After the bloodbath in the cryptocurrency market on Tuesday, social media user @Shillverstein expressed his despair and hopelessness in a tweet today. Many other users in the community left messages of encouragement and support in response. Even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his own experiences of negativity, encouraging him to continue fighting. However, independent researcher Chen Jian criticized these encouraging comments, stating, “Vitalik is a typical victim mentality” (Previous summary: Community forces Ethereum Foundation director to step down, Vitalik gets angry: decision-making power is in my hands, outsiders shut up) (Background supplement: Ethereum Foundation in dire straits, how to save itself?)
The crypto market experienced a severe bloodbath this week, causing significant losses for many cryptocurrency spot and contract investors. Many users in the community also posted graduation posts, including platform X user @Shillverstein.
@Shillverstein expressed his despair and hopelessness in a tweet, stating:
“I have decided to end all this pain.
I love you all, thank you for the support over the years. I’m sorry, I’ve always been a depressed mess.
I’m on the verge of collapsing. I made a major decision to move closer to my family, but it’s not working out. I have nowhere to go, completely lost and filled with despair. I have to give up my dog.
I’m completely broken, with no energy left to keep fighting.”
Vitalik: Hearing the negative news in the crypto market made me consider giving up
In response, many users in the community left messages of encouragement and support in the comments of his tweet. Even Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his own negative experiences (Ethereum Foundation, elitism in the crypto circle) as an example, advising him not to underestimate himself and to continue fighting:
“Fighting consumes energy and brings people to the breaking point. This is part of the condition of life.
Do I feel good when I hear people from crypto twitter and VC firms telling me that PvP KOL degen casino that’s money-losing for >99% of its own users is the best product…
Or when those who know nothing about the internal workings of the Ethereum Foundation tell me who should be removed from the organization, who should be added, and even expect all of this to be done within two weeks, do I feel good?
No, I don’t feel good hearing these things. Sometimes, they even make me emotionally impulsive and want to give up. But in those moments, I can always see signs in the world that remind me that we are fighting for something valuable, something worth fighting for.
If you examine your own heart, you will also find something worth fighting for.
Don’t underestimate yourself.
Make yourself undeniable.
Milady”
Independent researcher: Vitalik is a typical victim mentality
However, after reading Vitalik’s “positive encouragement,” independent researcher Chen Jian immediately criticized Vitalik’s words as a typical victim mentality and pickup artist rhetoric:
“When I first read Vitalik’s tweet, I even felt some sympathy and resonance, and even reflected on whether my own perspective was too narrow, feeling a bit ashamed. But immediately after, I woke up and told myself, ‘No, this is not right! Don’t be deceived by him!’ Because all I see is a closed, arrogant, narcissistic, and stubborn Vitalik.
These words from Vitalik are a typical victim mentality + pickup artist rhetoric!
Chen Jian further stated that the community’s criticism of the Ethereum Foundation has not been baseless from start to finish, and that Vitalik and his team had ample time to explain the reasons behind these accusations to the community or to reflect on whether these criticisms are reasonable, and even make some small changes to “compromise” with the community.
But there was nothing, absolutely nothing. From start to finish, there was no positive response to the community’s criticisms. Certainly, among these criticisms, there are some excessive and malicious remarks, but there are also a lot of rational and friendly suggestions. However, Vitalik has never responded or adopted them.
He seems to deliberately ignore those reasonable suggestions and only sees a bunch of insults and extreme expressions. In Vitalik’s eyes, the community has become “a group of shortsighted people who only want to turn the crypto circle into a PvP casino and are driven by self-interest!”
Furthermore, Chen Jian added that some users in the community mock those who provide suggestions to the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik as a collective without team management. But Chen Jian refuted that these people are either stupid or bad:
The stupidity lies in the fact that can’t they see that the founders of the top-level projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as AAVE and Lido, are also providing suggestions? And these suggestions have received a lot of resonance and support from us “collective”?
The bad lies in the fact that don’t retail investors have the right to make suggestions, vent their frustrations, and complain? Even ordinary people have a mayor’s hotline, so how is it that in this supposedly flattened and decentralized crypto circle, we don’t even have the right to make suggestions?
Has Vitalik really reflected on where the problems lie with himself and the Foundation? From various performances, it seems not.
Does the Ethereum Foundation really take on the responsibility of uniting the community and leading the development of the ecosystem? Currently, it doesn’t seem so.
(Note: The article contains an embedded image)