Some recent Ethereum learnings (and I’m still very bullish)

I’ve written before about my interest in Ethereum, and though it’s largely underperforming in the early stage of this current bull market, I believe the Ethereum token, network, and ecosystem will have its day / year / time in the attention sun. For me, part of the spirit and purpose of investing is to channel what capital and energy you have towards the world you WISH to see, and not just purely to maximize return. And Ethereum’s focus on decentralization, openness, pluralism, and a sort of positive idealism (reflected in Vitalik, largely) is something I aspire to. But investing is hard, crypto is always humbling, this is not investing advice, blah blah.

Below are just a few recent tweets / writings / learnings about Ethereum that I wanted to share:

Ethereum has a yield in excess of its inflation rate. This is the definition of “real yield”, and is unique to Ethereum in the crypto world.
Institutions love yield. Especially real yield. It’s not hard to imagine a world where a bit of crypto risk-appetite in general comes back, and some institutional money managers realize that Ethereum can be viewed as both a tech-growth risk-on play, AND a real-yield play

But Ethereum has durable and unreplicable advantages right now. It is simultaneously
-The most Lindy smart contract chain
The only smart contract chain that crossed the regulatory chasm
-The only chain with which Coinbase is aligned
-The only chain that has a “yield”

One enormous medium term advantage Ethereum has in the institutional world is that the CME lists an ETH futures contract. BTC is the only other cryptoasset that’s listed on CME. Now with almost 3 years of history, this contract has given regulators, notably the SEC, some level of comfort with trading around ETH that just doesn’t exist for SOL.

Source: https://medium.com/alliancedao/ethereum-is-the-only-institution-friendly-smart-contract-chain-b6a0ac199b6f

One thing I ♥️ about Ethereum is the ability to easily verify the contract and look at the source code, whereas on Solana, one would need to compile the source code and generate a bytecode file before comparing against what is deployed on the blockchain

And of course Vitalik’s recent essay on cypherpunk values including:

  • Open global participation
  • Decentralization
  • Censorship resistance
  • Auditability
  • Credible neutrality
  • Building tools, not empires
  • Cooperative mindset

Source: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html