Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), believes that Ethereum will become irrelevant in five or ten years from now if its current trajectory does not change. 

Earlier this month, Feist introduced Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7938, which aims to increase the gas limit by 100x over the course of four years. This would make it possible to conduct a much bigger number of transactions per block. 

Feist has admitted that the proposal is "unconvetional," but he argues that such unrhotdox decisions are needed since the layer-1 chain is at risk of fading into irrelevancy. 

The researcher is part of the camp that wants Ethereum to become the center of economic activity within the ecosystem. Ultimately, the endgame is to scale Ethereum up to 1000x, according to Feist. 

If liquidity gets fragmented across layer-2s, Ethereum will likely end up losing to other competing ecosystems, the researcher warns. 

Feist is convinced that Ethereum will be able to scale without compromising its crucial properties (censorship resistance and verifiability). 

As reported by U.Today, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson recently predicted that Ethereum would not be able to survive in ten years from now, with "parasitic" layer-2 solutions being cited as one of the key reasons behind its possible demise. Hoskinson predicted that Ethereum would face the fate of Blackberry, the leading smartphone manufacturer that lost its crown to Apple in the late 2000s and went extinct. 

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, says that Ethereum has "realized that it is in a hole and has stopped digging" in response to Feist's proposal. However, it remains to be seen whether it will manage to climb out of this hole, according to Hougan.