My eight years with Ethereum

Author: Todd Source: X, @0x_Todd

First, congratulations to Ethereum’s 10th anniversary!

It has been exactly 8 years since I registered for the first Ethereum wallet.

There was a saying in the past that humans will have large-scale cell renewal replacements every 7 years on average.

Indeed, from the perspective of cellularity, I am no longer me.

Ethereum is still Ethereum.

My earliest Ethereum wallet is still alive, and even the little change left in my wallet that year has increased by 10 times.

At that time, I was typing at home and discussing Ethereum;

At this moment, it is hard to imagine that I am still sitting in place, discussing Ethereum.

Let me talk about myself first.

As we all know, I am a loyal supporter of Bitcoin, but I am not a BTC maxi (translated as a star-chasing fan. I am not a fan of the only one). I also like Ethereum, BNB and Solana, and I am happy to study them.

My first Ethereum wallet was actually not a MetaMask, but an ancient wallet called My ether wallet. This wallet is too primitive because every time I log in, I have to upload a file called a keystore, and then enter the password to unlock the file before I can use it.

The reason I wanted to register for an Ethereum wallet was because I wanted to buy a crypto cat at that time.

At that time, two cats could have children. Some cats had scarce characteristics, and each cat had a different birth rate, so that the descendants could be endless, and then they were for everyone to hype.

The first time I used MetaMask, it was traced back to 2020. At that time, the originator of the algorithm stablecoins was called AMPL. Its characteristic is that if it increases by 1 yuan, it will print money to everyone.If it falls below 1 yuan, it will deduct money from each person’s balance, and the effect of stablecoin is achieved by adjusting supply and demand.

Two wallets are actually a microcosm of two eras. In fact, I roughly divide Ethereum into 4 eras:

Era 0 (2015-2016): The birth of Ethereum
Era 1 (2017-2019): ICO Era
Era 2 (2020-2022): The DeFi Era
Era 3 (2023-2025): LST Era
Era 4 (2025-Today): The Asset Era

Era 1: ICO Era

Ethereum actually had only one trick in 2015-2016, which was smart contracts.This was definitely a new thing at that time, because other copycats, such as Ripple and Litecoin, did not have this thing.

Of course, people are also very shallow in the development of smart contracts. Until 2017, people probably only used it to issue coins.

After all, I still use an anti-human wallet like My ether wallet. How could I develop a Dapp?

However, it is enough to issue coins.In the past, if you want to issue a coin, you need to modify the code (for example, change the word Bitcoin to Litecoin), you need to find miners to support it, and you need to monitor the stability of the network at any time, which is very troublesome.

At least 80% of people just want a coin to speculate, and don’t care much about its underlying mechanism (even the narrative is becoming less and less important now. I regret that I did not understand this sentence in a timely and thorough manner).

And Ethereum perfectly took on this demand, so it became the absolute supernova of that year.

I was deeply impressed by it. When the ban on 94 encryption was issued in China, the price of Ethereum was 1,400 RMB, and half a year later, Ethereum reached 1,400 USD!

Ethereum’s high price this time is essentially a FOMO sentiment aroused by supply and demand.

Just imagine, you have to participate in 1-3 public ICOs in the group every day, each of which needs Ethereum. If you make a smart contract, you will make 3-100 times more profitable. How can you not hoard a little Ethereum?

Of course, Ethereum’s checkout was also caught off guard.

I often share with my friends the story of the space chain and the hero chain breaking the time.The space chain launches blockchain nodes into space, while the hero chain is the so-called gambling chain released by the so-called Southeast Asian casino owner.

These two projects were considered to be the king-level projects in the ICO era, but they both broke the issue price at the beginning of 2018, marking the beginning of the breaking issue price.

When everyone found that projects that used Ethereum to raise funds began to cash out Ethereum, and at the same time, using Ethereum to participate in ICOs and lose one by one, they naturally began to slowly dump Ethereum.

Therefore, Ethereum was hit $80 per in 2019, which is a real valley of despair.

Actually, I cannot avoid the vulgarity. I am not the kind of real E Guard who still maintains faith while the decline continues to fall.

Keeping writing is indeed a good habit and helps leave a tool for self-reflection.I looked at me in March 2018, Ethereum was about 400 US dollars, and I also published an article during the Ethereum trough period, questioning the value of Ethereum – I can only issue ICOs, so after ICO checkout, what else can Ethereum do?

