Published by Tech Crunch two days ago, the article titled  "The collapse of ETH is inevitable" has received a lot of attention.

But what are we really looking at here? There's one huge factor we can't just gloss over - the author of the article is Jeremy Rubin - one of Stellar's advisers.

My point isn't any disrespect to Stellar or Rubin either, I own some Stellar. I own Ethereum too, so maybe since i'm a fan of both I can see this article for what it is - rivals making their cases for their product, and against their competitors.

The case Rubin is attempting to make is summed up in these key points:

● Gas isn't required to execute a contract on Ethereum's blockchain.

● Ethereum isn't even needed for as a mining reward "We’re able to incentivize miners to mine transactions without paying any fees in ETH whatsoever" as the article states.

● Leading to the conclusion - apps built on Ethereum (the blockchain) don't really need ETH (the token).

Ethereum's founder Vitalik Buterin took to Reddit to respond, saying in part:

"In Ethereum as it presently exists, this is absolutely true, and in fact if Ethereum were not to change, all parts of the author's argument (except the part about proof of stake, which would not even apply to Ethereum as it is today) would be correct. However, the community is strongly considering two proposals, both of which have the property that they enshrine the need to pay ETH at protocol level, and furthermore the ETH gets burned, so there's no way to de-facto take it out of the loop by making the medium-of-exchange loop go faster."

Which frankly, is the truth.  That's why I'm leaning towards labeling Rubin's arguments borderline misleading.  Let's pause for a second and ask - what tech-based project would still exist today, if the first version was the final version?

Rubin's argument is more along the lines of "If Apple stopped at the iPhone 1, no one would be buying them today".  In other words, his argument depends entirely on nothing changing.

While it's always way more exiting to get caught up in the heat of the argument, the fact is - any tech with developers who call the project "finished" is doomed. Ethereum does not fall into that category. To the credit of Ethereum Foundation, they are constantly evaluating places to improve, and following through with proposals to implement those changes.

Until that key factor changes - Ethereum is absolutely not headed towards collapse. They're simply part of the never-ending uphill battle, known better as "technology".

Jed McCaleb has been a pioneer on many fronts in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world, he founded the first major bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox, and sold it in 2011 (long before the new owners mismanaged it), he then went on to be a co-founder of Ripple, but left the company in 2014.

Speaking to CNBC Fast Money, McCaleb expressed his belief that cryptocurrencies must be decentralized;

"The real vision is that you have a network, much like the internet, that anyone can participate in. There's not one central entity that can decide that it's going to start charging. This is the way this thing can actually grow and reach ubiquity. That's the key thing to make these things successful" says McCaleb.

The discussion then went into his current project, Stellar, which he founded after disagreements with how Ripple should function, and at one point, blasted Ripple a bit for what he sees as lacking vital decentralization.

"It's very hard to run nodes outside of Ripple Labs (The Ripple team is) running the majority of the nodes, which should be concerning for people." he expressed.

Speaking on his current project, Stellar, McCaleb emphasized why he felt it's important that the company behind a cryptocurrency should maintain a non profit status, which Stellar Development Foundation does, comparing it to the non-profit birth of the internet " Imagine an internet created by a for-profit company, it would just be a very different world."

Ripple currently ranks the #3 cryptocurrency globally, and Stellar has been catching up - currently sitting at #8.