This material is a translation of the article by blockchain enthusiast Michael Spencer. The material reflects his personal opinion and may not reflect the views of editors and users of Ethereum.
If Ethereum proves scalability, public blackany can remain without a future.
All hopes in the field of decentralization and decentralized applications are pinned on Ethereum. It is doubtful that anyone will be able to do what Ethereum has managed to do. However, the cost of ETH at the time of writing is around $84.66.
Try to understand this when the value of the asset was $ 1358 in January 2018. In other words, it has fallen by more than 10 times in recent months. Of course, someone can say that today an unprecedented number of developers are involved in the project. Of course, ConsenSys representatives will tell you only the positive part of the story (no wonder it's their bread). But whether users cryptology or transaction at ETH some value in the overall picture?
In light of changing circumstances, will Ethereum ever scale enough for mass use?
ETH died?
We should ask ourselves whether this iteration of public blockchains has a future. When the circle of ICO, fraud, network security issues and crazed supporters of "decentralization", I would not have come close to ecosystems like EOS, Tron or XRP for a cannon shot. I would like to trust Ethereum, but things are changing so quickly that their technology now seems outdated.
Perhaps my words will sound like a line from a banal article in Forbes or on LinkedIn, but things are really bad: the concept of "cryptocurrency" is strongly associated with fraudulent schemes of rapid enrichment.
I really believe Ethereum last chance public blockchains. I also think that in the conditions of cryptocurrency "winter" he has less time to demonstrate his ability to scale. Ethereum has had major hopes for an independent blockchain ecosystem, but Its own blockchain has terrifying technical problems that need to be addressed, and its supporters need to figure out how to exercise self-government: adequate systems that could replace corporate governance structures, yet, and this factor is holding back growth.
Cryptocurrencies may disappear, and the world will not care
What happens when a crowd of young people try to reinvent technology with non-existent products, ecosystems are fake, and many crowdfunding projects are almost certainly waiting for failure?
The cryptocurrency world is crumbling, and this collapse has nothing to do with stock volatility: it is about the disappearance of currencies, altcoins and other things that were in fashion just some 12 months ago. The death of Ethereum is quite likely, and the legitimacy of Bitcoin as a digital asset was under a big question against the background of the fall of its value to $3000.
Ethereum was a pioneer of decentralization, a paradigm that transcended centralization issues and Internet money that seemed magical. Governance models and consensus systems allowed technology to be continuously updated, and the size of the community did not matter much. As for hard forks of Bitcoin Cash, cryptocurrencies strange and characteristic viscous cycle of self-destruction.
Unlike blockchain, cryptocurrency has always been a experiment young. For speculators, this was a sign of a tool that could help survive global recessions. Then something strange happened: global recessions were not observed for about 12 years.
Ethereum is the most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin and ranks third in total value, but does it now have any value?
The main theme of the Devcon conference was Ethereum 2.0, a radical update that would allow the network to finally realize its true potential. But isn't it too late? And does the increase in the number of imitators of the project make any difference? Is it about the death of Ethereum? Isn't it clinging to Bitcoin in an attempt to avoid oblivion as we enter an era of technological dystopia where Chinese companies reign and Silicon valley is irrevocably centralized?
You can be any idealist, but what if your product simply does not scale, because the system is simply incapable of it? Yes, the Ethereum project is being worked on by ideological researchers, developers and administrators who are responsible for supporting the software and know that the time to prove to the world the importance of public blockchains is running out, and all this is accompanied by a lot of technical problems and potentially unrecoverable limitations. Maybe we were happy early? Maybe we were too stupid, pumping HYIP around just emerging technology, and our emotions were cut off from reality. I'm willing to admit that. The idealism of youth can sometimes be tantamount to fraud – it has happened to all of us.
According etherscan, for all the time Ethereum it was held 353 million transaction. All things considered, that's not the most mind-blowing figure. Since June 1, the average number of transactions per day is from the strength of 610 000, and this figure is also not too impressive.
Speaking of winners and losers, we always thought that Ethereum will become the new leader of the crypto-currency sphere, where Bitcoin shone until recently. However, the cost of ETH is tied to the price of bitcoin, and in this sense, the attempt of the crypto-currency economy to distinguish itself from other markets failed miserably. Market forces still rule the ball, and this underscores the inferiority of the current " system." Innovation is constrained by the centralization of the system itself.