There was indeed an expert in the comment section at that time. A man named LionStar retorted incisively:

“2018 is just the beginning of Ethereum. People in the Ethereum community themselves know that Ethereum has no stretch or performance now, and it’s still early. Ethereum’s grand vision will only take the first step in 2018. POS, sharding, plasma, truebit, state channel, swarm, zero-knowledge proof and so on have not been applied yet. Let’s look at the development of Ethereum in five years. Also, most people who speculate in currency are based on prices. When the price rises, they will rise, and when the price falls, they will not work. This idea is not only terrible and meaningless. Technology and development prospects determine the real value, and prices will eventually approach real value.”

The black humor is that all the above, except for PoS and zero-knowledge proof, failed.

Of course, this is also the most admirable thing about Ethereum, which is that it is an open framework that allows various teams to try various ideas, such as the above mentioned – sharding, plasma, truebit, state channel, swarm and other things.Most of them come from the community, and everyone expresses their opinions and works hard for it. This is the best embodiment of the spirit of the Internet and the spirit of open source software.

Only by constantly and free trial and error can Ethereum be today.

The entire Ethereum community is actually two main lines.

One is technology to improve Ethereum’s own performance;

The second is application, which is made around Ethereum.

The flowers bloom at both ends, each with one branch.After Ethereum fell into a trough, DeFi unexpectedly slowly kicked off.

Era 2: The DeFi Era

It all started in 2020 when Compound announced the start of subsidizing depositors and borrowers. People were surprised to find that it was impossible to make meaningful applications on Ethereum, rather than boring mini-games like Crypto, which only has the meaning of viewing.

Moreover, this true application can actually be better than traditional applications.Cheaper borrowing costs and higher deposit interest.There was even a situation where the electricity meter was reversed at one point.

People are accustomed to it now, but people at that time were shocked.

You should know that other popular coins at that time were distributed storage, and even solar cannabis coin game chains and other things created for the sake of creation. However, Ethereum has something that can surpass traditional applications, which is very cool and can be called the first college student in the village.

In addition, ICO is not all a bubble, it brings some new things. EthLend, the predecessor of AAVE, which we are using every day, also comes from the ancient ICO era.

Therefore, Ethereum was destroyed and then established, and the DeFi era officially began.

DeFi also caused changes in supply and demand, because both Uniswap and Sushiswap require a large amount of Ethereum as LP, which has greatly increased the demand for Ethereum.

Holding Ethereum, dig something and bear a little impermanence, you can get an APR of more than 100% annualized annualized interest rate. Who can’t be moved by such an interest rate?

With the intense demand for Ethereum from DeFi, Ethereum first climbed to 4100, and then reached an all-time high of 4800 in 21 years.This contains people (including me) imagination about Ethereum being able to eat traditional finance.

However, unlike ICO, Ethereum has been surrounded by wolves in 21 years. DeFi was born in Ethereum, but the gospel soon spread to the competition chain.Ethereum’s competitors are cheaper and faster.In the ICO era, the gap in Gas fee was not obvious, while in the DeFi era, the three words “Noble Chain” were definitely the worst advertisements for Ethereum, not praise.

It’s 22 years in the blink of an eye, and Luna—it’s hard to call it DeFi, because it was Ponzi from the beginning.Its blast collapsed, led to the market, took away FTX and 3AC, and also caused the DeFi craze in which these institutions were deeply involved in, and it was like a wake-up call to hold down the DeFi summer.

Similar to the former ICO, due to the reverse change in supply and demand relationship, people no longer participate in liquidity mining, and Ethereum has also begun to enter a long downward channel.Especially the decline in exchange rate with BTC has shattered countless people’s dreams.

If DeFi is prosperous, the ether will prosper. If DeFi is weak, it will naturally be difficult to harden the ether, especially when other chains focus on handling time-consuming under 1 cent.

Why has Ethereum been vigorously promoting the L2 strategy rather than the L1 expansion strategy over the years?

I think you probably understand it when you see this.

This is indeed a critical survival and death!Ethereum must immediately be in place and slow down DeFi’s departure, even if it is not hesitant to hinder its main network status.So a large number of L2s were born at this moment.

There are pioneering Arb OP ZK, leading institutions like Base Mantle OPBNB, mother chain like Metis, novel ideas like Taiko, and applications like Uni.

What Ethereum needs is not a long-term implementation plan, but a very fast, very simple, and can immediately expand the capacity immediately. After all, it is L2.

Facts have proved that L2 has achieved its due effect. They have completely consolidated the golden sign of EVM and have not allowed a large number of DeFi developers to lose their fees outside the ecosystem.

The money and users do not go to the outside world. Although these funds and users have left the ETH main network, at least:

(1) Didn’t go to the competitors;

(2) No more competitors were created.

Just imagine, if there is no L2 strategy, Coinbase will definitely issue its own chain, which is human nature.But with L2, at least in name, Base Uni and others still regard Ethereum as the “common master of the world”.

