s position would put more weight on the base layer’s usefulness, resilience, security and credibility than on periodic burn spikes.

Under that thesis, steady infrastructure progress, upgrade quality, contract compatibility and resistance to censorship matter more than record fee-burning periods.

He also warned that trying to extract a premium from every block could encourage aggressive management and intervention, moving Ethereum toward a commercial model he rejects.

Some developers want more data and wider communication before a major change, while others have favored faster activation. A rushed change could damage confidence in Ethereum’s development process; a prolonged redesign could delay the capacity improvements developers seek.

What happens before mainnet?

Core developers face pressure to publish further analysis of EIP-8037, EIP-7928 and affected contracts. That work will determine whether the design gets adjusted, needs more testing or faces another delay. The proposals set direction but leave implementation unsettled; the next step is design and testing, not an immediate EIP-1559 change or confirmed shift in ETH’s monetary policy.

If Ethereum expands capacity while burn pressure falls, Glamsterdam will test Buterin’s store-of-value thesis directly. The outcome will depend on upgrade quality, contract safety and whether applications continue to rely on Ethereum’s open infrastructure. The next market-structure checkpoint is developer review of EIP-8037 and EIP-7928 before any mainnet activation; no fixed activation date has been specified.