Evaluation of Investment Value of Ethereum

In yesterday's article, I attempted to analyze the business model of Ethereum.

This assessment method is still very rough, and there are many details for which I can only provide rough estimates. There are certainly many imperfections and even errors in the details.

But this direction must be adhered to.

There are two sentences by Duan Yongping that I strongly agree with: do the right thing, and do things right.

I believe that using a business model to evaluate Ethereum is "doing the right thing"; using various methods to assess it is an attempt to "do things right." Although this attempt is bound to involve various mistakes, as long as we continue to improve and correct, we will get closer to "doing things right."

Starting from yesterday's business model, for Ethereum to reach an intrinsic value of $2 trillion in the future, it conservatively needs to burn around 20,000 ETH daily.

However, from the current ecosystem perspective, it seems a bit unimaginable for Ethereum to reach this state—according to current data, Ethereum burns only about a hundred ETH daily, which is still quite far from the target.

To achieve such a scenario, from the most intuitive understanding, Ethereum's future ecosystem must be quite large, specifically:

• There must be a large number of layer two expansions built on Ethereum.

• A batch (rather than just a few) of layer two expansions with strong ecosystems must rise.

This form, in turn, requires Ethereum to be secure and decentralized. Otherwise, if Ethereum encounters problems, the layer two expansions built on it will collapse, and the entire ecosystem will face a catastrophic disaster.

Is this scenario possible to achieve?

If we consider this issue from the opposite perspective, it seems that for Ethereum to reach this goal, it is not a matter of whether it can do it, but rather that it must do it.

For a long time, the only two layer one blockchains I have learned about extensively are Bitcoin and Ethereum.

My expectation for layer one blockchains is that they can recreate a brand new on-chain ecosystem and on-chain economy in the future. To achieve this vision, a layer one blockchain must meet two basic conditions:

• It must be a Turing-complete system.

• It must be as decentralized as possible.

Between Bitcoin and Ethereum, Bitcoin has better consensus than Ethereum but lacks the first condition. So theoretically, if Bitcoin can address this shortcoming, its prospects would be quite bright.

Unfortunately, after the past two to three years of practice and exploration, Bitcoin still has not made substantial progress on the first condition, so among these two layer one blockchains, only Ethereum remains capable of meeting the conditions to realize this vision.

Ethereum's future must develop a more diverse ecosystem to attract a wider range of builders.

A reader commented:

Is economic globalization the most favorable environment for blockchain, especially for public chains like Ethereum?

The current situation is that economic globalization is beginning to come to an end to some extent, with cracks appearing in the traditional alliance between the United States and Europe, and the future world will be more fragmented than today.

However, global communication and interaction cannot be blocked, especially in economic terms. Public blockchains can precisely serve as intermediaries for such communication and interaction.

In this context, I believe that decentralized, more neutral public chains have more favorable conditions. I find it hard to imagine a public chain with strong institutional or national characteristics playing such a role.

Therefore, I believe Ethereum can play such a role.

The largest bank in Switzerland, UBS, is testing tokenized gold trading on Ethereum's layer two expansion, which is a typical example.

What has been mentioned above is speculation about the future. If we return to the current reality, Ethereum's daily burning of only about a hundred ETH in transaction volume is clearly mismatched with its current market value. Its current market value is obviously overestimated.

From the current scenario, I can only imagine two possible outcomes:

• If in four years (or perhaps less than four years), the Ethereum ecosystem (including layer two expansions) still does not see a dazzling new ecosystem emerge, then Ethereum's price will certainly drop significantly.

• If within four years, Ethereum experiences an explosion of a new ecosystem, then it will make significant strides toward the envisioned goal.

I believe the second scenario will occur.