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What exactly is ETH? Is this a question that many people haven't deeply pondered? Many would say it's a public blockchain, a smart contract platform, a settlement layer. But I increasingly feel these are just functions, not its true value. What truly determines ETH's long-term value might not be how much Gas is burned daily, nor how high the TPS is, but whether it can become the reserve asset of the entire on-chain financial system. Many people keep discussing that L2 takes away Gas fees, and the application layer captures the profits, so ETH's value capture is weakening. I think these discussions aren't wrong, but they might still be stuck at the first layer. The real question should be: Does the entire future on-chain financial system actually need to hold ETH? For example. Many think the US dollar is strong because of SWIFT, Visa, and the Federal Reserve. But what truly supports the dollar's status isn't these payment tools. It's that global trade, commodities, foreign exchange reserves, and international settlements almost all revolve around the dollar. People hold dollars not for daily transfers, but because the entire financial system requires dollars. Will ETH follow the same logic? If DeFi matures more, RWA is massively on-chain, stablecoins continue to expand, and more assets start to be issued, traded, lent, and collateralized on-chain... Then what really matters isn't how much ETH is consumed daily, but whether more and more participants in the entire on-chain financial system must hold ETH. Today, ETH is already the most important collateral asset for many DeFi protocols and the core asset for network security, with a large amount of ETH staked long-term. If the on-chain financial system keeps expanding and ETH remains the core collateral and reserve asset of the entire system, then its value source will no longer be just Gas but the entire on-chain financial ecosystem. Of course, the biggest variable lies precisely here. If DeFi, RWA, and stablecoins prosper but these values ultimately don't flow back to ETH, or if holding ETH becomes less and less necessary, then the market's current valuation of ETH might be reasonable. So I increasingly feel that what will decide ETH's fate in the future isn't whose TPS is higher, nor whose fees are lower. But a more fundamental question: As on-chain finance grows, will ETH become increasingly irreplaceable, or increasingly dispensable? I believe the answer to this question truly determines ETH's value for the next decade. $ETH $ETH $BTC