“Ethereum aims to be the world ledger: the platform that stores civilization's assets and records, the base layer for finance, governance, high-value data authentication, and more. This requires two things: scalability and resilience.
This post will describe how Ethereum 5 years from now can become close to as simple as Bitcoin.
Simplicity is in many ways similar to decentralization. Both are upstream of a goal of resilience. Explicitly valuing simplicity requires some cultural change. The benefits are often illegible, and the cost of extra effort and turning away some shiny features is felt immediately. However, as time goes on, the benefits become more and more evident - and Bitcoin itself is an excellent example.”
(Simplifying the L1, via Vitalik’s blog)
Ugh. What the heck.
As of yesterday (Cinco de Mayo 2025), when I skimmed through Vitalik’s most recent blog post and read the first sentence of the first paragraph, I now realize I actually know what the goal of Ethereum is. Then, I watched the documentary, ‘Vitalik: An Ethereum Story’, which reinforced the message of that first paragraph - Ethereum can enable a decentralized Internet. And I was like, how am I just now knowing what Ether is for?
The documentary clarified, “Bitcoin can be digital money, but Ethereum can be digital infrastructure.” “The backbone of a new, decentralized Internet” is how the documentary is introduced on social media.
I just learned this *yesterday*. And now that I know this, it feels like something I’ve always known and understood.
But it wasn’t. Previously, I guess I thought of Ether as a similar cryptocurrency to Bitcoin. I had heard it explained as, Ethereum has the ability to have “smart contracts” and ‘have things built on it’, which sounds nice. It sounds like a slight difference from Bitcoin I suppose. The main distinction of Ethereum for me, was that a teen boy had learned about Bitcoin, and was then inspired to make his own version, after his favorite video game character was deleted by the ‘centralized authorities’ of the video game. Which makes sense. If you spent a lot of time with the characters of a video game, of course you wouldn’t want one to be arbitrarily deleted. I’ve never really gotten into video games, but that experience is very understandable. Also, I like his clothing choices, and the Ethereum logo and illustrations with their color scheme of pastel pinks, lavenders, and blues.
Well, I’m glad I understand Ethereum’s purpose now. I’ve been trying out decentralized social media for 2 months and 10 days, and learning about why decentralized social media is valuable compared with traditional social media. So, the idea of a decentralized Internet sounds amazing. I hope the Ethereum team succeeds while following the non-profit path.
#Ethereum
#thoughts
I also have a new appreciation for the complexity and simplicity of dandelion puffs (蒲公英）。
