Cultured Beginnings - The Daily Gwei #391
It's all about the culture.
I often find myself reflecting on the fact that Ethereum has been extremely lucky to have had such an amazing founder in Vitalik - and from such an incredibly young age too. He was just 20 years old when he first published the Ethereum whitepaper and has accomplished more in his 20’s than most people will ever accomplish in their entire lifetime. And yet, despite all of his accomplishments and the wealth/fame that came with it, Vitalik is one of the most humble people you will ever meet and has not become corrupted by his fame and fortune.
It’s very rare to find good “leadership” these days - especially within industries like crypto where money, greed and power seem to dominate. I also think that people like to downplay the importance of leadership in pursuit of selling some sort of narrative about how a project isn’t “decentralized” if it has any form of leadership. I’d take the other side of this and say that without strong leadership in the early days of a project, any community that forms is left to basically fend for themselves and the leadership void just gets filled up with people who have no business being in positions of leadership to begin with. We’ve seen this play out a few times at the application layer and it never ends well over the long-term.
The culture of a crypto community is something that is often overlooked and thought of as an afterthought when in fact it is the most critical thing to get right. I think the clearest example of this is what happened with the Bitcoin community over the years and how many of them turned into incredibly toxic people. This, in turn, pushed many intelligent people away and into other ecosystems (usually Ethereum) and now most of who’s left in the Bitcoin community are essentially “digital goldbugs” who hate everything but their one precious coin. It may be unpopular to say this, but I think this happened in-part due to the leadership void left by Satoshi (though obviously Satoshi leaving was a positive for other reasons).
On the other hand, Ethereum culture is one of openness, innovation, diversity and a strong commitment to upholding the ideals of decentralization (with very little toxicity). This culture didn’t just happen on accident - it was initially set in motion by Vitalik as he attracted some of the best and brightest minds to work with him on Ethereum and also attracted those who bought into his vision of what Ethereum can and should be. Of course, over time, Vitalik’s influence waned and he has mostly stepped away from the spotlight over the last few years - but his legacy persists and acts as the foundational piece of Ethereum cultural infrastructure.
There’s no long-term guarantee that Ethereum’s culture will stay the same as it is today - in fact I expect it to change pretty drastically over the coming years - but the core of what Ethereum is must be preserved at all costs. If we allow Ethereum’s values and principles to be eroded by opportunists, grifters and scammers then we will have failed in what we have been trying to accomplish. Thankfully, I don’t see any reason to be “bearish” on Ethereum culture for the foreseeable future - let’s make sure we keep it that way.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.