EthFinance

1/ I find it telling that price has overtaken every other meaningful metric, such as active wallets, transaction volume, number of validating nodes, etc. in the current zeitgeist. Camila’s tweet is the latest example of that disease. 🧵

1/ I find it telling that price has overtaken every other meaningful metric, such as active wallets, transaction volume, number of validating nodes, etc. in the current zeitgeist. Camila’s tweet is the latest example of that disease. 🧵

https://x.com/camirusso/status/1849432939689341378

PhD in aviation ∩ climate science | Aviator, diver, ETH maxi, nexialist | Host of /diving /ethfinance /eth-staker /geopolitics /science /singapore /thomas

2/ In other words, the casino appears to have overtaken the computer, and the new narrative seems to measure the success(or lack thereof) of Ethereum (and other chains) by the price of their token alone.

4/ After all, BTC itself has been corrupted from the Satoshi vision of pseudonymous e-cash to this ossified pet rock where even maxis now mock self-custody with a straight face (cf Saylor). Few of the OGs of the genesis era remain. They wouldn’t have celebrated a Bitcoin ETF.

5/ Radical thought: as much as I’d love to see ETH do another 10x from here, what if… this was never the point? Ethereum’s mission isn’t to pump anyone’s bags. If the network can offer plentiful settlement block/blob space at cost, instead of at extractive margins, isn’t that a desirable feature?

6/ As long as Ethereum performs as a decentralized, censorship resistant, credibly neutral, and permissionless global settlement layer, hasn’t Ethereum fulfilled its mission? Why does the price need to do another 10x for people to validate the incredible success to date?

7/ The ETH price is already well above what’s necessary to maintain the economic security of the network. Stakers are being compensated a steady rate which, while not stellar, is quasi risk-free and sustainable from an issuance standpoint.

8/ This is not to discount the amount of work left to complete the roadmap. But there’s a vision (which Vitalik continues to articulate eloquently in his recent blog posts) and it’s being delivered on effectively.

9/ Yes, I wish the execution of that roadmap was faster. Yes, I wish Ethereum as an ecosystem invested more in marketing — not to pump the price, but to drive adoption among corporates who are largely indifferent to Ethereum’s technical merits over the likes of Hyperledger etc.

10/ But right now the gloom and despair about price is draining. Maybe we need a deep bear to purge away all the rent seekers (including in other chains), and revisit ATH once the roadmap is far more advanced. 🎬

3/ Maybe it’s a function of the next generation of crypto adopters having missed the cypherpunk ethos on which this technology was initially spawned from. If your first exposure was the ICO or NFT craze, maybe it makes sense to think of the entire space as just a zero-sum gamble of green and red candles.

Excellent observation. I had not noticed the oh-so-subtle drift over the past year or so. The sideways market must really be getting to people.