At the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Festival, Ethereum Foundation researcher Shyam Sridhar highlighted the importance of Ethereum's openness and transparency. According to Foresight News, Sridhar noted that historically, every coordination system has had backdoors, such as banks freezing accounts, platforms banning users, and AI infrastructure shutting down APIs. He emphasized that these characteristics of Ethereum are key reasons why developers trust and contribute to its development.