Flashbots Strategy Lead Hasu: Charging Passive Holders Is Good for Ecosystem Investment

Flashbots strategy lead Hasu said in a post that charging passive holders — making them pay to support projects that invest in the ecosystem around a token — is actually a good approach. He cited Lido, Aave and DAT as examples, noting that these projects jointly fund Ethereum client teams, multiple EF-derived projects and the broader DeFi buildout. Hasu argued that Ethereum's problem has never been excessive ETH issuance; the real issue is underinvestment in the ecosystem. Reducing inflation will inevitably inhibit investment, he said. He also acknowledged that the Ethereum research community has historically struggled to predict such second- or third-order effects. The post frames token-holder fees as a funding pipeline: money collected from passive holders flows back into the infrastructure and development work behind the ecosystem. In Hasu's view, this makes fee collection a useful mechanism for sustaining investment, even as its wider consequences remain hard to foresee.