¶ Tomorrow-Fi
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¶ HTTPS
Take a look at the top of your browser, click on the box on the top. Look at the first 5 letters: https.
All you need to know about https - it is the method by which computers communicate behind the scenes to deliver the internet experience you know and love.
From the perspective of 99.9% of humanity (including the vast majority of developers), you never need to know or care what happens under the hood of https.
All you care about is that given a web address, https can deliver content of arbitrary kind and size.
¶ Building before the Foundation Sets
Now, imagine you are Mark Zuckerberg, and you have this vision for a sleazy, gather-all-the-photos-of-our-female-classmates-so-we-can-rate-them website.
Let’s say you want to deploy your proto-Facebook onto the internet…
...but let’s say that https isn’t finished.
In fact, far from being finished, it’s in the middle of some transformational changes.
Changes that not only change how information flows through the system, but radically reshape the purpose of https and, by extension, the entire internet.
How far would you get building Facebook in those conditions?
How big can you build your legacy on a foundation that hasn’t finished setting?
This is how you should understand the current state of Ethereum.
¶ Background Technology
In 2030+, you will experience Ethereum the same way you experience https now. You’ll see glimpses, maybe a 0x or .eth address, but you’ll never really need to think about it.
As Ethereum fades into the background, it will be the foundation for internet-native property.
In 2023, Ethereum provides exactly this: credibly neutral settlement, guaranteed by a decentralized network of untrusted computers.
But it’s very difficult to access, slow, risky and expensive.
It’s very easy to wonder how empires are going to be built on Ethereum.
It’s very easy to wonder how nation-states will dissolve in the glory of the World Computer.
But, then again, imagine if we were at the point where all https could do was send 100 ASCII characters back and forth.
Would you have been able to imagine Facebook?
¶ Lessons from the Past
Unfortunately, my friends, peering into the future is a fool’s task; there’s no telling what Ethereum will enable. But while we are here making this point, we might as well drive it home.
And so, I’ll ask you to consider the greater Ethereum ecosystem we have today.
AMMs, collateralized lending protocols, stablecoins, oracles, rollups, bridges, DAOs, NFTs, let’s even throw in all the centralized exchanges, crypto banks and other institutions.
Everything you think of when I say “Ethereum” in 2023.
Let’s call it “Today-Fi.”
¶ Ethereum Whitepaper
Back in 2014 at Bitcoin Miami, a 20 year old Vitalik Buterin explained that Bitcoin could be expanded to a Turning-complete blockchain computer.
Many would see Vitalik’s proposed Ethereum as a betrayal of the fundamental principles of crypto.
Would you have been able to see Today-Fi?
Maybe you would have stuck around through the ICO and the 2015 launch to make it all the way to July 2016 and THE Decentralized Autonomous Organization.
¶ The DAO Hack
Before DAOs, there was the DAO, a single entity around which the entire community rallied.
About 15% of all ETH (more than currently staked) was sent to the DAO… and then the DAO was hacked.
Fortunately, the hacker had to wait 28 days before he had access to the funds, and so the community was able to coordinate and deploy a hard fork, undoing the damage.
Would you have been able to see Today-Fi?
¶ The Shanghai Attacks
Or how about shortly later, in fall of 2016, in the middle of Devcon 2 (held in Shanghai).
An attacker had found a way to completely freeze the Ethereum network and thereby break a core promise of Ethereum: 100% uptime.
Fortunately, many of the core devs were all staying at the same hotel and were able to gather in the same physical space to answer the attack.
This began a 2+ month long back and forth, threatening the very existence of the World Computer.
A first hard fork in October slowed (but did not stop) the attacker.
Eventually, the attack was halted with a final hard fork on November 22, 2016 and Ethereum has never seen a successful DDOS attack since.
Would you have been able to see Today-Fi?
¶ Progress Cycles
Bull markets, bear markets, ICO mania, De-Fi summer, NFTs, the rise and fall of the alternate L1s, everything has built and built and built and then crashed all over itself.
But each time, we learn from the mistakes of last time and build a more sophisticated Ethereum.
So here we are, sitting in the depths of the bear market.
It's been a year since we felt true euphoria, since then it's been a lot of pain. We’re waiting in dread as we wait for SBF’s gifts to unwind. And Uncle Sam is finally turning his angry attention towards crypto.
Are you able to see Tomorrow-Fi?