Author: Joseph Chalom

Translated by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher

Currently, amidst the drama surrounding the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the debates about the ETH price, there is a lack of vision for the bigger picture. I completely understand this argument, but it does not determine who will lead the financial infrastructure of the next decade.

This is just a perspective of one stakeholder. Before leading Sharplink, I spent twenty years as an executive at BlackRock, responsible for fintech and digital asset strategies.

These experiences have made me understand what institutions really value before deploying funds toward a new infrastructure.

I want to take a step back, avoid the noise, and provide a different judgment on the current state of Ethereum and its future direction.

The Ethereum Foundation is Doing Its Job Well

Looking back at the achievements of the past decade, Ethereum has secured victory in the three attributes that institutions prioritize the most when adopting new infrastructures—trust, security, and liquidity. It is winning, and its advantages are immense.

Take a look at the report card. The settlement of the value of most stablecoins globally occurs on Ethereum. Its scale of tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) far exceeds that of any other blockchain and serves as the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions.

On these dimensions, no competing chain can compare to it.

This is not a coincidence but rather the result of the years of rigorous protocol development by the Ethereum Foundation. Ethereum is the only blockchain that has a decade-long record of significant upgrades.

The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka have all come along the way. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring a leap in scalability, and the foundation is also leading the path toward quantum resistance. This is the industry's most ambitious technology roadmap.

Decentralization is an Advantage, Not a Flaw

Some of the harshest criticisms of the foundation treat decentralization as a weakness. This precisely reverses the logic of institutions. The Ethereum ecosystem has the most developers of any chain, and the vast majority do not work inside the foundation.

No single foundation should control a chain. Institutions will not abandon their existing systems to lock themselves into another proprietary framework.

They need to be assured that the underlying properties they rely on cannot be arbitrarily changed by a few power holders. In fact, no chain should depend on any single participant.

Ethereum's reliable neutrality and decentralization are exactly why it can become the future layer for financial settlement. These are definitely not flaws.

If I were to choose between two foundations: one focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and core protocols, and the other solely serving short-term marketing, I would choose the former every time.

Using Amazon to Analogize the Value of ETH

There are many historical examples where foundational innovations were dismissed, only to be overshadowed by trendier newcomers, eventually leaving the critics with egg on their faces. Amazon is the clearest case.

In the early days, the consensus around Amazon was that it was an online bookstore propped up by the internet bubble, losing money. Bears focused on the income statement but failed to see Bezos's long-term ambitions.

He aimed to build a wholly new structure for online commerce. Its potential market was not selling books, but the entire retail economy, which later expanded to cloud computing and media. Those analysts who only focused on short-term prices missed the larger opportunity.

Today's Ethereum and ETH are at the same juncture. Its potential market is not cryptocurrency trading, but the entire global financial system. The intrinsic value of ETH is closely tied to the expansion of the network.

And this network is at the critical juncture for a leap in trading volume, encompassing stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi, and the emerging wave of smart finance.

To secure such a vast trading volume, ETH will become a highly sought-after incentive layer and the ultimate trust vehicle, and its currency premium will rise accordingly.

Without ETH, there is no Ethereum. Assets and networks are inseparable.

When Others Fear, I Am Greedy

In almost every market cycle, the moments when retail investors cut losses and emotional sentiment plummets are the ideal opportunities for disciplined capital to enter.

Buffett built Berkshire by buying quality assets at the worst times in the market: from GEICO in the 1970s to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis.

For most of the past year, the fear and greed index has indicated extreme fear in the market. The smartest investors buy quality assets at moments of maximum panic. They act counter-cyclically, rather than going with the flow.

During the crypto winter after FTX, most institutions chose to avoid exposure to Bitcoin and ETH, or delayed product launches. However, when I was at BlackRock, we did the opposite.

We doubled down on our investments, built infrastructure, established ecological collaboration, and launched products connecting traditional finance with crypto. We should all learn from the experiences of Buffett and BlackRock.

Making a New Voice for Ethereum

The Ethereum Foundation is doing its job well. Moving forward, it will focus more on CROPS—the core attributes of anti-censorship, anti-capture, open source, privacy, and security.

For most people, the issue is clear: at a time when institutions are eager to embrace Ethereum, there is a gap in leadership for market promotion in this regard.

I have a strong feeling that stakeholders and participants in the ecosystem need to play a more significant role in the narrative of Ethereum and institutional adoption.

Since last summer, digital asset treasury companies and core Ethereum managers have played a vital role in this matter.

This includes ecosystem participants such as Sharplink, Tom Lee from BitMine, Joe Lubin from Consensys, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, EEA, and others. We have also worked closely with a small team within the foundation focused on institutional education and adoption.

Sharplink is also investing in this ecosystem. We were among the first companies to stake billions of dollars in ETH and have invested hundreds of millions in quality DeFi protocols; recently, we also collaborated with Galaxy Digital to establish a $125 million DeFi yield fund to support existing and emerging protocols.

Even so, we can do more and will certainly do more: become outspoken advocates for Ethereum and actively support the upcoming institutional adoption supercycle.

The future of Ethereum is unfolding right now.

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