Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has long been a proponent of the cryptocurrency community, and in a recent podcast interview, the 27-year old expressed his views on not only his own network but top cryptocurrency Bitcoin and the communities of both the blockchains.
Buterin, who referred to himself as a tech philosopher in the interview, shared that he was bothered about the possibility of the cryptocurrency space walking into a “cultural trap” if the current schools of thought among many proponents of the top networks were not changed.
While in general, he was concerned that many crypto-proponents believed in the crypto-only approach while ignoring other issues in the world. As for Ethereum, the entrepreneur feared that the network’s main cultural mistake could be its exclusivity for the rich. Buterin further stated that this was probably happening due to the high fees that the network charges.
When asked about whether the flippening would take place in the future, Buterin answered that “it could.” As for why Ethereum could take over the market capitalization of Bitcoin, he said,
“I think the big difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is a platform where the value of the ecosystem comes from the value of the currency, but in Ethereum the value of the currency comes from the value of the ecosystem.”
Since the much-awaited London hard fork took place on the network in June, the network fees issue is also being tackled while improving its transaction payment system. Pointing towards this as scoring another point for Ethereum, Buterin said,
“Especially post-EIP 1559 when you have the fees burnt, that then becomes true in a more direct economic sense.”
At the time of writing, Ethereum’s market cap had flipped Bitcoin’s by almost 40%, while having completely overtaken the top digital asset in terms of transaction count and transaction fee.
Moving onto the increase in popularity of the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), Buterin expressed his enthusiasm for the emerging sector and for retroactive public goods experiments such as Gitcoin DAO and Optimism.
Answering whether DAOs could become the next big thing after the successes of decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens, he said,
“I think DAOs are definitely going to be more important over time… In terms of what’s still missing from the DAO space, I don’t think there’s any one big thing, but more a lot of little things.”
He added,
“When will be the first time a DAO decides to make a strategy pivot, or when will two DAOs decide to merge? It’s the ability to make big decisions and not just continue incrementally on the same path, that’s something I think we’ll see soon.”
Lastly, the crypto genius also touched upon the NFT craze that has enthused the crypto community and increased the traffic on Ethereum by attracting new demographic sets. He said,
“I think NFTs have been interesting from a cultural perspective because they bring people into Ethereum that have a completely different mindset than DeFi and regular crypto people for example.”