As long as EVM does not fall, Ethereum will not lose.

Era 3: LST Era

Next is the third chapter of Ethereum, which is also the worst-case chapter.

Following the ICO era and the DeFi era, Ethereum has entered the LST era.

With the upgrade of Shanghai, Ethereum’s conversion to PoS has been completely successful. From the perspective of TVL, Lido has risen, EtherFi has risen, and countless ETH LSTs have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

Every new era will have a strong mark of the era from the previous era. You can go to DeFillama to see. DeFi, the top DeFi on Ethereum, is basically an affiliate of LST or LST.

Source: DeFillama

What are LST affiliates?

For example, revolving loans, EtherFi’s revolving loans can easily achieve a return rate of more than 10% on the Ethereum standard (if you are interested, you can DM me to communicate).But “loan” requires a place to borrow, so AAVE and Morpho’s large number of TVLs are actually derived from the demand for revolving loans, so although they are DeFi, I compare them to LST affiliates.

DeFi helped promote the birth of LST, which became DeFi’s largest customer at present.

Say something off topic.Our company Ebunker was also established at this time, September 15, 2022, which is also the day when Ethereum PoS succeeds in merge.

Until today, there are more than 400,000 Ethereum running on our nodes in a non-hosted form, which makes me quite satisfied with the decision I made at that time.

After all, every E-sub Guard wants to take his own actions to protect the security of Ethereum (I run the nodes).

Going back to the topic, if you are careful, you can find that I have just emphasized that “sharp changes in supply and demand have affected the prices of Ethereum.”

However, LST (including unmanaged staking) has not brought about improvements in supply and demand. Lido’s ETH interest rate has remained at 3% for a long time, and EtherFi can be slightly higher than 3.5%, but this is already the limit.

Neither the EigenLayer nor the other re-staking behind it has changed the nature of this benchmark interest rate.

But just like everyone is looking forward to the United States’ interest rate cut every day, this 3% benchmark interest rate even magically suppresses the virtual economic activities of Ethereum, a virtual country.

Ethereum’s gas fee has begun to fall (of course, it is also inseparable from the efforts of L1 expansion and L2 strategy), but the above economic activities are still very depressed.

This is exactly the same as the two times in history – the imbalance of supply and demand relationships.

So, LST did not become a summer, but accompanied Ethereum all the way down.

Because, the 3% interest rate does not constitute a reason for large investors to buy Ethereum, and at most it can delay their sales.However, I still have to thank LST, because many big friends have deposited Ethereum into Staking, and at least they did not create a gold pit of 80 US dollars similar to that in 2019.

Era 4: The Asset Era

Fortunately, after Bitcoin, Ethereum has successfully entered the US spot ETF, which has given Ethereum a brief hype. In fact, this has opened the fourth big chapter of Ethereum – the asset era.

The process of turning from alternative assets into mainstream assets is long. In this way, everyone watched the ETH/BTC exchange rate gradually fall below 0.02, and Ethereum encountered the third “big doubt”.

In fact, the audience should thank that man, Saylor, who invented the great micro-strategy gameplay.

Companies first buy Bitcoin/Ethereum, relying on these assets to issue additional shares and issue debts, and then buy more Bitcoin/Ethereum, continue to issue more stocks and lend more bonds, and then buy more Bitcoin/Ethereum.

The success of micro-strategy in Bitcoin has inspired the Ethereum community.

Sharplink, led by Consensys, and bitmine, represented by traditional funds supported by Mutoujie, began to compete for the leading position of Ethereum’s micro-strategy.

They and a group of imitators have successfully ignited the resonance linkage between US stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Yes, that’s right, this time it has changed the supply and demand relationship of Ethereum.

Institutions bought Ethereum at a large-scale real market price, and like before, the LST era also played a foundational role. A large amount of staking locked in the liquidity of a large number of Ethereum floating chips, which naturally created the FOMO of coin-stock linkage at this moment.

Of course, this is also inseparable from the good impression that Ethereum has left on the circle and traditional funds for a long time.

V God did not show off luxury car villas, nor did he stand on the platform to copy scams, but was constantly thinking about how technology could affect the future of Ethereum, such as ZKVM, privacy, L1 simplification, etc.

Never even mentioned sbet or bitmine once on Twitter.

Ethereum can be selected by the market and usher in this fourth era, which is the goodwill and reputation accumulated by Ethereum and V god over the years.

It can be said that God V is an important part of my recognition of Ethereum values.

at last

As Binji said, the Ethereum network has been operating smoothly for 10 years, with 3,650 days and nights without any interruptions and maintenance windows.

During this time: