In this critical review, we comment on the absence of widely shared benchmark problems and relevant challenges or even attractive competitions in the field of electrokinetics. We argue that in some other scientific domains that are, similarly as electrokinetics, strongly multidisciplinary, the existence of these tools is very beneficial because it stimulates the discussion about what constitutes the bottleneck of further progress, allows easier exploitation of results provided by other scientific and engineering disciplines, and, last but not least, makes the research domain attractive and visible to a broader public, including students. The goal of this review is to provoke some discussion that might perhaps lead to compensating for these shortcomings.