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If you want to see a graph about why many are so bullish on Ethereum - https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%

If you want to see a graph about why many are so bullish on Ethereum - https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F110fd6e9-505a-4f91-b36c-cc1bf95f22be_1354x708.png https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... Blockchain is like the early days of the internet, probably like 1998 right now. There were competitors to all the major internet protocols - TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP, but once everyone standardized the web flourished. I believe Ethereum is like that today. There are competitors, and loud internet commenters are financially incentivized to criticize it and promote others, but if you look at where organic development and new projects are founded on, Ethereum is far and away the most popular. Others are not even close. Other chains who criticize the fees of Ethereum are essentially saying, "That place is so crowded, nobody goes there anymore." ETH is working on scaling, bit by bit, and now with Layer-2 solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, Matic/Polygon, zkSync, Immutable, etc. etc. it's finally allowing scale in a significant way even before ETH2 is launched and takes over. Many chains pay projects to port their dapps to their own chain just to get some sort of third-party development, while the Ethereum Foundation primarily funds fundamental research and protocol improvements - Ethereum doesn't need to pay people to build on their chain. If an alternative blockchain's only reason to exist is "Like Ethereum - but with lower fees!" I would be leery. Some chains like Monero exist with a very defined purpose (privacy), and I see Bitcoin as something else entirely (store of value). But as the one-chain-to-rule-them-all, Ethereum would be your best bet.

knowaveragejoe 6y ago
The graph is a few years out of date, fwiw.
- seibelj 6y ago
  True - but as a longtime crypto pro the sentiment is still accurate IMO. See recent article https://decrypt.co/66740/who-are-the-fastest-growing-developer-communities-in-crypto https://decrypt.co/66740/who-are-the-fastest-growing-develop... > There are more than 8,000 monthly active developers working on various cryptocurrency projects, according to the Developer Report, produced by Electric Capital, a venture firm, with some 80% of those developers starting in the last two years. > The current leader in terms of people actively contributing to the development of a network is Ethereum, with approximately 2,300 average monthly developers - those who were active on a monthly basis, according to the Developer Report. The number actively working on Ethereum has grown by 215% in 3 years.
jerry1979 6y ago
>If an alternative blockchain's only reason to exist is "Like Ethereum - but with lower fees!" I would be leery. Do you think that taproot on the bitcoin chain could fill that role?
- seibelj 6y ago
  The bitcoin culture is very religious and getting even minor changes into the protocol are very difficult. Bitcoin is not trying to be like Ethereum, no one speaks for bitcoin, and everyone can have their own opinion on what it is. The fact it takes so long to make changes is a good thing from my perspective - the risk to the entire crypto space if BTC were to have a serious problem is catastrophic, so slow-and-steady is a smart tactic. For me, bitcoin is a store of value, like digital gold. I don't purchase BTC for the same reasons I purchase ETH. Taproot will enable better privacy on bitcoin and more efficient transactions. It will not enable an EVM-like smart contract system.
  - atweiden 6y ago
    > Taproot will enable better privacy on bitcoin and more efficient transactions. It will not enable an EVM-like smart contract system. You can already price EVM transactions in Bcash: https://smartbch.org/ https://smartbch.org/ (Notably Bcash has chosen to do “Ethereum on Bitcoin” using a sidechain, rather ironic from a historical perspective)
- dsr_ 6y ago
  Remember that there are lots of reasons to prefer OSI over TCP/IP, it's just that TCP/IP focused on interoperability and being useful.
  - dboreham 6y ago
    Not so much. OSI actually sucked. You had to pay to read the specs. Their stream protocol (CLNS) was a straight copy of TCP. There was no defined API (see: BSD Sockets). The layers were arbitrary, following Conway's Law vs the number of committees in the ISO organization. In addition as you note there was no interop and production deployment was rare.
Tenoke 6y ago
I don't see a reason to think that Ethereum is definitely like tcp/ip rather than e.g. like operating systems, social networks, browsers, programming languages etc. Ethereum is the best bet for the leader in the space (it already is) but some of the competitors bet on having different paradigms with different advantages rather than just lower fees e.g. ADA or SOL, and I don't see a reason for certainty that there'd be only 1 big success even if it's possible.
mondoveneziano 6y ago
> Blockchain is like the early days of the internet, probably like 1998 right now. There were competitors to all the major internet protocols - TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP, but once everyone standardized the web flourished. This just hurts to read. I get the point you are trying to make, but spewing non-factual comparisons isn't helping. 1998 is not "early Internet", more like 1970. By 1998, TCP/IP was entirely established; it was standardized in the 1980s. "WWW" is not a separate protocol, if you already list it with HTTP. As to the overall comparison of Blockchain with "the Internet" that is so popular: I don't see it. Up until the recent modern age, the Internet was always something where demand--and desired applications--were vastly over capacity and capability. From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up (or, in fact, could not keep up--many long desired applications only became feasible in the 2000s or so). This does not resemble the history of Blockchains. Equating something with the technology that completely changed the shape of the world is a very tall order. Electricity qualifies, probably the printing press does.
- xur17 6y ago
  > From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up It's not exactly the same, but this rings at least somewhat similar to what Ethereum is going through - the demand is pretty clearly there (people are willing to pay very hefty transaction fees to use it), and scaling solutions are just starting to launch that are enabling entirely new features, which I imagine will unlock another wave of demand.
  - atweiden 6y ago
    > It's not exactly the same, but this rings at least somewhat similar to what Ethereum is going through - the demand is pretty clearly there (people are willing to pay very hefty transaction fees to use it), and scaling solutions are just starting to launch that are enabling entirely new features, which I imagine will unlock another wave of demand. This is notable for confusing “demand” with speculation-fueled investment.

