The crypto community is looking for someone to blame for Ethereum’s recent underperformance, and they appear to have found their scapegoat. On August 1, someone posted a photo of Vitalik Buterin and an attractive woman wearing matching plush hats, naming her his ‘girlfriend.’

She would, the poster claimed, allow the brilliant co-founder to focus on Ethereum development and spark a rally to $10,000 per coin. Unfortunately, this hasn’t turned out to be the case.

Indeed, over the past week, Solana has outperformed ether by 9%, and over the past year, ether is up just 29% compared to Solana’s 400%. Ether is even underperforming Tron and meme coins like Pepe over the last 12 months.

It wasn’t the first time the Ethereum community has tried to ‘ship‘ Vitalik with female influencers or selfie-posing fans. Other ‘girlfriends’ seen with Vitalik derive from a restaurant photo, conference selfie, and phallic memes.

This morning, the same account that posted the original 1 million-impression tweet posted a photo of another ‘girlfriend.’ This time, the post claimed, the new girl would allow Vitalik to become so productive that ether would rally to $50,000.

These memes have some comedic appeal in part because they reflect subtle truths. Although the women in these photos might not be romantically involved with Buterin, there’s a widespread belief that because he’s so wealthy, he can date the most attractive women. Indeed, he is personally worth at least nine figures and might be a billionaire.

Read more: This boring TikTok went viral after pivoting to Vitalik Buterin cringe

CoinTelegraph later ripped off the original engagement-farming post, gaining a further 360,000 impressions.

First you get the crypto, then you get the women

Men in crypto have long professed a belief that success in crypto somehow culminates with earning trophy girlfriends. An early bitcoin influencer claimed that buying a memetic quantity of bitcoin would earn the holder eternal riches and well-endowed women. Similar claims are replete across crypto social media.

Over the last year, developer commits by Ethereum developers total 21,626 — an impressive yet lower number than commits by small altcoins like ICP, ADA, FLOW, or DOT.

For this reason, in addition to a slower rally relative to altcoins, fans shipping Vitalik Buterin with girls they see posing in photos is their way of encouraging him to focus on Ethereum development — even if it comes at the disparaging women’s role in the community.