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Opinion: We're in the golden age of Ethereum

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Ethereum will expand in all important areas.

The Golden Age of Ethereum: The Beginning of a modular blockchain paradigm

原文作者：Anthony Sassano，EthHub联合创始人

原文编译：Unitimes

Ethereum is expanding in a number of ways.

Ethereum is like a super-city of economic activity that runs 24/7, spans the globe and allows anyone to access it. Unfortunately, Ethereum has been suffering from the side effects of its own success: it has lost many users due to its high transaction costs. But don't worry, Ethereum has expanded, and not just in the much-talked-about L2(second layer) formEthereum is expanding on many different fronts!

A good analogy is that we can compareVertical scaling of Ethereum (i.e. L2s).Imagine how a city can be builtHigh-rise buildingsTo scale up. If a city consists only of one-storey buildings, then the city will either need a massive horizontal expansion of the first floor (L1) (although this will still be limited and expensive), or it will limit its growth to accommodate only those who can afford to live there. This is where Ethereum L1 is right now, and it's where we build L2 scalability technologies (e.g.Rollups, Validiums Or even side chain).

In terms of L1 scaling, that is, horizontal scaling, Ethereum will be more thanData fragmentation (Data Sharding).Data sharding will provide additional capacity for L2s (Like building more tall buildings on new land). So not only are we able to build enough tall buildings (L2 capacity) to house 10,000 people, but we can build many more tall buildings to house millions of people. Just as you can optimize the capacity of a tall building and the layout of a city, you can do the same with the Ethereum L1 and ITS L2 ecosystem. We're actually in the middle ofModular blockchain paradigmIn the beginning.

Another thing that doesn't get talked about a lot is what about EthereumExpand its social layerOr, to put it another way, how Ethereum expands as its community gets bigger and bigger. I think Ethereum does this by embracing the spirit of decentralization, which means not building communities through a top-down approach -- no rulebook, no guidelines, no set of laws (other than code), and certainly no rulers in Ethereum cities; Instead, Ethereum operates more like a"The bazaar"-- just as...Ben Edgington saysThe ethereum marketplace is "noisy and seemingly chaotic, but very efficient and dynamic -- and, crucially, produces better results" for open source software development.

As you can see, Ethereum is in a very good position,Expansion will be made in all important areas. In fact, I think for encrypted networks,Social scalability The scalability problem is vital because without it, the encrypted network would essentially be a centralized network controlled by a small group of people, and this is what we're trying to break down with blockchain technology!

So let's continue to expand ethereum's fantastic super-city and make sure it stays decentralized.

The golden age of Ethereum

As someone who has been in the Ethereum ecosystem since early 2017, I can say with certainty that I have never been more optimistic about the future of Ethereum than I am today. After years of effort, we are seeing Ethereum.L1 aspects (EIP-1559And other major upgrades),In L2 & have spent(RollupsStride forward) as wellApplication layer (DeFi,NFTs,DAOsAnd so on.We are in the golden age of Ethereum.

For me, what excites me most is that the Ethereum ecosystem is really like a city that never sleeps. Things happen at any time of the day, and you can use the Ethereum network anytime. Obviously, this is very similar to the way the Internet has worked for a long time, but we never had oneAlways openanddecentralizedFor me, at least, this is the most exciting innovation ethereum has brought to the world. Let's dive into some of the exciting things that are happening in Ethereum.

Let's start with "merge." Amazing progress is being made on this front, and most of the developers involved in both the consensus layer and the execution layer of Ethereum are now focused on completing the merger. As far as I know,Most of the core research on the merger has been completed, and the customer teams are making progress on the related functionality building A developer beta network and a public beta network for the merger will be launched in the coming months. Of course, we are still some time away from a mainnet merger. (q1 / Q2 2022)& NBSP; But I'm sure that researchers and developers will spend as much time as possible to make sure everything goes smoothly and safely. After all, this will be the biggest upgrade in Ethereum's history -- and we want to get it right.

One thing that has become clearer to the entire Ethereum ecosystem over the past few months is thatHow will Ethereum scale: Rollups (and zero-knowledge technologies) are the Schelling points that all extensibility researchers/developers are currently working on, and there seems to be a general consensus that"Modular blockchain"Design is what Ethereum should strive for; On this basis, we will also implement data sharding in the future to enhance these Rollups that need a lot of data.Give Rollups more extensibility.

Even before data sharding was implemented, we already had hybrid solutions, such as Validium and Volition, that scale at the expense of some security (because they put data down the chain).

At the same time,NFTs (Non-homogeneous tokens) have become non-crypto native usersThe best and easiest tool to get into Crypto. What makes NFTs special is that they are more user-friendly for new Crypto because the NFTs ecosystem is not as full of complex financial jargon as DeFi.

Most importantly, collecting and trading NFTs is much more interesting and intuitive to the average person than financial activities -- I mean, when and to what products does the average person provide liquidity in a traditional financial system? Don't get me wrong, I still think DeFi will be a huge market, but it won't be the "gateway" to Crypto for most people.

Finally, we now have many different forms.DAOs [Decentralized autonomous organizations] exist in the Ethereum ecosystem, from old-school DAOs like Maker to new-age DAOs in the "social token" ecosystem. But there is a thread hereAll of these DAOs focus on improving social and economic coordination among global actorsAll of these DAOs have no centralized intermediary. When it comes to DAOs, I think you can take a "flowers are easy" approach, which allows people to experiment quickly, innovate, and ultimately make progress.

That's a brief explanation of why I think Ethereum is in its golden age, and I haven't even talked about things like DeFi and emerging social token ecosystems. Of course, not every Ethereum-based use case will be a long-term success (1COs is one of them), but as an ecosystem, we learn over time which use cases are alive and which are fleeting.

Because after all, Ethereum allows you to build anything you want, anywhere in the world.