Ethereum will succeed for many reasons.
Most notably, though, Ethereum is the only chain that has optimized for maximal decentralization, and censorship-resistance above all else.
Instead of trading off exceptionally high levels of decentralization in favour of speed, we doubled down on developing a far more sustainable path towards scalability, that over the long-term, allows us to preserve and stay true to those original core values.
Enter: Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap.
As of today, Ethereum is home to a bustling ecosystem of scalability solutions, housing many different types of L2s, including rollups, validiums, optimiums, and even side chains, which you can track using amazing resources such as
@l2beat and
@growthepie_eth. Yes, I understand that side chains are not directly tied to Ethereum, but they do expand the usability of ETH!
L2s are in a good place today. They are doing a masterful job at moving the transactional activity of everyday users away from the highly-expensive L1, to the much more scalable L2 layer, where fees are virtually non-existent. In 2024, there are more people who have access to Ethereum's robust ecosystem of decentralized financial services than at any other point in Ethereum's history - and that, of course, expands the user base of ETH the asset to a much wider range of people.
With the rise of L2s, it is very much safe to say that Ethereum has succeeded in one of its most important missions over the last four years - and that is, to provide inexpensive access to Ethereum's decentralized, censorship-resistant, and highly-secure blockspace.
Now let's move on to ETH the asset, and why I believe that ETH is positioned beautifully to progressively evolve into one of the most desirable, unique, and productive assets the world has ever seen.
Ethereum has taken what Bitcoin did with BTC, and made it better in almost every practical way, particularly in the realm of programmability, and security.
Through things like native staking, ETH has proven itself to be a tremendous SoV, with roughly $80B dollars worth of ETH committed to keeping the Ethereum network alive and secure. Unlike Bitcoin mining, where dwindling block rewards are cause for uncertainty around the longevity of the chain, Ethereum has already solidified itself as future-proof with sustainable, healthy inflation via "minimum viable issuance," which goes hand-in-hand with affordable, modest hardware requirements, to ensure that there will always be an incentive for home stakers to validate the chain.
Outside of its use as a SoV and staking asset, ETH is the most pristine form of money and collateral that you will find across all of crypto. Its use throughout the DeFi ecosystem is unmatched, in addition to its use as a medium of exchange used to purchase onchain items such as NFTs and RWAs, among other things. Slowly, ETH's use of money is expanding into the real world, with some of the largest institutions on the planet using Ethereum to bring their business services onchain. Ethereum's "real world" era is only just beginning, and you can bet your a** that it's going to be powered by crypto's most secure, productive, and widely used form of money.
To round out this thread, I'll leave you with this.. Short term PA has never been a reliable source of signal for gauging the desirability of any specific asset over the long-term. On two very separate occasions, in 2016 and 2019, Ethereum was written off as a chain that would never go anywhere. I don't need to rehash here how wrong those people were, as I am sure you are all well aware. We are seeing the same kind of sentiment circling the depths of CT again today - only this time, ETH is already established as the second most valuable asset in all of crypto, and Ethereum and its L2 ecosystem houses more onchain developers than any other blockchain today.
The world is coming onchain - and it's all happening on Ethereum.