The Ethereum Digital Nation - The Daily Gwei #194
A rapidly growing global "special economic zone" enters the game.
Ethereum is a new digital nation where experiments are being run 24/7 unbounded and unchained from normal meat-space regulatory hurdles. Due to this, and as Ryan Sean Adams points out below, Ethereum is poised to be the fastest growing economy of the next decade.
Now, obviously the Ethereum economy is still quite small compared to literal nation states but what we’re really measuring here is the rate of growth. Just like developing nations can have a faster pace of growth than developed nations, so too can the developing nation that is Ethereum. We will see trillions of dollars flow into the cryptoasset class over the next few years and much of this will find its way into Ethereum DeFi protocols (especially those that take advantage of stable assets). We’ll also continue seeing a Cambrian explosion of new protocols and apps being launched onto the network.
In meatspace, we sometimes see “special economic zones” created which offer more favorable financial regulations to spur innovation and experimentation. I believe that Ethereum is one giant special economic zone that is available to every single citizen on Earth who has access to some hardware (laptop, mobile phone) and an internet connection. Anyone can deploy anything they want to the Ethereum network - whether that be a simple fork of an existing protocol or a hot new DeFi app for people to “ape into”. The best part is that people can choose to either do this using their identity or anonymously and we are actually increasingly seeing teams choose the latter path.
I’ve often talked/written about how I believe that Ethereum will be a nexus for economic activity and I think that thesis plays perfectly into Ethereum being a special economic zone. This is because while other platforms exist in the crypto ecosystem, most of them do not afford the same guarantees that Ethereum does across decentralization, permissionless, security, neutrality and network effects. For example, a centralized exchange may have an API that you can interact with but it will only allow you to do very limited things (such as interact with it via trading bots) and it will not allow you to build financial products using its infrastructure. Another example would be trying to build a new stablecoin from scratch on a smaller network - you may succeed at doing it but to get usage/liquidity you will have to integrate with the Ethereum network in some way.
I believe that eventually the Ethereum economy will be one of, if not the biggest economies on the planet. And it’ll be a truly global, neutral and fair economy for everyone to participate in (sans high gas fees) - whether they’re a human or a robot and whether their identity is known or they’re anonymous. The future is exciting - don’t sleep on it!
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.