In my opinion, this hard fork was messy and full of things that do not benefit Ethereum neither in the short term or in the long term. The only improvements that are tangible is native AA and the increase of the blob count. The rest of the EIPs were unnecessary and most were only refactorings which might as well never happened.
It is clear to me there is a problem in the decision-making part of the protocol rather than in the “development”. I think the development is fine but the decision making is too fragmented.
Fragmented decision making
The biggest issue isn’t development—it’s the growing inefficiency of decision-making caused by too many people trying to make governance calls at once.
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Too many visions for Ethereum
- Decision-making is slow and chaotic when 100+ people are involved. Discussions often get derailed, wasting valuable time.
- Large groups struggle with agility—a smaller, focused decision-making body would be faster and more effective.
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As Ethereum grows the inneficiency will get worse
- As Ethereum’s ecosystem expands with more developers, client teams, and stakeholders, the chaos in ACD calls will scale with it.
- Without a structured governance process, decision-making will continue slowing down, leading to unnecessary delays in upgrades and forks.
A Better Path Forward
Like @asn said, Ethereum needs a *smaller, structured decision-making body handle governance, while keeping ACD focused only on technical discussions.
Without this change, ACD will become increasingly ineffective, and major decisions will be made informally outside the calls, turning ACD into a symbolic process rather than a functional one. If Ethereum is to keep evolving efficiently, governance must scale as effectively as development does.