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With ethereum showing resilience through the last crypto-currency winter, consensys founder joe lubin says that it is "bullish" on ether's () relative stability through macroeconomic compositional events.
Cointelegraph Magazine editor Andrew Fenton spoke to Lubin at the Web3 event Building Blocks 23 in Tel Aviv, Israel, for an all-encompassing interview about the current state and future of the Ethereum ecosystem landscape.
The co-founder of Smart Contract Blockchain has covered a number of topics, including the performance of the eth market over the past year. A myriad of macro events, including the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) and the demise of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, played their role in what Lubin described as a “blow off top” for the ecosystem:
“We do this thing as you know, where we get irrationally exuberant, and then there's a blow off top, higher highs, lower lows.”
Lubin likened the past 12 months to the early 2000s, where the dot-com boom and bust saw “crazy ideas” explored and driven by “exuberance” for geopolitical, economic and ecosystem reasons. He believes that the same type of exuberance may not drive investors into crypto space in the near future.
Sees potential for larger projects and "tremendous innovation": Sees potential for larger projects and "tremendous innovation":
"I think we are at a stage of building enough enabling infrastructure.
Related: What's in and what's out for Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade
The ConsenSys founder added that ETH’s ability to hold its value around $1200 for an extended period while certain “CeFi” players imploded was reason to be positive for the future of the ecosystem:
Related: What is in and what is out for the betterment of Ethereum Shanghai. We've developed scalability, ease of use, and now we can construct more useful use cases."Notwithstanding a difficult year for cryptocurrency markets, Lubin takes positives out of the resilience of the Ethereum ecosystem and the value being realized by “high profile companies” exploring what can be built within the nonfungible token (NFT) space in particular.“it feels like there just weren’t people who would sell the token at lower prices. I have the impression that there are simply no people who would sell the chip for less.
And it's the right thing to do. Part of Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake consensus was the introduction of its fee-burning mechanism, which saw Ethereum become deflationary for the first time in November 2022.
Over the past several months, the Ethereum Merge has also played an important role in the ETH's market value.
Part of Ethereum's movement towards consensus evidence of the issue has been the introduction of its combustion mechanism, which saw Ethereum become deflationary for the first time in November 2022. Lubin talked about that as well, emphasize his belief that deflation of ether was important to ensure that the value of the underlying asset increased over time: There is money you spend on purchasing coffee. There's money you're putting in. You're investing money here.
There's some money you can borrow.
You want a little bit of your cheap bandwidth, like ether, to be very fresh and to appreciate in value.”the ethereum co-founder also said he was confident that the ethereum ecosystem would not see any further changes in its monetary supply and that a continual contraction of the monetary base was likely to continue. 'I think that slow contraction makes sense, or at least if you facilitate the things that we will certainly have ether enclosed in protocol and we will have ether enclosed in other types of voting systems dao, defi, etcetera.”
Ethereum is now gearing up for the Shanghai hard fork, in which an important feature will be enabling staked ETH in the Beacon Chain, with user awards available for withdrawal. I think it's helpful in terms of the ecosystem."
