Yesterday, Reddit user u/huntingisland posted a post titled Why Ethereum matters, why we should root for Ethereum over almost all competing smart contract platforms in the r/ethereum community , exploring the existence of Ethereum among many competing platforms. The importance has attracted the attention of many Ethereum community members. Let's first look at the main content of the post, and then share some of the community members' views and insights.. . . The following is the original translation of the post: Bitcoin is very fair at the beginning. At that time, anyone who knows Bitcoin and holds a PC can start mining from the first day of release. Mining has become more difficult over time, but people can easily buy BTCs in different exchanges or other holders. You don't have to be a member of the privileged class to enter the Bitcoin field.
The start of Ethereum is also fair. But unlike Bitcoin, the ambition of the Ethereum project has made it impossible for some of the founders of the project to contribute to the development of the project. As a result, they launched an open crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the development of Ethereum. Anyone who has heard of Ethereum can participate in the crowdfunding, when each ETH sold for about 30 cents. After launching the Ethereum blockchain, anyone with a contemporary graphics card can also mine ETH.
However, some of the founders of the Ethereum team did not like Ethereum's financing model. They hope that Ethereum will be funded by insiders and venture capital firms, and hope that Ethereum will remain privatized for a long time. Some founders even left the project because of an open non-profit community project and a for-profit organization controlled by venture capital and venture capital.
Of course, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are open source projects that encourage code to copy, modify, and reuse projects .
There are many competitors who claim to be Ethereum's "killer", ETH 2.0 "killer" and ETH are launching or planning to launch. To a large extent, many of these platforms do not adhere to the open participation model of Bitcoin or Ethereum. Some projects are even copyrighted closed source projects. Almost all of these projects are funded through venture capital or wealthy people through SAFT (Future Token Simple Agreement), usually through secret transactions that do not disclose the price and quantity of tokens. Public participation is generally not allowed until the price of the token is on the exchange and the price of the token has risen by a factor of 5, 10 or even 100. Therefore, the final situation is that most of the tokens are held by only a small number of already very wealthy people .
However, these so-called new "Ethereum Killer" projects bring more than just a fair and unfair token distribution, and these projects are designed around the end of the rich . That is to say, if you are a member of a VC, insider or rich who is allowed to participate in the market before the public offering, you will be able to hold a larger number of tokens than the average person. Thus you will have greater control over future changes to the rules of the blockchain platform. Some people even regard this governance model as a feature and a good thing, the authors do not agree!
Ethereum is an open, community-supported, non-profit organization-initiated project. Today, it is already an open, community-involved project. In addition to the gas cost, you don't have to pay anything to build an app on Ethereum. The blockchain platform does not require permission, and no chaebol can vote for you to leave the platform.Ethereum is not operated by wealthy venture capitalists or “qualified investors” who may have taken the lead .
There is a huge difference between the open community project of Ethereum and almost all of the competitive platforms that have been established since. The author does not want the future of our financial Internet to be built on the rule of the rich, because if that is the case, what is the difference with the existing financial system?
In this regard, what do some community members think?FreeFactoid : Ethereum is also one of the few blockchains for built-in banks, which is achieved through smart contracts. In the past, when whales (those top-level cryptocurrency holders who might have a huge impact on the network) exchanged a cryptocurrency into cash, their prices fell, sometimes dramatically. This should no longer be a big problem in Ethereum, because whales can simply deposit their ETH in a smart contract (such as MakerDAO) and get the equivalent dollar for consumption.
Basically, ETH's investors can also get a share of ETH's future earnings (because ETH will add value as a result of adoption) and unlock the value of ETH for immediate consumption.
E3ee3 : In my opinion, Ethereum does not face real threats. Most competitors are concerned with making this illusion (that is, creating the illusion of a threat to Ethereum) for a period of time and gaining more profit than the sustainable products actually delivered. From EOS to Cardano, with the disappearance of hype and commitment, all of these products will eventually be taken away by the new EOS and Cardano. Interestingly, their investors realized that these projects were stealing money, but still want to share a piece of it.
