Ethereum’s Killer App Moment: Did the Blockchain Giant Just Crack Its Own Code?

After a decade of ’world computer’ promises, ETH might finally have a use case that doesn’t make TradFi snicker into their spreadsheets.

The Merge cut energy costs by 99%—now the real test begins. Can smart contracts outrun Wall Street’s ’blockchain, not Bitcoin’ skepticism?

Funny how a $400B network still gets asked ’but what’s it for?’ Like watching a hedge fund manager struggle to explain basis points at a cocktail party.

Aim high

In his latest blog post, Simplifying the L1, Vitalik explains what Ethereum is aiming for — “to be the world ledger: the platform that stores civilization’s assets and records, the base layer for finance, governance, high-value data authentication, and more” — and how to achieve it: “This requires two things: scalability and resilience.”

Well, three things, probably: Morita would tell him that simplifying Ethereum requires marketing, too.

Ethereum’s decentralized and unofficial messaging has done a poor job of explaining what the world’s first smart-contract blockchain is, why it matters, or why anyone might want to use it.

Fortunately, Vitalik may have inadvertently fixed Ethereum’s messaging, too. “World ledger” is an excellent elevator pitch!

Using Bitcoin as a model, Vitalik’s new priority for Ethereum is technical simplicity: “One of the best things about Bitcoin is how beautifully simple the protocol is.”

He’s referring to Bitcoin’s code, which is simple enough that “even a smart high school student is capable of fully wrapping their head around and understanding” it.

(Note: I’ve looked at the code myself and, well…remind me never to match wits with a smart high school student.)

But Vitalik could equally have been referring to Bitcoin’s pitch to investors, which is beautifully simple, too: Everyone can immediately comprehend the appeal of “digital gold.”

“World ledger” may not be quite as intuitive as that, but it’s a major improvement on Ethereum’s previous attempts at branding: “World computer,” “ultra-sound money,” and “the app store of crypto” all required a good deal of explaining.  

The explanation of “world ledger,” by contrast, seems far simpler: a decentralized platform “that stores civilization’s assets and records.”

Being simpler should give it a better chance to stick.

Simplifying any aspect of Ethereum will not be easy, however, as Vitalik warns: “Explicitly valuing simplicity requires some cultural change.”

But that change may already be underway — there’s a growing consensus that Ethereum’s development should be “reprioritized” in favor of the base layer (rather than deliberately pushing transactions to layer-2 blockchains).

Just as importantly, there’s a growing recognition that Ethereum’s marketing needs to be reprioritized, too.

For example, Tomasz Stanczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, has acknowledged that marketing is part of what’s needed to rebuild Ethereum’s “social layer.”

“On the marketing side, I think we don’t want to create a brand name or advertising style of marketing,” Stanczak told Bankless on a podcast this morning, “but better communication and clarity is also part of marketing.” 

Better communication and clarity would fit Morita’s definition of marketing, too — marketing, he explained, is about showing people “the real value of what you are selling.” 

The good news for Ethereum is that the value it’s selling can be a little aspirational — like Sony’s pocketable radio that didn’t quite fit into a pocket.

Similarly, Ethereum isn’t quite the world’s ledger just yet — but that sounds like a good thing to aspire to.

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