Ethereum is *the* Project

 I came across a stupid but interesting tweet the other day. 

The idea is that if we all coordinate around the same asset, buy it, and increase its price to infinity, then we can all leverage it as collateral to take out loans. Infinite money glitch!

The replies to this tweet I also enjoyed. “It’s called Bitcoin.” “That’s what Bitcoin is.” 

The subtext being that Bitcoin is the first asset by the people, for the people, where we can all buy it, never sell it, and then live off its fruits. The power of why this would ever work is because of Bitcoin’s Schelling point as an asset. Bitcoin is the asset you never sell. Bitcoin isn’t just an asset – it’s the asset. 

Obviously this belief only scales so far, but it's a good articulation of what Bitcoin wants to be. 

A similar phenomenon happens in Ethereum, but more about the project of Ethereum rather than ETH the asset. To many in Ethereum, myself included, Ethereum isn’t just a project to work on. 

Ethereum is the project. 

Ethereum is the project for humanity to coordinate around. It’s the open source collective of all economically valuable code. It’s the wealth-producing superstructure that we can hand down to our kids, and to our kids' kids. It is the system that allows humanity to come together and coordinate in ways never before possible. It is a means to global peace, wealth, and happiness at a scale never before seen. 

If we can get all of humanity onto the same coordination layer, humanity can take a step forward. 

These are grandiose ideas, but I believe them wholeheartedly. The outcomes of peace, wealth, and happiness are not a 5-year plan, but a 50-year project. They do not come because of the creation of a few good smart contracts, but as the 2nd and 3rd order effects of 5,000 good smart contracts. 

If we can all coordinate around Ethereum as the credibly neutral financial fabric of planet Earth, we could get a lot more done a lot more quickly. 

But, like how not everyone can get behind Bitcoin as the asset, people unfortunately choose to not get behind Ethereum as the project. 

In fact, many seem just as focused on unbuilding Ethereum as fast as possible – because if they can invest in the thing that strips away a valuable component from Ethereum’s open-source superstructure, then they can get super rich. 

Ethereum unbundling is a political disposition. Just like Bitcoiners like Austrian economics, guns, and meat, Ethereum unbundlers also have similar personality characteristics (as we all do!). Some people inherently choose to “defect” in the prisoner's dilemma. 

Whether or not you think the Ethereum community is ‘holier than thou’ and ‘effectively no different from XRP shills’ depends on whether you think Ethereum is the project of humanity, or not. 

My claim is: if Bitcoin is a special snowflake because of its 21M supply, then Ethereum is a special snowflake because of what it represents: a never-ending project of open source contributions to create humanity's greatest coordination software. 

What is more noble than that?