Where will Ethereum explode in the future?

Source: Daoshuo Blockchain

I have expressed regrets more than once about the trend of Ethereum in this round of market.

Of course, the regret here is not mainly about the price. Because I am optimistic about Ethereum in the long term, the lower the price is, the more I like it. It is best to keep it lower than the fixed investment price I set for a long time.

My main regret is that the Ethereum ecosystem has not exploded with disruptive innovation and applications like the last round of bull market.

Taking advantage of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, I carefully read several articles about the second-layer expansion written by Vitalik (https://bridge.zkasino.io/) last year and this year.

From his article, I seem to see the signs of the future.

For the second-layer expansion of Ethereum, Vitalik made his attitude very clear in the article: he hopes that most applications will eventually run on the second-layer expansion.

And his view on Ethereum's second-layer extensions is not just to see them as extensions of Ethereum's performance, but to see them as blockchain "countries" with their own culture, personality, characteristics, applications, and ecology that are allowed to develop freely under the final discretion of Ethereum, the "general manager".

Thinking from this perspective, I changed my previous view.

I used to think that there are too many second-layer extensions now, and the existing second-layer extensions are endless. New extensions are still emerging in an endless stream. How much significance do these seemingly "repetitive" extensions have?

But now I think: Although most of these extensions are similar from a technical point of view, from a cultural and personality point of view, some of the current second-layer extensions have obviously developed their own different characteristics and circles.

For example, social (MEME) applications are obviously active on Base, wildly growing but quality-guaranteed applications are active on Arbitrum, applications with more institutional support are active on Optimism, and game applications are likely to be active on Treasure and Redstone in the future...

"Birds of a feather flock together". After these extensions gradually form their own characteristics, they will attract more similar applications to enter their ecosystems, thereby further strengthening their characteristics.

In the long run, there will likely be countless communities and groups on Ethereum in the form of second-layer extensions. They have their own culture, values, and community atmosphere.

The current community is constantly issuing coins (NFT, MEME), and the future community is likely to be constantly issuing chains (second-layer extensions)-------In fact, this phenomenon has already appeared in the Ethereum ecosystem: the earlier Degen chain and the Ham chain that is popular these days are all like this.

If this trend continues, Ethereum will not only build an ecosystem in the future, but a federation of network countries based on blockchain, and Ethereum is the ultimate authority of this federation.

This ultimate authority only technically guarantees the finalization and execution of transactions, while the various federal states under it germinate freely and grow wildly.

This freedom and wildness are the best soil for innovation and subversion.

In the last bull market, we talked about the application scenarios in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as DeFi, NFT, games, etc. But all these innovations are only nurtured on the soil of Ethereum.

And I guess that the next innovation of the Ethereum ecosystem will be nurtured in countless sub-chains based on the second-layer extension-------that kind of outbreak will no longer be an outbreak of individual application scenarios, but an outbreak based on the chain ecology.

The outbreak of the chain ecology will be the resonance of applications around a specific theme or a specific culture, that is, once a chain (second-layer extension) ecology explodes because of a certain theme or culture, all applications on this chain (including DeFi, NFT, etc.) will explode together.

As for what specific culture or theme it will be, I can't imagine it yet.

Because this outbreak is triggered by a certain theme or culture, and the formation of themes and culture is not a one-day job, it takes a long time to brew and grow---------Perhaps this is why the Ethereum ecosystem has not seen the emergence of new applications and new scenarios in this round of market?

And now the gradual growth of Ethereum's second-layer expansion culture and atmosphere is likely to lay a new foundation and brew new momentum for the next outbreak of Ethereum.