Looks like the options thing is happening already!
See also: various people thinking through and building different versions of the idea in the thread: https://t.co/gFNEvCbHct
Though I do strongly urge that if any of these get on mainnet quickly, we formally verify it first. I hope @vyperlang and/or https://t.co/OMFlWRqJda folks ( @Fricoben) can help!
(Also, now is a good time to be thinking about robustness-optimized oracles)
https://t.co/j1dxLV4Pn4
JUST IN: Japan's parliament has advanced a bill that would reclassify crypto as a financial product, cutting the maximum tax rate from 55% to a flat 20% and introducing insider trading rules for the first time.
@lanhubiji ETH 的估值不能只看费用,因为ETH以及其他去中心化代币本质上是带货币属性的商品。手续费和燃烧影响了部分供需,但更核心的是,以太坊是否能通过扩容降低使用门槛、扩大经济活动规模,并把这种活动持续转化为对 ETH 作为 gas、抵押品、结算资产和储值资产的需求,从而形成商品需求与货币溢价的正反馈。
Let's not forget that ETH is still the fastest asset to grow to $500B, even if it may be superseded by Anthropic, depending on its IPO date.
This is an extremely healthy consolidation, and it always happens after an asset experiences a meteoric rise.
A large chunk of BitMine's ETH is most likely coming from Ethereum OGs who invested anywhere from the ICO to $100, and who used the last five years in the $1K–$5K range to realize part of their profits in size.
Yes, some of them may have lost conviction, but they also sat on insane profits for 5+ years. It's only natural that they would sell a bit at some point.
There's plenty of precedent for consolidations like this in the stock market. Some take 5, 10, or even 20 years.
They all have something in common:
A violent breakout that makes everyone who doubted it cry their hearts out.
Believe in somETHing.
Btw, my thesis is that once CLARITY passes, the Ethereum ecosystem will obviously not stay at ~60% market share for DeFi TVL and stablecoins.
U.S. companies are not going to issue their stablecoins on TRON or BSC. That’s just not going to happen, due to regulatory risk.
So we need to look at Ethereum’s market share without those, which is already much closer to 80%.
Ethereum is still the only chain with a regulatory green light in sight, with ETH also being acknowledged as a commodity.
We can’t begin to grasp what that means, but we can certainly bet on Ethereum being a winner from regulatory clarity around tokenization.
Believe in somETHing.
TL;DR - I’m bullish on ETH and tired of the doomerism and complaining
The gap between builder and market sentiment around Ethereum, and the actual potential of the Ethereum ecosystem, feels unreal right now.
The reality is that Ethereum is the leading programmable blockchain by a large margin on most meaningful metrics. It has the deepest liquidity, the largest developer base, the most mature tooling, the most composable stack, the most developed DeFi ecosystem, etc.
Yes, other chains have interesting things going on. I am not saying anyone should underestimate Solana, Canton, the L2s, or even Tron or BNB Chain. They deserve the respect and recognition they have worked hard to earn. But most of their unique advantages only matter because Ethereum is the benchmark they are differentiating against.
Ethereum is the benchmark. Ethereum is the default. It is the largest credibly neutral universal settlement layer. It is the leader in this space.
And yet the Ethereum community often spectacularly fails to acknowledge and communicate this advantage. Somehow, the dominant narrative has become one of unmet expectations, internal conflicts, lack of hope, frustration, and an uncertain future.
I call bullshit on that narrative.
If crypto is the infrastructure for the future financial system (spoiler: it is), then Ethereum is still best positioned to sit at the center of it: a shared settlement layer for regulated and unregulated DeFi, tokenized RWAs, L2s, ZK identity systems, and even collectible NFTs. Yes, other projects want to be this centerpiece too. But today they still need to prove they deserve to be considered serious contenders in that race. Ethereum already has its starting number.
I know token prices are not where we want them to be. But this reminds me of old Vitalik's post asking whether crypto had earned the market cap it had back then. I approach that question a bit differently than he did, but I think it is still a very valid question.
