Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that ETH should focus on being a store of value rather than positioning itself as a "fee-burning token." While acknowledging the importance of retaining EIP-1559 and its burn mechanism, he noted that long-term burn rates below 10% of the break-even point are acceptable. Buterin argued that burns from 2021–2023 were primarily driven by internal crypto use cases and never represented a true valuation floor. He highlighted that supporting Ethereum's roughly $270 billion market cap through burning would require approximately 700,000 ETH annually in in-protocol R&D funding, necessitating interventionist governance that conflicts with decentralization and censorship resistance goals.