“Death of the middle'' is a useful framework for predicting how new technologies will affect markets.

The classic example is retail, once dominated by department stores like Sears and Kmart, until the internet drove consumers to two extremes: high-status premium brands and hyperscale internet retailers.

Crypto/web3. Author of Read Write Own

readwriteown.com

So.. I've heard a few references to Ethereum as the "middle" between BTC (value store/currency) and Solana (fast execution), and I'm obviously wildly simplifying. But I'm curious if the same principal applies there? Though I know some of the goals for this year aim to bridge it into the fast execution environment.

Musician and artist from the smallest largest city. https://audius.co/monist

Fair point! Golden apples and programmable oranges.

I think the question would be are those the right two extremes and how do you delineate category. For example, maybe the category is “near Turing complete blockchains” (excluding BTC) and the extremes are security vs performance. In that framing ETH sits comfortably in the security side.

The SOL ecosystem didn't really appeal to me, for a number of reasons, so I never tried it in 2020/2021.

This year, I actually bridged some crypto over to give it a try, especially since I was hearing "ETH is dead" and "lightning fast execution" a lot.

ETH has a very dedicated and large user base.