Hunter Horsley: ETH Isn’t Here to Dethrone BTC—It’s Building Web2’s Future
Ethereum isn't playing Bitcoin's zero-sum game. According to Hunter Horsley, ETH's real mission? Supercharging Web2 infrastructure—not competing for crypto's store-of-value crown.
The upgrade no one saw coming
While maximalists bicker over flippenings, Ethereum's quietly rewriting the rules. Smart contracts aren't just disrupting finance—they're rebuilding the internet's plumbing. Horsley's take cuts through the tribal noise: ETH was never meant to be 'digital gold 2.0.'
A Trojan horse for decentralization
From DAOs eating corporate governance to DeFi protocols outpacing Wall Street's legacy rails, Ethereum's proving its worth as Web2's silent partner. The network effect isn't in speculative hype—it's in thousands of devs shipping real-world use cases while Bitcoiners count satoshis.
The cynical kicker: Maybe ETH's real genius was convincing finance bros they needed blockchain at all.
Ethereum’s architecture promotes open innovation
Horsley argues that the design of Ethereum encourages permissionless participation, meaning that anyone can construct, maintain, or otherwise deal with the network. It allows its flexible structure to quickly evolve without causing a disruptive hard fork, unlike legacy Web2, which is still closed and uncompromising.
Developers currently prefer the use of Ethereum as a way of breaking down siloed systems and creating transparent and decentralized services. The open-source character of the network leads to a higher rate of innovation, scale, and worldwide accessibility. The decentralized architecture also makes it inclusive and does not experience centralized tech stack bottlenecks.
The upgrade path of Ethereum, which follows its modular development model, will allow it to integrate new technologies without undermining security or decentralization. This evolutionary ability is starkly opposed to traditional systems, where often total replacement is needed to introduce change.
Not every response to Horsley’s commentary was favorable. Crypto user Row₿ear responded that Ethereum had generally stagnated crypto and prevented Bitcoin innovation. He acknowledged Bitcoin’s ongoing strength but criticized Ethereum’s long-standing presence.
MegaETH ushers in a new era of scalability
MegaETH is one of the most significant developments in Ethereum, a scaling project aimed at enhancing the transaction process without compromising on decentralization. The upgrade also brings a modular execution system where consensus, execution, and data availability are decoupled. This structure increases throughput by large margins without sacrificing node accessibility.
During the initial public testing, MegaETH could process 1.7 Ggas/s, or 130 million transactions per day. Data throughput was up to 980 MB/s. In contrast to traditional approaches to scaling Web2, MegaETH improvements do not require costly hardware to maintain and make full nodes accessible to even more users.
The upgrade is modular but still keeps Ethereum decentralized as it scales. One of the community members said that Ethereum was never positioned as a replica of Web2, and it was supposed to go beyond the boundaries of Web2.
With these developments, the price of Ethereum has picked up. According to the recent update, ETH has reached a price of around $3,044.75, correlating to a rise of 3.18% in a single day. The rebound comes after episodes of high volatility in the wider market, and experts consider the structural improvements of Ethereum as a possible driver moving forward.
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