Ethereum is showing resilience during the latest cryptocurrency winter. ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin says he is “optimistic” about the relative stability of Ethereum (ETH) due to challenging macroeconomic events.
Cryptooshala Magazine Editor Andrew Fenton spoke with Lubin at the Web3 Building Blocks 23 event in Tel Aviv, Israel for a comprehensive interview on the current state and future of the Ethereum ecosystem landscape.
The co-founder of the preeminent smart contract blockchain protocol touched on several topics, including ETH market performance over the past year. A host of macro events, including the collapse of the algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and the demise of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, played a role in what Lubin called the “disruption” to the ecosystem:
“We do it, you know, when we get irrationally riotous and then there’s a breakdown, higher highs, lower lows.”
Labin compared the last 12 months to the early 2000s, when the dot-com boom and bust was accompanied by “crazy ideas” that were explored and driven “abundantly” for geopolitical, economic and ecosystem reasons. He believes that the same abundance may not attract investors to the crypto space in the near future, but sees the potential for bigger projects and “huge innovations”:
“I think we are in the phase where we have built enough infrastructure. We’ve created scalability, usability, and now we can build more useful use cases.”
Despite a challenging year for crypto markets, Lubin is drawing positives from the resilience of the Ethereum ecosystem and the value being realized by “famous companies” exploring what can be built, particularly in the non-fungible token (NFT) space.
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The founder of ConsenSys added that ETH’s ability to hold its value around $1,200 for an extended period while some “CeFi” players collapsed was the reason why it had a positive effect on the future of the ecosystem:
“It feels like there were simply no people who would sell the token at lower prices. And this is good. Hence, I am optimistic.”
The Ethereum merger has also played a major role in the market value of ETH in recent months. Part of Ethereum’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake consensus was the introduction of a fee burning mechanism that saw Ethereum go deflationary for the first time in November 2022.
Lubin also touched on this topic, emphasizing his belief that creating a deflationary regime for Ether is important to ensure that the value of the underlying asset rises over time:
“There is money that you spend on buying coffee. There is money that you invest. There is money you can borrow and borrow. You want your high economic bandwidth money like Ether to be very fresh and appreciate in value.”
The Ethereum co-founder also said that he is confident that the Ethereum ecosystem will not see any further changes in its money supply and that the permanent decline in the monetary base is likely to continue.
“I think a slow cut is reasonable, or at least if you smooth that we will definitely block ether in the protocol and we will block ether in other types of voting systems DAO, DeFi and so on. I really think it’s valuable to the ecosystem.”
Ethereum is currently preparing for a hard fork in Shanghai, an important feature of which will be the inclusion of ETH staking on the Beacon Chain with the ability to withdraw user rewards. The developers of the Ethereum Foundation have targeted March 2023 as a tentative rollout date.
Credit : cointelegraph.com
