Current status of Ethereum development? | Q&A

1 Is Soneium a boon for the Ethereum ecosystem?

The Soneium layer two expansion built by Sony will definitely have a positive effect on the Ethereum ecosystem, but this effect is only potential. Whether it can have a direct impact depends on whether there are attractive applications built on it.

I feel that such a chain theoretically will not issue tokens. However, it has already launched a testnet and a DEX running on the testnet, so there are already users online using test tokens for related operations, hoping to take advantage of it. I suggest that if you have the time and energy, you can play around with it, but don't take it too seriously to try to exploit it.

Writing this, I thought of another long-standing popular layer two expansion, Linea.

Recently, this project made headlines with news that one of its co-founders left the project in July. It is rumored that this was due to a disagreement with other team members regarding Linea's vision.

The biggest shock this news brought to the community was the concern that the project might not issue tokens. Regardless of what the impact will be, it is certain that this will have a negative effect on Linea in the short term.

This incident also reflects a dilemma in the current Ethereum ecosystem from another perspective: how can numerous layer two expansions continue to develop and survive without application support?

I'm afraid Linea won't be the last layer two expansion to face such issues. If the bear market continues, I estimate that more and more projects will encounter problems.

2 Looking at the last round, large institutions are keen to support new chains, even with significant vulnerability risks, like FTX and LUNA.

Seeing this comment reminded me of a recent set of new projects in the crypto ecosystem that well-known venture capital firms, including A16Z, have invested in.

In these projects, the stage of investment from these VCs is quite early, with many being in the "pre-seed" or "seed" rounds. This indicates that these large capital firms still have a high-risk appetite for these projects, or in other words, they are willing to take risks to participate in these projects.

I took a closer look at these projects, and many of them are in DeFi and gaming.

Among them, DeFi mainly consists of projects within the Ethereum ecosystem, as well as some Bitcoin and Solana projects.

The gaming projects are primarily gaming platforms rather than actual game projects.

In addition to these two categories, there is also a layer two expansion for Ethereum. This layer two expansion claims to achieve better results in speed, layer two cross-chain, and finality.

I feel that these projects still lack distinctive features; in my view, the vast majority are just reinventing the wheel without breakthroughs in applications.

3 Continuous large-scale selling by the Ethereum team: does it subtly indicate internal divisions within the Ethereum team? Has corruption occurred?

According to the Ethereum team's own explanation for the sell-off, it is to support related projects and cover various expenses, but I haven't checked the relevant information and data, so I can't determine whether this reflects internal divisions within the team.

However, the Ethereum team has had divisions for a long time. The departure of co-founder Gavin Wood in the early years was a significant blow to the core Ethereum team—he is the author of the Ethereum yellow paper, a major contributor to the first version of the client, and a key contributor to Geth.

As for the Ethereum Foundation, it has long been criticized. Not only this time, but for a long time, the Ethereum Foundation's lack of transparency and public accountability has been heavily criticized. Frankly speaking, there hasn't been much improvement over the years.

I think the main reason for this is that this organization is a non-governmental organization and not a publicly listed company, so it lacks supervision in terms of legal regulation.

There are definitely issues within the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum Foundation, and the Ethereum core team, and some of these problems may not be easy to resolve over time.

However, what I can think of is: looking at the entire crypto ecosystem, I really can't find another ecosystem and team that is better than Ethereum.

Recently, I paid close attention to the Ethereum Foundation's information and read in detail about a recent AMA they held. I shared my thoughts and feelings about this AMA during an online discussion last weekend.

Overall, I feel that the Ethereum Foundation members who spoke gave me a good impression, primarily because they still have not deviated from the core spirit of Ethereum and have proposed new solutions in terms of anti-censorship and sharding.

So, despite its imperfections and various issues, I still believe that the core motivation and spirit of Ethereum remain, and it will continue to move forward, albeit with difficulty.