The Ethereum Mafia - The Daily Gwei #289
Just when you thought you were out, Ethereum pulls you back in.
The Ethereum ecosystem is full of extremely bright, vibrant and intelligent people from all walks of life and varied backgrounds. While these people may have vastly different cultures, social norms and educational backgrounds, they all share one thing in common - they are part of The Ethereum Mafia.
Jordan’s thread above caught my attention today because it runs through all of the projects that have spawned off from the Synthetix ecosystem (which, of course, is built on Ethereum). Many people who were involved in Synthetix from the earliest days to today have gone on to either start their own project, their own fund or continued to be open advocates for other projects in this space. This effectively creates a “Synthetix Mafia” that is able to spread the ethos and mission of the Synthetix project via the new things that these people decide to build. Additionally, many of the projects that have spun out of the Synthetix ecosystem are actually building on Synthetix!
I think that Ethereum has a major advantage over other ecosystems because it has 6+ years of building world-changing technology to lean on. The people who built the early successful apps on Ethereum are true pioneers - they paved the way for things like DeFi to flourish - and now many of them are moving onto their next project which just works to further increase Ethereum’s already strong network effects. These people believe in Ethereum’s mission, it’s ethos and have deep relationships with plenty of other like-minded people so they aren’t leaving the ecosystem - they’re simply keeping it in the family.
Something that I find especially funny is that those who don’t even like Ethereum for whatever reason actually still build on it or use it - I mean, we need only look at the tokenized BTC solutions on Ethereum and the fact that $8.4 billion worth of BTC has already been tokenized (mostly to take advantage of DeFi yield farming). That’s the beauty of an open and permissionless platform - anyone can use it for whatever reason and no one can stop them. Though I think this also speaks to Ethereum’s ability to attract people from all walks of life - whether you’re a hardcore “digital gold” believer or a rabid “world computer” hopeful - there’s a place for you in Ethereum.
Given the nature of network effects, The Ethereum Mafia™ is just going to continue to grow at an exponential rate - with plenty of early employees of successful DeFi projects and early investors making enough life-changing money to go and build their own projects (it’s much easier to take risks when you know that you’re not going to end up on the street if your project fails).
And after all, once you’re in - you’re in.
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.