Crypto Weekender 5/24
Curated reads, listens, views by Ria Bhutoria and Wilson Withiam.
Weekly Spotlight 🔦
The Unbundling of Ethereum by Kyle Samani
Kyle Samani’s latest piece discusses the impact of Ethereum losing developer and project mindshare to alternative dapp platforms on the wealth stored in its native cryptocurrency ETH. Ethereum has earned this monetary premium by bundling a wide variety of apps onto a single platform, giving ETH value beyond its utility for gas payments. But due to inherent throughput, latency, and cost constraints, developers are selecting competing chains or migrating existing Ethereum projects to other platforms at an increasing pace. Samani states common blockchain applications — gambling, in-game assets, security tokens — may not need Ethereum’s level of trust-minimization or, in the case of security tokens, a blockchain solution at all. Moreover, alternative chains optimized for specific use-cases are being deployed and gaining interest — Binance chain for token issuance, JP Morgan’s chain for enterprise solutions, and Tari’s digital asset platform for managing event tickets — accelerating the divergence from Ethereum.
Despite these developments, Samani argues open finance applications can only function on Ethereum right now, as other smart contract platforms do not store enough wealth and liquidity to compete. These use cases are not only “value accretive” to ETH but operate more efficiently than legacy financial substitutes in spite of Ethereum’s shortcomings. As a result, next generation chains and the migration of other verticals are unlikely to impact ETH’s monetary premium in the short run. Ethreum’s dominance is further buoyed by being oldest and most stress-tested operational network, especially compared to chains like Algorand and Kadena that have yet to launch on mainnet.
One caveat Samani mentions is the uncertainty surrounding the transition from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0 and the complexity of deploying applications in a sharded blockchain environment. Ethereum 2.0 promises improved throughput and reduced transaction fees, but there are potential nuances currently unknown to Ethereum developers that may impact time to deployment and discount ETH’s monetary premium.
Reads 📚
The Past & Future of Blockchain: Where we’re going and why by Spencer Bogart
ELI5 Explanation of the Ethereum 2.0 Testnet by Mohamed Fouda
The Case for Better Data in Crypto (Slides from CBUS 2019 Conference) by Nic Carter
Bitcoin: an Accounting Revolution by Murad Mahmudov and @ImacallyouJawdy
Lightning Network Consensus is a Marketplace and That’s Okay! By John Carvalho
Decentralized Lending: An Overview by Antonio Juliano
MetaMask Metrics: a first look by Bobby Dresser
Tweets
Matt Walsh thread on the corporate mindset around blockchain projects
The TIE thread on recent Bitcoin tweet volume and sentiment analysis
Ari Paul thread on crypto security
Arianna Simpson thread on traditional vs. decentralized prediction markets
Listens 🎧
Unchained: How to Trade on Crypto Exchanges Without Fear of Hacks
Staked Podcast: Investing in Governance with Jake Brukhman
The Blockcrunch: Can Crypto Change How We Run Organizations? — Luis Cuende (Aragon)
Zero Knowledge: Diving into Cosmos with Sunny
Off the Chain: The Bitcoin Sign Guy: The Legend of the Sign
Blockchain Insider: Do the crime, do the time
Base Layer: Alexander Skidanov (NEAR)
Citizen Bitcoin: Gigi: 21 Lessons from Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole
Views 🎥
Bitcoin’s Wild Ride special on 60 minutes
Is the Freedom to Transact a Universal Human Right? panel and the rest of the Consensus 2019 talks
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