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Saturday 18 November 2023

Ethereum is/was Bitcoins Greatest Sidechain

Despite our resentment as bitcoin purist's we can't deny that there has been a lot of development on Ethereum over the years. We call it a scam and it is pretty scammy, dishonest at the core (see my previous article). Though it has been a major distraction, we can learn a lot from what has happened and how it has fallen. Bitcoin gets stronger from attacks and this is no different, but we can learn a lot from the choices that were made in etherium and how they have slow led to its decay and fall from grace.

There have been so many well-funded projects, programmers even amateur devs maybe, have been getting rich. It is not (or it wasn't) uncommon to find a relatively unknown project with an ERC20 token that has a billion-dollar market cap. That market cap means that if the developers are taking 10% they have more than enough money to work on the project for life. It means we have seen a lot of fast development in the Ethereum ecosystem. 

This wild funding has been used to wrap bitcoin, to exchange bitcoin and to do all sorts of things, NFT's and finance rip-offs. Lots of bitcoin has been moved around here and it has created value for bitcoiners wanting to get spendable money out or wanting to exchange their forks and altcoins. It has had the highest bitcoin volume of all the sidechains, I like to think of it like this, yes it's a shitcoin, but this has had the biggest objective utility for bitcoiners for many years. It was never going to replace bitcoin (even though they said they used to say they would), but it did have a use, though many of these are only experimental we bitcoiners get to learn about many things before they can affect the mainchain.

With etherium for me at first it all seemed too good to be true and it turns out it was. The altcoin development ecosystem sits on shaky foundations. It stands at odds to honour and prudence. Despite the potential security flaws and deception, we have to admit that the methods have coloured our vision for what could be our future and stand as contrast so we can define bitcoin in the best way. I wonder if the  anarchy that creates them and allows them may be necessary. 

With the rise of Liquid, RSK, RGB, Taproot Assets, Lightning, nostr, BRC20 and layer 3 how long will it stay on top. We might need to reorganise coin market cap, with the demise of etherium and all its decendents and offshoots. I hope that bitcoin can learn from it's rebellious but prosperous, now foolish and forgotten son Etherium. BItcoins son that let its own sons (the grandchildren) free and then succumbed to fear and changed his mind for the worst to hold onto power.

 

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