Why Ethereum Lost The Plot [Su Zhu]

Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_2fDTuh5aU (start at 25min mark)
Crypto villain of the year https://cryptobriefing.com/2021-review-the-top-10-crypto-villains-year/

Transcript

i would be curious to learn in

what sense has ether over optimized for

being money so what at what points did

it make a trade-off like a conscience

trade-off to say

we

we designed the chain to be better money

and worse as let's say an execution

layer

sure

i think a good broad way to understand

it is if you look at antonio the founder

of do idx's tweets about it afterward

and he he said you know

the ethereum user experience on on layer

one has basically not even 10xed over

five years

um and at that time the roadmap

was very much to to figure out how to

cater to users and developers right um

and and so i think just like if you just

zoom out that far it's pretty easy to

see that we're we're in a very different

place today

on ethereum than it was uh

a couple years ago and i think the

another easy way to see this is just

with d5 itself right where if you look

at the d5 that's kind of really taken

off and done well it's been crosstrained

it's been non-ethereum right so you know

luna versus snx but then also you know

um

sort of projects on avalanche versus

projects on ethereum the you know the

same exact project but they'll do better

on avalanche um and then you know you

you you kind of get a sense that um

i think ethereum rightfully says that

they're the bedrock or kind of the uh

birthplace of defy innovation right but

what that also means is that if that's

the

main claim to to to um

sort of power that that that becomes

quite

it becomes quite nostalgic like in a way

right uh where

um what about the new users or what

about the new developers where do they

go and and you know what we're seeing is

that new developers are just multi-evm

right so they

deploy where the users are because their

goal is to

have their product be used you know so

an example is we back tranches which is

a

quite quite uh novel mechanism for doing

risk sharing across um longs and shorts

and it's got one of the highest tbls in

d5 right but they started off on bsc and

the the founders love ethereum but they

just

said if i launched on l1

uh there's no way and i'm not gonna

launch on matic because

if i'm gonna launch on another chain

anyways i might as well launch where the

actual users are

right so

uh okay

this is what kind of work this is kind

of what we're seeing on the app side and

then you look at the performance of d5

coins too right you know when we have

that part let's take note with the

performance let's let's stick with the

sort of the tech for a second because

yeah sure sure so

um

if we i think if we look at blockchains

from

actually first principles

it's really just you know it's a shared

database where anyone can can verify or

where anybody can see that the the

computation that was done whether it's a

transfer or a smart contract execution

that was done with

integrity so that was that was done

correctly right

and you can have various

kinds

of such uh

database basically so being the most

centralized would be just binance right

the centralized exchange nobody has any

insight into their database but it has a

lot of reputation at stake um so you

just trust it to you know perform all

the other updates correctly pretty much

and on the other extreme

you have something like bitcoin and

ethereum where they say oh we throttle

the network um really hard to sort of

keep um

this verification cost this cost for

people to actually do the accounting

themselves to to to to walk through

every step that was done and say oh i

can i can verify

without making any trust assumptions

that all of this computation was done

correctly

right and in the middle between these

two extremes centralized exchange and

the completely decentralized blockchain

you have a pretty wide trade of space

right and um that's where you find bsc

that's where you find avalanche and

solana at some points across these

spectrums right

but

sort of what i'm wondering is

i mean

are these other chains really gonna you

know

develop in in in any other way i mean

than ethereum and bitcoin so their

databases are always so yeah

i guess my answer would be they already

have and they will continue

because they are attracting all the new

users i think this is the just the

reality of the space right and i think

you know when i told you that half of

metamask users are bsc users and it

under shocked you

it's because a lot of

you know a lot of ether ogs and biblical

energies they don't use

chains because they don't need that

money right like you don't need to make

a thousand dollars you don't need to

make ten thousand dollars right you're

too wealthy to care

but that says more about you than it

says about other people right so

it's kind of my point which is that um i

i find that a lot of ethiopians they're

in the mindset now where they're like

i'm already rich and you have to

understand why what i've done is so good

and also what i why what i'm preserving

is so valuable and valuable

as it may

um you have given very few outlets for

new users to come and participate

in what you've done and and so you know

that's the reality of the space and and

you know having matic is not is not an

answer right because if you have matic

then they say what is the difference

between matic and any other l1 right and

then and then you open up that door and

then

yeah of course of course there's none

right so so i think that that's kind of

the reality of the space and i agree

with you a hundred percent on you know

there is a

you know a decentralization trade-off uh

between each of these and i think what

the novel sort of

understanding that i have or or that um

i think the market has as well is that

um

where ethereum is on the trade-off scale

um

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it

it is optimized for a world

that um

it's struggling to maintain its network

effect for evm itself

where evm developers are immediately

deploying to every chain

and then users are using where

they find it most convenient

so

i would say in april or march i would

have said that ether itself uh will

benefit a lot from this multi evm i

believe i said that in a thesis um and

he did and i think in part ether has

right it has outperformed bitcoin quite

a bit uh since then because ether

benefits from being able to be ported

around on evm just much easier right so

you can bring your you know y...