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Few developers have the opportunity to create a project like Ethereum, in just over six years the cryptocurrency went from being the competition of the other-almost unknown Bitcoin (at that time), to move more than $9 billion in daily transactions using its blockchain protocol.
The Ehtereum protocol has gone from having only application in the world of cryptocurrencies to being a cornerstone of the new concept of Decentralized Finance (DEFI), as its protocol is used by most of these new applications that are emerging in the market.
Despite Ethereum’s success, its creator, Vitalik Buterin, acknowledged that his biggest regret during the creation of the protocol was “the issue of its ‘8 co-founders’ (and choosing them so quickly and without discriminating).”
Buterin was referring to the eight founders of Ethereum, who, apart from him, include poker coach Mihai Alisie; Canadian entrepreneur Anthony Di Lorio; programmer Jeffrey Wilcke; mathematician Charles Hoskinson; Amir Chetrit, who worked on his own cryptocurrency; SyNerG Music CEO Joseph Lublin; and computer scientist Gavin Wood.
Hoskinson is now the founder of Cardano, a cryptocurrency that recently just placed as the third largest market cap cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Gavin Wood ended up designing Polkadot, which already has a volume equivalent to $2.4 billion in daily transactions and is the ninth most popular cryptocurrency in the market.
It seems that Buterin’s fantastic team was divided by disagreements over Ethereum’s corporate name, while one wanted Ethereum to be a non-profit organization, the others believed that the blockchain platform should be incorporated as a private company. The dilemma proved divisive and Hoskinson ended up leaving the group.
“People are harder to coordinate in small groups than I expected. You can’t get everyone to sit in a circle, see each other’s inherent goodness and get along, especially when there are big incentive conflicts at play,” Buterin explained.
Buterin also regrets certain technical issues about Ethereum, as is the case with its design which Vitaly propi described as an idea having 256-bit design.
Could Ethereum surpass Bitcoin in market value?
Some analysts think Ethereum could surpass bitcoin’s market capitalization in the future, as is the case with Goldman Sachs, which has called Ethereum the “Amazon of information.”
“Given the importance of actual uses in determining store of value, ether has a high probability of overtaking bitcoin as a dominant store of value” says a part of the Goldman Sachs report leaked on Twitter.
The growth of DEFI has pushed the adoption of Ethereum, the bolckchain’s open source code allows for the creation of sophisticated, decentralized financial instruments such as compound interest loans.
“The Ethereum ecosystem supports smart contracts and provides a way to create new applications on its platform,” the Goldman report explains. On top of Ethereum’s protocol, the transfer of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) to digitize art, for example, or other types of assets, is also already supported.
During the last year, Ethereum’s growth has surpassed that of Bitcoin. While famous Bitcoin has grown in value by 300%, Ethereum has grown by 1000%, partly due to the adoption of the blockchain protocol in a large number of DEFI applications.
Economist, writer and liberal. With a focus on finance, the war on drugs, history, and geopolitics // Economista, escritor y liberal. Con enfoque en finanzas, guerra contra las drogas, historia y geopolítica