laibe

Ethereum community, I’ve been digesting a lot of what has been said from everyone these past couple of days/weeks, wanted to say a few words. If you don’t know me, I’ve been a long time builder in Ethereum almost since inception. I built some of the first apps on Ethereum, some of the first tools, SDKs and the first stage-2 rollup Fuel V1. Ethereum was and still is completely different from any other human project on planet earth. It took me three days to even understand what it was in the old days, I had to watch grainy videos of Vitalik in dark rooms explaining how it worked. At that point it was unintelligible even for most in the space. What drew me to Ethereum was a few things: - a love for building things in a decentralized way (getting rid of single points of failure and middle men) - a desire for building a new internet - a principled leader who didn’t seem like a grifter business guy Vitalik was not a normal “leader” in any sense. Nerdy, unapproachable, and in his own head. But he had something most others didn’t, he was not in it for the money or business . He just loved the build and research. This is what made me pick Ethereum. It was the love for building things and changing the world. Yes, the power of capitalism makes the system run, but it’s a component of a larger whole. A flow that makes the turbines work, not the turbine itself. Ethereum and the foundation was never run like a business. This was intentional for regulatory reasons at the time, but also spiritual, in the sense that corporate practices is what got us into the mess of needing Ethereum in the first place. Repeating those patterns always felt wrong. The foundation was always designed to be somewhat removed from marketing, and even the build of many tools. The community had to do almost everything. Only Solditiy and client development was covered. I loved and hated this. In one scene, it was more decentralized. In another, it held back development of things like the language and tooling for years. People who should not have been building tooling ended up doing it. It slowed the space and project down significantly. In retrospect, this should have been done by a single focused entity like a business. What made Ethereum become the force of nature it was not the foundation but companies like Consensys. Joe, had a deep sense about institutions and marketing that the foundation lacked. At the time it gave Ethereum a more decentralized source of marketing. The foundation just had to focus on DevCon and other major events. I think this relationship worked really well in the early days and drove Ethereum to the success we see today. Of course now the world is different. Projects like Solana run things far more like a business, even at the foundation level (at least from my perspective), it’s basically American Ethereum. I don’t believe this is right for the EF to follow and it goes against the spirit of the project in the first place. Many of the really good engineers were drawn to Ethereum specifically because it wasn’t run like an American company, but instead as a global project to change the world. Call it idealistic, but it’s true. I’m really happy Solana exists to explore what that side of the field can produce, and I think it’s helped accelerate the space tremendously, but this vibe/approach is not the spirit of Ethereum for me. Ethereum and its foundation needs to retain its ethos of being a neutral zone of blockchain research and development. It’s not a company, it’s not a product creator, it’s a lot more than all those things combined. That being said, the EF should listen to our new customers more: rollup teams (more blobs and fix bridging, then do fancy things later) and to market Ethereum to the masses. I’m very proud of being a part of Ethereum in the small way I have over the years. Many do not have the context or the history to understand what it means for humanity and I’m very excited for its future despite what others say.