knowaveragejoe 6y ago

The graph is a few years out of date, fwiw.

seibelj 6y ago
True - but as a longtime crypto pro the sentiment is still accurate IMO. See recent article https://decrypt.co/66740/who-are-the-fastest-growing-developer-communities-in-crypto https://decrypt.co/66740/who-are-the-fastest-growing-develop... > There are more than 8,000 monthly active developers working on various cryptocurrency projects, according to the Developer Report, produced by Electric Capital, a venture firm, with some 80% of those developers starting in the last two years. > The current leader in terms of people actively contributing to the development of a network is Ethereum, with approximately 2,300 average monthly developers - those who were active on a monthly basis, according to the Developer Report. The number actively working on Ethereum has grown by 215% in 3 years.

jerry1979 6y ago

>If an alternative blockchain's only reason to exist is "Like Ethereum - but with lower fees!" I would be leery. Do you think that taproot on the bitcoin chain could fill that role?

seibelj 6y ago
The bitcoin culture is very religious and getting even minor changes into the protocol are very difficult. Bitcoin is not trying to be like Ethereum, no one speaks for bitcoin, and everyone can have their own opinion on what it is. The fact it takes so long to make changes is a good thing from my perspective - the risk to the entire crypto space if BTC were to have a serious problem is catastrophic, so slow-and-steady is a smart tactic. For me, bitcoin is a store of value, like digital gold. I don't purchase BTC for the same reasons I purchase ETH. Taproot will enable better privacy on bitcoin and more efficient transactions. It will not enable an EVM-like smart contract system.
- atweiden 6y ago
  > Taproot will enable better privacy on bitcoin and more efficient transactions. It will not enable an EVM-like smart contract system. You can already price EVM transactions in Bcash: https://smartbch.org/ https://smartbch.org/ (Notably Bcash has chosen to do “Ethereum on Bitcoin” using a sidechain, rather ironic from a historical perspective)
dsr_ 6y ago
Remember that there are lots of reasons to prefer OSI over TCP/IP, it's just that TCP/IP focused on interoperability and being useful.
- dboreham 6y ago
  Not so much. OSI actually sucked. You had to pay to read the specs. Their stream protocol (CLNS) was a straight copy of TCP. There was no defined API (see: BSD Sockets). The layers were arbitrary, following Conway's Law vs the number of committees in the ISO organization. In addition as you note there was no interop and production deployment was rare.

Tenoke 6y ago

I don't see a reason to think that Ethereum is definitely like tcp/ip rather than e.g. like operating systems, social networks, browsers, programming languages etc. Ethereum is the best bet for the leader in the space (it already is) but some of the competitors bet on having different paradigms with different advantages rather than just lower fees e.g. ADA or SOL, and I don't see a reason for certainty that there'd be only 1 big success even if it's possible.

mondoveneziano 6y ago

> Blockchain is like the early days of the internet, probably like 1998 right now. There were competitors to all the major internet protocols - TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP, but once everyone standardized the web flourished. This just hurts to read. I get the point you are trying to make, but spewing non-factual comparisons isn't helping. 1998 is not "early Internet", more like 1970. By 1998, TCP/IP was entirely established; it was standardized in the 1980s. "WWW" is not a separate protocol, if you already list it with HTTP. As to the overall comparison of Blockchain with "the Internet" that is so popular: I don't see it. Up until the recent modern age, the Internet was always something where demand--and desired applications--were vastly over capacity and capability. From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up (or, in fact, could not keep up--many long desired applications only became feasible in the 2000s or so). This does not resemble the history of Blockchains. Equating something with the technology that completely changed the shape of the world is a very tall order. Electricity qualifies, probably the printing press does.

xur17 6y ago
> From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up It's not exactly the same, but this rings at least somewhat similar to what Ethereum is going through - the demand is pretty clearly there (people are willing to pay very hefty transaction fees to use it), and scaling solutions are just starting to launch that are enabling entirely new features, which I imagine will unlock another wave of demand.
- atweiden 6y ago
  > It's not exactly the same, but this rings at least somewhat similar to what Ethereum is going through - the demand is pretty clearly there (people are willing to pay very hefty transaction fees to use it), and scaling solutions are just starting to launch that are enabling entirely new features, which I imagine will unlock another wave of demand. This is notable for confusing “demand” with speculation-fueled investment.