Ethereum critics say it’s “dead,” but supporters say cryptocurrency is something like “digital oil.”

The majority of this is due to Ethereum prices, which is awfully late Bitcoin. The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency marked a series of all-time highs and surges in interest from Wall Street investors. Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, Ethereum had traded about $2,500, according to data from Crypto Exchange. Binance.

An insufficient movement in the price of ether has prompted us to declare the end of Ethereum. “Ethereum is dead” I wrote it Max Keizer, ON’s famous Bitcoin booster x. “They haven’t been buried yet.”

This is an exaggeration. But whether Ethereum’s price slump reflects a temporary stumbling, or whether blockchain is welcomed by boosters as a future computer remains questionable as if it will never grow into a promise.

Crowd costs and scaling

“Bitcoin has passed away many times… Ethereum has passed away several times,” said Josefulvin, CEO of blockchain technology company Consensey and co-founder of Ethereum. luck. “When we have a challenge, we learn from them.”

These challenges have been around since 2013 when 19-year-old Canadian Wiley, 19, had the idea of ​​a new type of computer. Fearing that large tech companies have an unhealthy monopoly over cloud computing, which could potentially suppress developers, Buterin was seeking blockchain instead. He and others came up with Ethereum, a decentralized blockchain-based computing platform in which programmer code is immune to the whims of corporate giants.

The developers quickly flocked to Ethereum, but the increase in activity led to an increase in “gas charges.” Every time users send each other’s assets in Ethereum, they have to pay in cryptocurrency – in the same way Amazon Users must pay dollars to use cloud computing networks. The only difference is that Ethereum gas fees are distributed to a distributed cohort of computers supporting blockchain, rather than a single corporate entity. In 2021, sending cryptocurrency to other users with Ethereum sometimes cost hundreds of dollars, and developers looked for solutions.

The solution is that Ethereum critics say they have taken away some networks of its financial value. Instead of working quickly to speed up the core network of Ethereum, the developers promoted the L systemAyer-2 blockchainor L2S, is built on top of Ethereum. These L2s include Arbitrum, Optmism, and Polygon – instead of packaging user data into one bundle and asking the blockchain to process it individually, they post it to Ethereum.

If gas prices were any indication, the strategy worked. Since peaked in mid-2020, transaction costs have plummeted by more than 99% at Ethereum. Glass Node.

However, Kyle Samani, managing partner at Crypto Investment Firm Multicoin Capital, believes this approach has reduced the value of Ethereum’s core network. “My basic view is that networks are either sustainable or worthless without direct user activity,” he said. luck.

Users have moved to L2S, ejecting some Ethereum of the activities that underpinned the price of cryptocurrency, claiming Samani, a well-known supporter of the competing Solana blockchain.

However, Paul Brody, chairman of the Enterprise Etherium Alliance, a blockchain advocacy group, said it was locked at ether prices in the short term. “Ethereum is a great world computer,” he said. luck. “I don’t think it can or should try to be everything, all people. I don’t think Ethereum in particular should also try to be the best, most deflationary cryptocurrency.”

Return to Layer 1

Ethereum upgrades should not be a clear task of controlling Ether prices and encourage increased demand for cryptocurrencies, Brody said. And that’s what developers are working on, says Danny Ryan and Vivek Raman, co-founders of Ethereum Advocacy Group Ethrealize, one of the wings of a robust blockchain-based technical and cultural community that is convened at large annual gatherings like Esten in Colorado.

According to Ryan and Raman, programmers are optimizing the speed of Layer-1 networks as well as Layer-1 chain ecosystems. Additionally, the duo believes that a flood of large tech companies exploring Wall Street and blockchain technology is in a hurry to buy cryptocurrency. “I don’t think you should pretend that your assets don’t have to be valuable,” added Danny Ryan. His co-founder Raman even equated Ethereum with “digital oil.”

“When we ask the institution, when we hold a meeting and say, “This is a civilization infrastructure, a global neutral infrastructure where we can deploy real assets with real trust,” Raman added. “Ethereum is an obvious choice.”

However, it remains to be seen whether Titan on Wall Street has decided to go to Ethereum instead of a competitor like Solana. Still, supporters are full of hope. “If it’s the first place for us to work and everyone to do business,” Brody said.