Did crypto earn its valuation back then? Has Ethereum earned today's valuation and price?
In many ways, yes. We have built a lot of great tech. We have solved many hard problems. Progress in areas like ZK has gone far beyond what most of us expected five years ago.
And yes, the institutions are coming.
But do we know how they are supposed to make money once they arrive? Can we explain where and how crypto gives them material improvements over legacy technology - enough to produce real savings, better efficiency, or higher margins? Is what we have built compatible with their tech stacks and compliance requirements? Do we have solid business cases for them?
And if you’re not a fan of institutions, can you explain how we are replacing them in a way that lets me recommend a DeFi product to my friends without their money somehow ending up funding North Korea? Why should they abandon those institutions and go crypto? And is your argument valuable enough to justify the crypto valuations you expect?
Personally, I can answer most of those questions positively. But the answers are not obvious or very solid. In many cases, we are still at the beginning of the journey, not the end. So I do not expect prices or valuations to behave as if we had already reached the finish line. There is still a ton of work to do, a lot of things to build, and a lot to prove.
But today, more than at any point in the past, I am optimistic that we will be able to answer those questions soon-ish. It feels like we are in the "Trough of Disillusionment" phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle, and we’re starting to climb the "Slope of Enlightenment".
Since 2016, my thesis for crypto has been simple: the IT infrastructure for finance - or more generally, for value exchange - is mostly risk and cost. It is rarely a unique competitive advantage. So it makes sense for many actors to share that risk and cost instead of each owning and maintaining it for themselves.
Today, more than ever, I believe Ethereum is the best possible candidate for that common, shared IT infrastructure and it offers the strongest ecosystem to build on (together with L2s).
If you made it this far, thank you. A like or RT would be much appreciated, if only to justify the time I spent composing this ragepost. ;)
Ethereum doesn't play a narrative game because it has every narrative. It is the most decentralized network, with the widest geographic and stake-weighted validator distribution. It is the most secure network, protected by a pool of slashable Ether that even now gives it a raw total cost of attack that far outstrips all else. It stands alone as having effective client diversity, an achievement of ecosystem coordination that reduces the chance of a software bug becoming a protocol bug. Ethereum has non-probabilistic finality without sacrificing liveness, the self-healing mechanism of the inactivity leak, a sharded data availability layer, and perfect uptime.
Ethereum is the World Computer, it is the cryptographic bulletin board with guaranteed liveness, it is the unstoppable neutral verifier of proofs, it is the hardest database in existence. It is the global settlement layer for finance, finance that pretends to be decentralized, and decentralized finance. It is where you can vote, collaborate with friends, keep your art, keep your life savings, and record your life's works. Ethereum is the Unreasonable Man's katechon of liberatory technology in a world increasingly eroding Free speech, Free software, Free association, and Free markets.
Ethereum did this without taking shortcuts; scaling has always remained conservative to keep the CROPS requirement of at-home self-verification not only feasible, but easily feasible. It does this without hiding its problems; MEV is a scourge but it is transparent, where it can be reasoned about. It takes the time to prioritize important hardening features like FOCIL even when it requires the painful decision not to focus on other improvements.
Ether doesn't play a narrative game because it has every narrative. It is programmable. It is an unconfiscatable store of value with predictable and sustainable monetary policy. It is the pristine decentralized asset of the greatest network, by which virtue it is pristine collateral in decentralized finance. This makes Ether private nonvolatile money, able to mint a number of anonymous stable cash equivalents that are cheaply transferable anywhere and everywhere. It is an inherently productive asset in both its own flourishing ecosystem and as the wage of soldiers receiving the minimal viable pay to secure us all.
The future is incredibly bright. We have all of the tools we need and simply need to actually build liberatory technology with them. Ethereum upholds incredible underlying CROPS promises, but not everything that exists atop it is accessible in a CROPS way. The sovereignty of most users is eroded bit by bit in various ways and various trust assumptions. There is no reason that we cannot do better, there is no reason that we cannot fix this, and I am excited to dedicate my life to this cause.