Do you want to spend your whole life making and trading Memecoins, or do you want to build infrastructure and change the crypto world?

Author: Rickey

Translation: DeepTechFlow

Lately, I've heard too many complaints about the infrastructure of Ethereum, accusing venture capital firms of investing heavily in meaningless infrastructure, believing that the surplus of infrastructure has led to industry difficulties, and attempting to create conflicts between application developers and infrastructure organizations. They seem to depict the Ethereum ecosystem as a "Niflheim" (Niflheim is a cold, dark, and misty world in Norse mythology. It is usually described as a place unsuitable for survival) unsuitable for application development.

This statement is very unfriendly and difficult to believe.

We need to clarify some misunderstandings: What is real infrastructure?

Does it have a grand narrative? Is it backed by top venture capital? Has it generated a lot of bubbles? Is it full of nihilism? Have you lost your investment? EBOLA (EVM Logic Absence Syndrome)?

Real infrastructure includes:

1. Protocols, EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), frameworks, toolchains, and non-application layer blockchain services.

2. Used to solve specific problems, improve application efficiency, user experience, decentralization, security, and privacy.

3. The code is open source, accepting contributions and reviews from the community.

4. Provides free solutions for application developers, even complete public products.

5. Built by a group of truly idealistic and optimistic people.

Development of blockchain infrastructure

I tend to describe the development of blockchain infrastructure in the form of git branches.

Blockchain is like a new git branch. In the first phase of this branch, infrastructure such as cryptography, P2P networks, consensus algorithms, etc., was added. These infrastructures can be used to build Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other L1 networks.

In the second phase, various tools, facilities, and services based on Ethereum emerged one after another, allowing developers to build various wallets, DeFi applications, and Layer2 networks. Interestingly, after this commit, an on-chain branch was created. The ultimate goal of this branch is to store user data completely on the chain and implement application logic through smart contracts. Developers can implement truly verifiable, composable, and interoperable on-chain applications. Currently, we are in the phase of building on-chain infrastructure for this branch, and I believe we are on the right track.

What does infrastructure bring us?

1. Reduce Monopoly

In a specific field, developers have more choices. Suppose you are the founder of a startup and want to provide transaction data query services for your network. Would you be willing to pay a high fee to purchase block scanning services from a company, or choose to deploy a free Blockscout?

2. Improve Efficiency

Developers will migrate to more efficient tools and infrastructure. Here are the changes in my technology stack over the past year:

Chain: Tendermint → OP Stack

Development tools: Truffle/Hardhat → Foundry

Contract interaction: Web3.js / Ether.js → Viem

Storage: IPFS → BNB Greenfield

Block explorer: Etherscan → Blockscout

Wallet: Extension wallet → Coinbase Smart Wallet / AA

3. Diversify Application Variety

Provide developers with enough infrastructure to create interesting applications. A few years ago, we mainly built DeFi and NFT-related applications in the Ethereum ecosystem. Now, you can use various infrastructures to build more interesting products and applications:

Cloud platform: Fleek

Authentication: Privy

Games: MUD, Dojo, Paima

Wallet toolkit: Onchain Kit, rainbowkit

Open source rewards: tea

Full-stack ZK proof service: polyhedra

Trustless AI for Ethereum: ora

IP: StoryProtocol

4. Reduce Application Startup Costs

In fact, you only need to pay the gas fee for deploying contracts. With sufficient infrastructure, even small development teams can quickly integrate infrastructure services to achieve the expected functionality. Almost all infrastructure service providers offer free plans for developers, which are sufficient to support and validate your early ideas.

5. Accelerate Mass Adoption

This depends on the changes that infrastructure brings to non-financialized applications and user experience. I think this is also the reason why many developers have shifted from developing consumer crypto applications to developing infrastructure. It's not that developers are too focused on technology, but they must first solve the friction between efficiency and user experience before building applications to validate their feasibility.

We may need to go through several stages to achieve a true mass adoption infrastructure explosion period: multiple different solutions appear in the same field, similar to Layer2's OP, ZK, ZKEVM, and Plasma. Infrastructure elimination period: the market will eliminate infrastructure that is meaningless and relies solely on tokens. Infrastructure stabilization period: some truly valuable infrastructure will survive, and developers will start building various categories of consumer applications based on this infrastructure. Mass adoption: at this stage, blockchain infrastructure is the same as the user experience provided to consumers by Web2 services. Users can use various applications without understanding the working principle of blockchain, which can bring better benefit distribution, ownership of digital resources, privacy, and anti-censorship capabilities to users.

6. Reduce Centralized Influence

Imagine if all our applications use the same infrastructure service, and one day, the government of a certain country shuts it down, or even arrests its core code contributors or CEO, making it unable to provide services for applications. But our infrastructure services are sufficient, and there are other alternative solutions, so applications will not stop running due to the paralysis of a certain infrastructure.

Continue to build infrastructure

"Do you want to spend your whole life selling sugary water, or do you want to change the world with me?" This is what Steve Jobs said to John Sculley, a PepsiCo executive, to attract him to join Apple.

Now I want to ask you a question:

"Do you want to spend your whole life making and trading Memecoins, or do you want to build infrastructure and change the crypto world?"

Infrastructure is the driving force of the industry, bringing new narratives and visions, even if it's just a new standard, a proposal, or an SDK. Countless builders need stories to strengthen their beliefs and maintain their passion. Why do we believe in crypto? Why believe in on-chain? Be a person who builds cathedrals. If you don't think you're building a cathedral, then change jobs.

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