According to @AltcoinGordon, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has issued a stark warning that the ecosystem is at an inflection point, urging that decentralization must become a concrete user guarantee rather than a hollow catchphrase. Buterin highlighted that many Layer-2 networks and DeFi projects possess hidden backdoors and insecure interfaces, proposing practical 'tests' for projects to prove their resilience, such as surviving the disappearance of their founding company or resisting insider attacks. The analysis points out that nearly a decade after its launch, Ethereum has failed to host large-scale DApps like a Web3 Amazon or Facebook primarily due to severe scaling limitations, with the network processing only about 14 transactions per second. This bottleneck makes the economics unviable for high-volume, low-value mainstream applications. While zero-knowledge proofs offer a potential path to scalability, the current ecosystem's struggles are reflected in the market, with ETH trading at approximately $2,536.64, a 24-hour decrease of 1.846%.