Ethereum medallion beside resilient cryptographic network hardware

Vitalik Wants ETH to Become a Store of Value as Ethereum Races Toward Quantum Resistance

By Isaac • November 8, 2026 7:22 pm • Comments

Ethereum is making a more ambitious pitch for itself.

Vitalik Buterin says ETH should be treated as a store of value built on the network’s resistance to censorship, capture and centralized control. He does not want its value story to depend on users burning more ETH through transaction fees.

That argument lands at an important moment. Ethereum fees have dropped sharply, activity has continued to grow, and developers are simultaneously trying to move the network toward post-quantum security on a faster timetable.

Trending: A 10% XRP Drop Could Put $8.84 Million in cbXRP-Backed Loans at Risk

Cointelegraph reports that Buterin wants Ethereum to lean into ETH as a store of value rather than tying the asset’s central narrative to fee burning. His argument is that optimizing the chain around fee revenue could work against the qualities that make Ethereum difficult to capture in the first place.

Buterin groups those qualities under “CROPS”: censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security. In his view, those properties could become more valuable as artificial intelligence puts more pressure on digital ownership, identity and centralized systems.

This does not mean Ethereum is abandoning utility. It means utility alone may not explain why someone would hold ETH for years.

The distinction matters because the old “ultrasound money” story leaned heavily on EIP-1559 and the idea that busy periods would burn enough fees to constrain supply. That mechanism still exists, but low fees have weakened the simple version of the pitch.

A recent State of the Ledger summary highlighted the tension: mainnet transactions were up while the median mainnet fee was a fraction of its prior level. That is good news for users, even if it makes fee burning a less dependable marketing slogan.

The other half of the story is what Ethereum developers are trying to build before quantum computers become a practical threat.

A separate report from Cointelegraph says Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake is targeting December 2028 for a post-quantum and post-AI transition. That is a year earlier than the foundation’s previously published 2029 roadmap target.

The distinction is important: Drake described 2028 as a hope and an accelerated target, not a completed protocol commitment. Ethereum still needs multiple upgrades, production-ready cryptographic systems and broad agreement before the transition can be called finished.

No publicly demonstrated quantum computer can break Ethereum’s signatures today. The work is defensive: developers want upgraded wallets, signatures and network layers in place before the threat becomes immediate.

That preparation fits Buterin’s broader argument. Scarcity alone does not make an asset a credible long-term store of value.

It also has to remain accessible to its owner, difficult to censor and resilient against the next generation of attacks.

The market will have to decide whether Ethereum can support two ideas at once: a heavily used settlement network and a durable monetary asset.

Lower fees help the first goal. Stronger censorship resistance, privacy and post-quantum security help the second.

Neither guarantees a higher ETH price, and the 2028 timeline could move as engineering realities change.

But the direction is becoming clearer. Ethereum’s leaders are no longer relying on fee burns to carry the entire monetary story.

They are arguing that the network’s hardest-to-copy qualities—neutrality, security and resistance to capture—may be the real foundation beneath ETH’s long-term value.

Join the conversation!

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

 

Search ProCoinNews