Repressive measures on the part of regulators and a growing understanding of the unwillingness of blockchains to active use not only scared off many investors, but also deprived us of the freedom that cryptocurrencies could bring to us. Instead, we've got fraud, glitches, and technology that doesn't scale too well, either technically or in terms of use by real consumers. This is the lowest point of belief in the readiness of blockchain technology to change the world. Round.
The motley Ethereum community needs to solve the problem of human control, but how can a bunch of Bohemian engineers be expected to handle the task? In 2018, management errors were common in almost every industry and system of society. We can see this on the example of corrupt politicians, greedy top managers from the technological sphere, unethical engineers and, of course, crypto-currency speculators, who particularly clearly abused the ICO system. The EOS project is a Prime example. Ethereum is more attractive for developers, but its future as a blockchain-as-a-service in the field of cloud solutions, where giants like Alibaba and Amazon are leading, may not be so rosy. Before at least getting closer to decentralization, the market will need centralized blockchains. Perhaps cryptocurrency will have to give way to some of its equivalent when the time comes.
It's not easy to admit, but Ethereum may have to die to allow public blockchains to evolve. The project will not be able to establish a dispersed global network of developers and stakeholders without sacrificing "decentralization". It would be better to have it purchased and funded by Amazon. You can't just reinvent the wheel by reviewing the way businesses and organizations work. It is necessary to find a balance with reality.
Bitcoin has been so poisoned by internal conflicts, deadlock situations and storing overly large amounts just a few wallets that were irrevocably broken. The death of Ethereum can happen in any possible scenario, first of all because of the inability to scale or have time to do it before something better appears. These guys did not think well enough about the long-term perspective and could not foresee future problems. Decentralization has been a spontaneous outbreak, which the world and technology were not ready.
No matter how much we trade cryptocurrencies, the world changes by itself. Ethereum is no longer perceived as the leader of the public blockchain model. There is no world computer, and if there is one, it is more connected with cloud technologies and the future of artificial intelligence, which will be the main macro trends of the next decade. In comparison with them the blockchain in the best case is mikrotrend in the technology field. And let's not forget that cryptocurrencies exist in the era of exponential technologies. If they don't shoot, it will seriously hurt the value proposition of decentralization and the idea of decentralized blockchain distribution, but the world will not collapse from this: every month there are theft of intellectual property for amounts exceeding the entire volume of capitalization of cryptocurrency markets.
We live in volatile times, and of all possible long-term rates, for public blockchains like ETH, uncertainty is greatest. The sad truth is that capitalism does not need change, let alone a crisis of democratic leadership. The world because of its inertness underestimates the cryptocurrency, which, in contrast, is overrated.
For the most zealous dreamers and supporters of Ethereum, cryptocurrencies are something of a religion. Their dogma holds the promise of an entirely new type of democratic society, where it is much more difficult to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the elected, hide corruption and exert secret behind-the-scenes influence. Nevertheless, in the process of formation in the crypto-currency environment, everything that was supposed to be eradicated in the corrupt and Mercantile corporate world spread with their help. Cryptocurrencies have turned into a fraud with our money, and it deserves punishment. Therefore, the current prohibitively low prices of these assets are in some sense justified.
A year ago, which corresponds to several centuries on the cryptocurrency timeline, investors poured billions of dollars into promising projects that create decentralized applications, and Ethereum was a kind of angel of blockchain innovation. How quickly things change! America ostracized these projects, banks called them Ponzi schemes, and everything else is history. The securities and exchange Commission took aim at the most questionable ICO and projects, and pessimism reigned in the community (a significant part of which, by the way, were ordinary speculators).
Ethereum, perhaps, too quickly became too popular and, being tied to the success of ICO projects, lost its essence as a solution that seemed to be the obvious successor of Bitcoin. The craze for CryptoKitties revealed an unsightly truth: Ethereum technology proved immature and unable to cope with the loads that large decentralized applications would require. The realization that the release of the second version of Ethereum, Serenity, could take years, was frightening.
It may happen that by the time Ethereum 2.0 is ready, there will be no cryptocurrencies left.