I’ve been in the Ethereum ecosystem for over six years.
I’ve heard “there’s a lot of work being done on…” literally thousands of times. Yet outside of the crypto-sphere I’ve only met a handful of people who’s life would be impacted in the slightest if the entire thing disappeared.
Ethereum is eight years old and debates about use cases, etc aside I think even someone towards the middle of the debate can readily acknowledge progress, utility, value, and adoption has been incredibly slow.
Consider ENS - the last time I registered with ENS the process was just as confusing and convoluted as ever, only in this instance with gas fees I paid around $300 for the name. Oh, and the various transactions kept failing - leaving me wondering (per usual with crypto) if my funds went up in smoke, off to some scammer, etc.
Like so many times in crypto before I just assumed the funds were gone but like I said I DO follow this space and DO find it interesting so I consider burning crypto left and right a relatively cheap education/hobby. Plus I get to tell cool stories like this one on HN ;).
I can’t imagine how creaky, bug ridden, impossible to scale, nearly impossible for mortals to use, and inevitably completely overrun by scammers and frauds an Ethereum (or any crypto) based mail and messaging system would be. No. Just no.
With every day, week, month, and year that passes hearing “We’re building! People are working on XYZ!” when meanwhile the only thing people actually see is the latest headline for some crypto criminal, fraud, scam, collapse of last years “use case” (NFTs anyone?), etc.
I’m not saying it’s dead but I think it’s pretty safe to say the window for anything approaching mass adoption, credibility, and real utility has closed.
“Stop trying to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!”