Original Author | Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom

Translation | Odaily Planet Daily Qin Xiaofeng（@QinXiaofeng888）

Editor's Note: On June 15, ETH rebounded strongly, rising more than 10% in a single day, sweeping away previous downturns. Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom published a long article on platform X titled Milestone: Ethereum Developers Surpass One Million.

He stated that Ethereum's core advantage is not speed, but the aggregation of the largest and most profound talent pool; the real moat lies in the long-term ecosystem built from composability, standard setting, and trusted neutrality; these builders are focusing on scalability and quantum resistance, continuously consolidating Ethereum's status as the default operating system for the financial internet. (Recommended reading Sharplink CEO: Selling ETH Now Is Like Selling Amazon During the Internet Bubble)

The following is Joseph Chalom's original article appreciation, translated by Odaily Planet Daily, Enjoy～

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I just returned from Asia, where I engaged with Ethereum developers and ecosystem leaders. I particularly want to mention Seoul's Nonce Classic, Four Pillars, and DSRV, as well as our friends at SNZ, and the recently launched Ethereum Community Hub in Hong Kong—this is Asia's first permanent physical Ethereum community space, supported by the Ethereum Foundation.

What impressed me the most was not just the enthusiasm, but the local builders' rigorous attitude and ambitious aspirations. The level of projects, experimental spirit, and long-term thinking emerging within the global Ethereum ecosystem left a deep impression and inspired me greatly.

These vibrant individuals gave a real face to a number: according to Electric Capital, the number of lifetime Ethereum developers has surpassed one million—specifically 1,012,824 unique contributors. No other ecosystem in the crypto space can compare.

A Milestone Worth Noting

One million is an integer, often hollow, but this time it's different. Behind it is the largest pool of technical talent ever gathered around an open, permissionless blockchain network—more importantly, this talent pool is continuously deepening and expanding.

Among these one million, approximately 232,000 developers have remained active in the past twelve months.

Why Ethereum: The Real Key Question

For years, discussions in the crypto space have always revolved around speed, transaction fees, and throughput. Each new chain claims to be "faster than Ethereum." However, the most important question in the crypto space has never been "which chain is the fastest," but rather:

"Where will the best builders choose to build long-term?"

In this regard, Ethereum remains unparalleled. Its advantage lies not only in technical aspects but also in institutional, cultural, economic, and compositional factors—it is the cumulative sediment of developers, infrastructure, standards, tools, liquidity, research, applications, and social collaboration over the past decade that no other ecosystem can replicate.

Ethereum has become the default operating system for programmable finance and internet-native capital formation.

What This Million Is Building and Why It Deepens the Moat?

The significance of one million developers lies in what they are currently doing. The current focus is on the most challenging and risky topics in the industry: core protocol scalability, privacy protection, quantum resistance, and the agentic systems running on it.

Glamsterdam—Protecting core values through innovation. The Glamsterdam upgrade, planned for 2026, demonstrates how Ethereum safeguards its core values while advancing. Core changes include: built-in proposer-builder separation (ePBS), block-level access lists (BALs) that support parallel execution and higher throughput, and possible increases in Gas limits—which will significantly enhance Layer 1's capacity while ensuring trust neutrality, security, and MEV fairness—this is the dynamic manifestation of the moat.

Synchronous Composability—Making multiple Rollups function like a single chain. Composability has always been Ethereum's superpower; the next leap is to extend it to Layer 2. Native Rollups and "Based Rollups," combined with synchronous composability, are the solution. A contract on one Rollup can directly call a contract on the mainnet or another Rollup in a single atomic transaction—no cross-chain bridges, no waiting. Linea, Ethereum Economic Zone, Gnosis, Zisk, and the Ethereum Foundation’s collaborative teams are integrating this design with real-time proof. The result is that dozens of Rollups no longer function as isolated networks, but begin to work collaboratively like a single chain. This is a direct response to the critics who pointed out the issue of "fragmentation."

Quantum Resistance—Ethereum's most significant competitive advantage. No mainstream ecosystem is better prepared than Ethereum for the post-quantum era. The "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, the post-quantum security team of the Ethereum Foundation established in early 2026, the information center pq.ethereum.org, and over ten client teams operating a post-quantum interoperability developer network weekly—all constitute a coordinated open-source migration plan aimed for around 2029. When quantum risks become a reality, those institutions managing trillions in assets will care about only one thing: which chain is prepared the earliest and most fully.

Moat Beyond Developers: Composability, Standards, and Trust

This developer advantage will continually self-reinforce, stemming from Ethereum's building approach. Its deepest network effect is not liquidity but the depth of composability: various applications operate like interoperable financial Lego blocks—lending, stablecoins, exchanges, wallets, tokenized assets, oracles, Layer 2 Rollups—interacting through shared standards, so developers never have to start from scratch. EVM is the application layer of the crypto space, and Solidity skills are universal across Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, zkSync, Scroll, Linea, and hundreds of other networks.

Learning the Ethereum tech stack maximizes the choice space, which in turn drives a flywheel effect—more developers, more tools, more liquidity, more institutions, which then attract more developers to build composable protocols and assets. Liquidity creates liquidity, and composability creates composability.

Moreover, Ethereum dominates where value truly aggregates, not just where the noise is loudest:

Three powerful forces further deepen this competitive advantage:

• Credible Neutrality—Ethereum is protected by over 900,000 validators (compared to about 800 for Solana), and this decentralization and platform neutrality are highly valued by large institutions.
• Modularity—Rollups like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism haven’t fragmented Ethereum; rather, they have expanded it into an increasingly tightly interconnected modular internet economy, inheriting the mainnet's security.
• Culture—Ethereum disproportionately attracts the top researchers, cryptographers, and EIP standard authors who set the direction for the entire industry. This last advantage is also the hardest to fork.

There is Only One Ethereum

Generating on-chain activity and becoming the long-term coordination layer for internet-native finance—trusted by the largest global financial institutions—is two different things. Ethereum dominates the minds of large asset owners, who prioritize trust, security, and liquidity. I felt this firsthand during my time at BlackRock.

In the tech market, ecosystems will integrate over time around standards, liquidity, and developer mindshare. This is Ethereum's moat.

After communicating with these developers, builders, and ecosystem leaders in Seoul and Hong Kong, I am more convinced than ever of Ethereum's competitive advantage. I have seen the talents who are building the next generation of financial infrastructure—the founders of our industry's future and the architects of agentic finance. It is these individuals and teams who will change the world.

The future of Ethereum is happening right now.

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