Opinion: The crypto world should continue to build infrastructure rather than overvalued empty infrastructure

Author: Rickey; Compiler: TechFlow

Recently, I have heard too many people complain about Ethereum's infrastructure, accusing venture capital firms of investing in a lot of meaningless infrastructure, believing that excess infrastructure has led to difficulties in the industry, and trying to create conflicts between application developers and infrastructure organizations. They seem to portray the Ethereum ecosystem as a "Niflheim" that is not suitable for application development (Niflheim is a cold, dark, foggy world in Norse mythology. It is often described as an unsuitable place for survival).

This statement is very unfriendly and unconvincing.

We need to clarify some misunderstandings: What is real infrastructure?

Does it have a grand narrative? Is it supported by top venture capital? Is there a lot of bubble? Is it full of nihilism? Did you lose your investment? EBOLA (EVM Logic Deficit)?

Real infrastructure includes:

1. Protocols, EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), frameworks, tool stacks, and non-application layer blockchain services.

2. Used to solve specific problems and improve application efficiency, user experience, decentralization, security, and privacy.

3. The code is open source and accepts community contributions and reviews.

4. Provide free solutions or even complete public products for application developers.

5. Built by a group of truly idealistic and optimistic people.

The development of blockchain infrastructure

I tend to describe the development of blockchain infrastructure in the form of git branches.

A blockchain is like a new git branch. In the first phase of this branch, infrastructure such as cryptography, P2P networks, and consensus algorithms were added. These infrastructures can be used to build Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other L1 networks.

In the second phase, various Ethereum-based tools, facilities, and services emerged one after another, and developers can use them to build various wallets, DeFi applications, and Layer2 networks. Interestingly, after this commit, an on-chain branch was created. The ultimate goal of this branch is to store user data completely on the chain and implement the logic of the application through smart contracts. Developers can implement truly verifiable, composable and interoperable on-chain applications. We are currently in the on-chain infrastructure construction stage of this branch, and I think we are on the right track.

What does infrastructure bring us?

1. Reduce monopoly

In a specific field, developers have more choices. Suppose you are the founder of a startup and want to provide transaction data query services for your network. Are you willing to pay a high fee to buy a company's block scanning service, or choose to deploy a free Blockscout?

2. Improve efficiency

Developers will migrate to more efficient tools and infrastructure. This is the change of my application technology stack in the past year: Chain: Tendermint → OP Stack Development tools: Truffle/Hardhat → Foundry Contract interaction: Web3.js / Ether.js → Viem Storage: IPFS → BNB Greenfield Block explorer: Etherscan → Blockscout Wallet: Extended wallet → Coinbase Smart Wallet / AA 3. Enrich the diversity of applications Provide developers with enough infrastructure so that they can create interesting applications. A few years ago, we mainly built DeFi and NFT related applications in the Ethereum ecosystem. Now, you can leverage a variety of infrastructure to build more interesting products and applications:

Cloud platform: Fleek

Authentication: Privy

Games: MUD, Dojo, Paima

Wallet toolkit: Onchain Kit, rainbowkit

Open source rewards: tea

Full-stack ZK proof service: polyhedra

Ethereum's trustless AI: ora

IP: StoryProtocol

4. Reduce the startup cost of your application

In fact, you only pay the gas fee for deploying the contract. Because the infrastructure is perfect enough, even small development teams can quickly integrate infrastructure services and realize the expected functions. Almost all infrastructure service providers will provide free plans for developers, which are enough to support and verify your early ideas.

5. Accelerate mass adoption

This depends on the changes that infrastructure brings to non-financialized applications and user experience. I think this is also the reason why many developers have turned from developing consumer crypto applications to developing infrastructure. It's not that developers are too focused on technology, but that they must first solve the friction between efficiency and user experience, and then build applications to verify their feasibility.

We may need to go through several stages to achieve true mass adoption infrastructure explosion period: Multiple different solutions appear in the same field, similar to Layer2's OP, ZK, ZKEVM and Plasma. Infrastructure elimination period: The market will eliminate those infrastructures that have no practical significance and rely only on tokens. Infrastructure stabilization period: Some truly valuable infrastructure will survive, and developers will begin to build various categories of consumer applications based on these infrastructures. Mass adoption: The blockchain infrastructure at this stage provides the same user experience to consumers as Web2 services. Users do not need to understand how blockchain works to use various applications, which can bring users better distribution of benefits, ownership of digital resources, privacy, and anti-censorship capabilities.

6. Reduce the impact of centralization

Imagine if all our applications use the same infrastructure service, until one day, the government of a country shuts it down, or even arrests its core code contributors or CEO, making it impossible to provide services to applications. But our infrastructure services are sufficient, and there are other alternative solutions, so applications will not stop running due to the paralysis of a certain infrastructure.

Keep Building Infrastructure

"Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world with me?" This is what Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley to entice him to join Apple.

Now I want to ask you a question:

"Do you want to make and trade Memecoin for the rest of your life, or do you want to build infrastructure and change the crypto world?"

Infrastructure is the driving force of the industry, it brings new narratives and visions, even if it is just a new standard, a proposal or an SDK. Countless builders need stories to strengthen their beliefs and keep their enthusiasm. Why do we believe in crypto? Why believe in chain? Become the person who builds the cathedral. If you don't think you are building a cathedral, change your job.