Ethereum

The Fat Protocol Thesis is being eroded in real time. Not by a faster L1, but by a growing recognition that value capture lives where demand is native and immediate, not abstract and structural.

I see three different scenarios playing out:

1. L1s begin to optimize for apps, allowing custom orderflow control with the caveat that a small percentage accrues back to that L1. A similar approach to what Unichain and Sorella Labs is enabling.


2. L1s focus on hyperscaling and subsidize infrastructure in order to attract users. Their moat becomes cheap an

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Recently the term REV (Real Economic Value) was coined – representing the subset of network activity that directly compensates the protocol for providing security and state maintenance. This includes:

• Base fees collected for transaction inclusion


• MEV tips that pass through to validators or stakers


• Blob/data availability fees in the case of modular ch

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Yes, we’ve scaled via rollups, but one of the few remaining use cases for Ethereum is settlement and DA. If the very few applications that actually accrue any source of value back to Ethereum are forced to leave due to constrained DA capacity, what source of value will Ethereum have left?

Just as falling compute costs unlocked the internet boom, lower transaction fees will unlock new application categories and use cases. The main comparison here is that general-purpose compute and coordination layers are more akin to AWS or Linux than HTTP. Ethereum and Solana are not simply “settling” transactions, but enabling programmable state c... See more

At the end of the day, continued fiscal deficits will increase US public debts, which requires more liquidity, more monetization and more currency debasement.

Which is good news for holders of scarce assets (equities, RE, gold, BTC, crypto).

In a world where the Fed — and other central banks — are driving 5-7% annual debasement of their currencies, investors need to make more like 10-15% annual returns to outpace this loss in future purchasing power.

Interestingly, Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap is implicitly a gambit in this direction. ETH is sacrificing REV to its L2s rather than capturing it all to itself, in return for spreading the moneyness of ETH the asset. It’s unclear if its L2s will win out, or if they’ll continue to aggressively use and spread ETH in the future, but it’s clearly t... See more

Bitcoin is special. It was the first, and it’s still the most decentralized, credibly neutral, predictable, and reliable network. No other network can match its story, and perhaps no other will match these features.

Also, unlike most of its peers here, BTC makes no attempt to be a productive capital asset. Now, that may sound like a weakness at firs... See more