Perfekt_disguize : If you don't evade the risks of a smart contract platform like Cardano, that's obviously not a smart move. Of course, we support Ethereum, but you can't ignore similar competitors, they are making progress, and they have taken substantial steps to become an open project.Lynx77 : You (referring to the author) should not compare ETH with BTC… When Ethereum was launched, 12 million ETHs were created for developers and 60 million ETHs were pre-mined for ICO participants to participate. Purchase. Given that there are currently 102 million ETHs in circulation, this means that 71% of the existing ETH supply was generated by pre-mining during the start of Ethereum.
Huntingisland : Developers are a few percentage points of ETH that they got for a year before working on Ethereum . The Ethereum Foundation uses its ETH to pay wages (the same purpose as the Foundation raised Bitcoin during the pre-sale period). ETHs excavated through “pre-mining” are sold for development costs. Without these costs, Ethereum and any other smart contract platforms will not exist. At that time, anyone could participate in the crowdfunding of Ethereum, when many Bitcoiners (Bitcoiners) also participated in the crowdfunding.
Cisco : I bought ETH excavated through "pre-mining" and I made ETH mining by purchasing a powerful GPU. What is the difference? Finally, I still have to come up with the hard earned money to support the launch of the Ethereum project, and hope that one day will be successful.
Burrrata : In addition, it should be said that there are many venture capital companies doing a lot of things for the technology industry and the whole world. Of course, there are also some VCs, which turn good projects into desperate empty shells. This usually happens in the later stages of financing, preparing for an acquisition or a public sale. Then the founder left and hoped the world would be better.In any case, I just want to say that not all venture capital firms are evil, and often early stage investments are also essential. That's why they are called “angel” investors, because anyone other than a venture capital firm who invests in the founders of early projects will be considered stupid. Today, however, this situation has changed.In the context of a cryptocurrency community/platform, it makes no sense to allow venture capital institutions to invest in a round of financing that precedes ordinary people . The cryptocurrency economic network is about the community. If a platform is legal, there is no need to open a special round of financing for special investors. *Everyone* wants to sit on this rocket ship. Moreover, if special interest groups are treated preferentially in front of the crowd, this will weaken the motivation of people to participate, reduce the value of the network, reduce the incentive to encourage investors, reduce the motivation to participate, etc…
In addition, the code for these networks can be forked and copied to any other platform. The particularity and uniqueness of a platform is due to the community built around it.Ethereum has something that is almost absent on other platforms – the community . This is the most valuable asset, and other projects want to take a slice of it. We need to recognize this, appreciate the value that the community brings, and nurture this community.
DCinvestor : That's true! Venture capital institutions play a very important role, and I still believe that they play an important role in the dapp (decentralized application) and L2 (second layer) areas. But I am very skeptical about their involvement in L1 (the first tier), especially when combined with mechanisms such as chain governance. Fortunately, Ethereum does not need to worry about this issue like other blockchain platforms. As for the situation of other blockchain platforms in this regard, we will wait and see, it will be very interesting.
Poleo : At present, apart from Ethereum , I don't have any currency on any other smart contract platform, but I don't believe that the technocracy that is born in our informal governance system will be better than Other governance methods are much better. In either case, you still effectively keep governance in the hands of a few elites. I am not saying that I am sure there is a better solution than Ethereum's governance. I just said that I am very happy that other platforms are trying different forms of governance. Chain governance does not necessarily have to be dominated by the chaebol. Second voting and representative systems, as well as new structures such as Futarchy, may also alleviate some of its shortcomings. I just think that it is too early to assume that the governance of Ethereum is superior. I generally agree that on the surface, many competing platforms have large governance problems that are not easy to solve, but this does not mean that these problems will not be solved.
I believe that the core developers of Ethereum will try to listen to the opinions of Ethereum users in the forum, but in the absence of formal governance mechanisms, the final decision is still made by a few key members of Ethereum. Not a user of Ethereum .
Cryptoaccount2 : Well said. In addition, if there is no formal governance mechanism, any decision may be attacked by a witch, just as you can buy a support ticket on reddit or buy a retweet on Twitter. For me, this doesn't sound like good management… "Who is the bigger social media queen, who decides."
What do you want to say about the development of Ethereum in competition? Welcome to express your opinion in the comment area!
