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Ethereum’s co-founder, Joseph Lubin, has argued that Ethereum’s future value will come from global adoption and $ETH demand, not from charging high transaction fees on the base layer.
The discussion began after ARK analyst Lorenzo Valente highlighted how revenue is distributed across Ethereum’s Layer-2 ecosystem using Robinhood’s recently launched blockchain as an example.
Robinhood Keeps Most of the Revenue
According to Valente, Robinhood’s Layer-2 chain has generated roughly $816,000 in revenue since launch.
Under the current structure:
- Robinhood retains about 89% of revenue.
- Arbitrum, which provides the Layer-2 infrastructure, receives around 10%.
- Ethereum earns only about $1,538, or roughly 0.15%, for settling those transactions on its main network.
Valente argued that the figures expose an important distinction in Ethereum’s investment thesis. If $ETH is primarily viewed as money and collateral securing the network, more companies building Layer-2s is a positive development because it increases Ethereum usage and demand for $ETH.
However, if investors expect Ethereum itself to generate significant fee revenue, the current model appears far less attractive since most economic value remains with Layer-2 operators.
Valente suggested Ethereum should capture a larger share of network economics, proposing a model where Ethereum receives closer to 15% of revenue instead of a fraction of one percent.
Lubin: Low Fees Are a Feature, Not a Problem
Lubin disagreed with the idea that Ethereum should prioritize maximizing Layer-1 fee revenue.
Instead, he argued Ethereum should deliberately keep its base-layer fees low to encourage adoption.
According to Lubin, the network is entering a phase where tens of thousands of companies could build applications and infrastructure across Ethereum Layer 1 and Layer-2 networks, and private Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains over the next two to three years.
Rather than focusing on extracting fees from every transaction, he believes Ethereum benefits more by becoming the foundational settlement layer for a much larger blockchain economy.
$ETH Demand Could Rise Even With Lower Fees
Lubin believes Ethereum’s long-term value comes from several factors working together. As more businesses move on-chain, more organizations will need to acquire and hold $ETH to operate within the Ethereum ecosystem.
He also expects staking to continue locking away large amounts of $ETH, reducing the liquid supply available in the market.
Combined with Ethereum’s token-burning mechanism, which permanently removes a portion of transaction fees from circulation, Lubin argues these dynamics could strengthen $ETH’s scarcity over time even if Layer-1 fees remain relatively low.
Ethereum’s Bigger Bet Is Global Adoption
Responding to questions about whether there are enough companies capable of launching their own blockchains, Lubin pointed to the much broader global economy.
He said that there are hundreds of millions of businesses worldwide and argued that blockchain represents the next evolution of the internet.
Just as businesses gradually adopted websites over the past two decades, Lubin believes companies of all sizes will eventually move parts of their operations on-chain.
In his view, Ethereum’s ecosystem—including its Layer-2 networks and permissioned EVM chains, is best positioned to support that transition.
Related: Ethereum Classic Halving Countdown: Can ETC Price Stage a Rally?