Ethereum: A Store of Value with Cash Flow [pdf]

- Proof of stake has serious flaws if done from scratch, as you are trying to secure a network using value created out of thin air. Ethereum is migrating to proof of stake from proof of work, and has already built up a security pool of over $200bn USD market cap and a significant amount of activity. ETH as the native asset required for proof of stake has enough security pool to allow the migration to make sense.

- "You have been talking about proof of stake for years, wake me up when it happens". We launched proof of stake on December 1st, 2020 https://www.coindesk.com/valid-points-ether-staked-eth-2-0-q.... This runs as a parallel chain that users deposit ETH into to participate in consensus via a bridge contract. The next step is to merge the current Ethereum chain to use this new chain's consensus, and we are working on this to happen late this year.

- "There is a vibrant developer community, but for what? All speculation?" Yes, speculation was and is ever present in this new technology given how permissionless it is. This means anyone around the world can interact with the blockchain without a gatekeeper. However, there is an incredible amount of financial innovation happening on Ethereum that didn't even exist back in 2017. Really well-thought out stablecoins, flash loans (which are a blockchain native concept), automated market makers such as Uniswap which had more trading volume than Coinbase https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/79775/uniswap-coinbase.... We have privacy technologies such as Aztec Protocol or Tornado Cash. We have zero-knowledge proof games such as DarkForest. What makes me personally excited is that Ethereum is like this global, shared computer where every application deployed immediately opens a composable API for others to interact with by design, creating infinite possibilities.

- Ethereum's development is far more decentralized today than it was years ago. Ethereum proof of stake was developed by 4 independent teams, unaffiliated with the Ethereum Foundation, and had a successful launch this past December 1st, 2020, and no, Vitalik cannot roll back the chain.

- "Some other blockchain already had proof of stake and have been running for years". What makes Ethereum proof of stake special is it takes no compromises between decentralization, security, and scalability. At the base layer of the blockchain, Ethereum uses really neat cryptography known as BLS signatures (https://medium.com/cryptoadvance/bls-signatures-better-than-...), which allow for signature aggregation at scale. This means there can hundreds of thousands or millions of consensus participants with minimal network overhead, compared to other chains which have a permissioned set of I urge everyone here to look deeper into Ethereum for what it offers and look at the depth of innovation happening in this ecosystem. Happy to answer any questions, as there seems to be a lot of misinformation.

The middleman is a social necessity, not solely a technical one. Retail doesn't want the responsibility. Is that simple, so enter the middleman there to absorb risk.

A protocol can't be a middleman. A middleman should be capable of being sued and be the fall guy if something goes wrong. Mostly it should be there to give peace of mind to the customer.

A protocol can't give peace of mind to the customer given that such code can't be read by 99.99999999999% of the population.

The middleman needs to exist to give peace of mind to the customer, and as I said it can't be a protocol. So it can only be a company with a brand, spending millions in Ads to earn the trust of the consumer so that he'd feel confident to put his money in it and in turn can sleep tight at night, knowing that his money are with an institution which is somehow trustworthy.

Nobody in the crypto world ever makes a market study or a revenue projection, or even a survey among the population and users.

People go and build stuff. Projecting themselves into the retail user. The only problem is that the crypto founder is not representative of the retail user, not even one bit. The crypto founder wants the responsibility, wants to kick the the final penalty in the World Cup final or be with the ball in your hands and 2 mins to win the SuperBowl. That is not the mindset of the retail user.

"We ship the products we'd want to buy" as Steve Jobs said in a keynote...only he used it as catchphrase to get the applauses and sell Apple to the world and to Wall Street.

People in crytpo , they do it for real. You never do it for real. You end up with your butt on the ground and nothing to show for financially.

If you somehow banned any new users from using Ethereum, existing users would continue to use Ethereum for the applications built on top of it.

A cashflow producing venture is not a Ponzi since that cashflow is supposed to ensure the returns of all investors.

Social networks, banking and cloud companies would love to hire for those skills.

Also central banks now want to do CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies), so skills acquired as dev/builders are and will stay in very high demand for the foreseeable future.