šŸ¤” Why You Are Thinking About Ethereum All Wrong


Have you heard? Ethereum is dead. Or noā€¦wait, it is pivoting. The price isnā€™t high enough. Other chains are gaining traction. Something must be done.Ā 

Ethereum is not dead. It is not pivoting. Itā€™s doing just fine.Ā 

The constant chatter about Ethereum online seems to fulfill a need for drama that the network itself has failed to provide. Ethereum has been the worldā€™s leading and largest programmable blockchain since its inception. As Ethereum approaches its 10th birthday, it remains the preferred destination for digital asset investors, banks, and start-ups in the crypto ecosystem.

Perhaps the biggest source of friction in the ecosystem comes from the gap between those who see Ethereum as a computing platformā€”the foundation for the future of digital financeā€”and those who would like it to be the ideal digital asset and store of value, similar, if not better than Bitcoin.Ā  For the latter group, Ethereumā€™s low asset price relative to Bitcoin is a perpetual source of disappointment.

For people who see Ethereum primarily as a computing platform, the low asset price is secondary to the networkā€™s enormously successful transformation over the last few years. In their view, and my own, Ethereum has gone from strength to strength.

šŸ”ø #Ethereum then & now

Turn back the clock five years and things looked different. Ethereum was closer to a wildly successful proof of concept than the future of finance.

The network struggled to execute more than a million transactions a day, and when it became congested, transaction fees reached absurd levels, as much as $50 for a single payment or transfer. And every transaction came with a sizable carbon footprint, thanks to the proof-of-work transaction processing system.

Today, the proof-of-work system is gone. In its place, proof of stake handles the same workload with a carbon footprint 99% lower.

Ethereumā€™s capacity crunch is also a distant memory. Today, the network can handle up to 250-450 million transactions per year, according to recent estimates.