Source: Consensys, compiled by AIMan@Golden Finance
As Ethereum approaches its tenth anniversary (July 30), Consensys releases the Ethereum report: (The Industrialization of Trust).
This report outlines the rationale for investing in Ethereum and the emerging technology category known as 'Trustware.' Trustware is an infrastructure that industrializes trust production, allowing trust to be encoded in the form of digital goods. Our research and analysis indicate that Ethereum has become the dominant blockchain platform, supporting over 50% of non-Bitcoin digital assets, including 60% of stablecoins, 60% of decentralized finance capital, and 80% of tokenized 'real-world assets,' such as stocks, money market funds, and bonds.
Ethereum's breakthrough: digital trust and trust software
Trustware is an infrastructure that can upgrade the simulated concept of trust (such as notes and ledgers verified by human agents and auditors, guaranteed by human insurance companies and regulatory bodies) to an equivalent digital trust concept generated by algorithms.
For centuries, human civilization has relied on various forms of trust infrastructure, from tribal kinship to large institutions such as governments, insurance companies, auditing firms, and legal systems. While these systems facilitate cooperation and economic growth, the costs are extremely high. It is estimated that humans spend over $9 trillion annually on trust-related expenses, including insurance ($8.0 trillion), legal systems (over $1.0 trillion), and auditing ($290 billion). This enormous expenditure highlights a fundamental issue: the current trust models cannot effectively scale in the digital age. They are analog—slower, more expensive, and more fragmented than the always-on, highly automated, and rapidly evolving digital economy that depends on them.
Trustware gives ordinary data the essential characteristics of trust—validity and finality—through a fully algorithmic process. Validity ensures the consistency and correctness of data, possessing mathematical certainty. Finality guarantees the permanence of data, making it nearly impossible to change without incurring significant costs. Ethereum allows these properties to be added to data in a scalable manner without ongoing human intervention, achieving trust at a marginal cost close to zero. In this way, with its powerful public network and breakthrough cryptoeconomic algorithms capable of generating digital trust, Ethereum can significantly enhance the speed, cost, security, and scale of financial transaction verification—the world's largest consumer of trust.
Reasons to invest in Ethereum
For years, investors have viewed ETH as the 'second-largest cryptocurrency.' While this is true, it holds little significance.
Today, they understand that ETH represents explosive growth of stablecoins and other tokenized assets. They see discussions about these assets in business channels every day, and they may even be using them in their daily lives. They realize that ETH supports the prediction markets they see online and in the news, and ETH also supports the new type of tokenized stocks that Robinhood is launching. With the introduction of landmark legislative proposals like the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, this wave of innovation will only intensify. Ethereum is increasingly recognized as the platform driving the future global economy.
Ethereum was born for this moment from the very beginning. In terms of security, assurance, and resilience, Ethereum is top-notch. The tenth anniversary of the genesis block also celebrates its unparalleled achievements in the fields of digital and traditional asset technologies over the past decade.
Unmatched economic security: With over $100 billion in staked capital and more than 1 million validators, Ethereum has built a strong defensive capability to effectively resist attacks.
Strong network effects: Ethereum has the deepest liquidity, the most developers (twice as many as the next blockchain), and the richest application ecosystem. The EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) standard dominates smart contract development, and all major stablecoins use Ethereum as their primary platform.
Proven adaptability and continuous upgrades: Through complex upgrades, such as the Merge (transition to proof of stake, reducing energy consumption by 99.95%) and Dencun (reducing Rollup fees by 90%), Ethereum has demonstrated resilience and ongoing improvement in its first decade without any downtime.
Global neutrality and decentralization: Unlike other centralized blockchains, Ethereum is not controlled by a single company or entity. Its more than 1 million validator nodes are spread across over 80 countries/regions, with more than 67% of nodes running outside the United States, demonstrating its anti-fragility and reliable neutrality.
Institutional validation and adoption: Global institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, Visa, and Franklin Templeton have begun to utilize Ethereum for tokenized assets, payments, and private equity investments, validating its security model and reliability. The total amount of tokenized real-world assets on Ethereum has exceeded $13 billion, with a monthly growth rate of up to 6.75%.
Although Ethereum's technology has matured and the digital asset infrastructure market continues to consolidate, its economic potential is still in the early stages. The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies represents only 0.3% of global wealth, and tokenized securities constitute only a small part of the capital markets. However, regulatory clarity is increasing, particularly in major economies like the United States, accelerating its adoption from resistance to embracing digital assets.
The integration of AI and blockchain has led to an unprecedented demand for trustless infrastructure: as AI agents begin trading at machine speed, they will need machine trust. Ethereum is the only infrastructure prepared for an economic environment where algorithms need to trust each other.
For institutions, holding ETH means owning digital economic infrastructure at a price far below its eventual value. ETH can be used to pay for network transactions and serves as a means of storing value. Unlike Bitcoin, ETH can also generate cash flow through staking. Additionally, similar to stocks, the value of ETH will grow alongside the popularity of the Ethereum platform. It integrates the properties of goods, currency, and capital assets into a unique and highly attractive asset. As noted in the Trustware report, ETH acts as economic bandwidth, supporting the assets expected to be issued and traded on the platform in the coming years, which will drive its value to grow robustly.
The trust machine has been built. It operates continuously, self-improving, creating more value, and attracting more users.
The issue is not whether to believe in Ethereum, but whether to believe in the digitization of trust.
If one believes, then the investment rationale for Ethereum having a portion of the future global economic base layer is self-evident.
