Probably Nothing - The Daily Gwei #386
It's all about the builders.
“Probably nothing” is a term used a lot in the crypto space that quite literally means exactly the opposite of what it says. Kartik uses it below to refer to the fact that ETHGlobal have had their biggest year yet with 9 hackathons, 18 summits, 5700 hackers, $1.5mil in prizes and more - definitely not “probably nothing”. I’ve been lucky enough to judge a few of these hackathons and I’m always blown away by the quality of the projects produced and the passion of those building these projects - there is certainly no shortage of raw talent in the Ethereum ecosystem!
If I had to pick my absolute favorite thing about the Ethereum ecosystem it’d be the fact that it continues to attract the best and brightest minds from around the world. Even amongst all the “layer 1 wars” going on right now, Ethereum is still the center of innovation and still produces industry-leading products and services. I think the most obvious example of this is the layer 2 ecosystem where researchers and engineers spent many years to come up with some of the best blockchain scalability technology that has ever existed. And I think this happened because Ethereum attracts a certain type of builder - one that cares deeply about decentralization and all of the other values that Ethereum embodies.
The fact that Ethereum has so many amazing and dedicated builders is part of my long-term bull thesis for the ecosystem and is also a major driver of my conviction on Ethereum. This is because without honest, hard-working and passionate builders, an ecosystem tends to devolve into one that is either purely profit-driven or only produces subpar products and services. The flow-on effect from this is that users have a very poor experience and get turned off of the ecosystem and if this happens enough times then the platform just becomes a barren wasteland. Of course, Ethereum layer 1 has been a big paint point for users due to high gas fees leading to a poor experience, but we’re all betting on the layer 2 ecosystem to fix this once and for all very soon.
Hackathons and summits like what ETHGlobal runs are crucial to the long-term success and health of the Ethereum ecosystem because they work to bring in new and talented builders so that Ethereum stays “fresh” instead of ossifying. I think the worst thing that could happen to the Ethereum ecosystem would be having a net outflow of builders instead of a net inflow - this would surely lead to stagnation and a great loss of Ethereum’s ability to innovate. Fortunately I don’t see this happening at all - all I see are thousands of builders flooding into Ethereum to build the future of the open internet.
All this isn’t to say that other ecosystems don’t have hardworking and passionate builders but Ethereum just seems to have such a near-monopoly on them at this point. And funny enough even those working on other ecosystems are still working with Ethereum-related tech/products/services (Solidity, the EVM, MetaMask) which basically just shows that all roads really do lead to Ethereum.
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.