Curious why Ethereum is gaining ground? Ethereum currently is seeing exponential from two simultaneous growth curves and there are three growing in the wings. Long thread below

The first is #defi. The growth of #defi has been hyperbolic. The last time we saw this was when the entire ecosystem of digital assets grew from just over ten billion to $100 billion over the course of several months in late 2016 early 2017

It's showing no signs of stopping, as we're witnessing oracles like @ChainLink help support more complex automated financial systems.

Why is this happening? It's simple: the Ethereum ecosystem is building robust, digitally native, market infrastructure--defi by defi . It's like watching a digital Wall Street blossom entirely on the Internet (as opposed to under the famed Buttonwood Tree in downtown NY).

Like the birth of Wall Street--which had its rocky origins trading post-revolutionary bonds and lottery tickets--this ecosystem will become more robust and mature over time. It may look funny now, but it won't in 10 years.

The second core area of growth is a broad category I call "digital property." NFTs are scarce tradable tokens that work nicely to begin to model out digital property rights. The first area where we're seeing growth is with digital art and other forms of media.

A new class of digital artists is already making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year selling their works online. Check out platforms like @SuperRare_co and artists like @muratpak and @Hackatao to learn more.

Like bloggers of yesteryear, these artists are natively digital and their voice will likely grow, helping to shape not just the Ethereum ecosystem but the art world over the coming decades.

These artists have a unique perspective and instincts for the Internet. And, as we all know, the Internet increasingly defines all aspects of our lives--especially culture.

If successful, my suspicion is that most art (like what we saw with books in Web 1.0) will eventually become "digitized," enabling the same emergence we saw with Web 1.0 and text.

@jbrukh has a nice post about "liquid IP" that outlines the possibilities in this direction: https://blog.coinfund.io/all-digital-content-is-going-on-chain-ae26a7071657

Critically, imho, the lessons learned in these markets will be the technical pattern for other forms of property (i.e., real property). We're already seeing threads of this with digital land on @decentraland, @SomniumSpace, and @cryptovoxels.

There are early experiments with real property (like @RealTPlatform), but my sense is in 2-5 years that will be more fulsome.

The question could become who will be the NFT version of Amazon -- moving from just distributing digital art to all digital property?

These two areas of growth are just the beginning. There are three more nascent and growing areas of development on Ethereum, which may be why you hear folks on Twitter saying "this time is different" from the ICO-craze of 2016-18.

The first is DAOs, the second is personal tokens, and the last is infrastructure.

Back in February 2020, there was several million dollars worth of digital assets managed via DAOs. Today it's over $100m with over 10,000 participants (check out @DeepDAO_io) to learn more.

Trading is great, but communities are sticky. DAOs are the first digitally native organizations. Tooling is rapidly improving and we're seeing blockchain projects increasingly turning to DAOs to manage their open-source projects.

DAOs are being used to build modern-riffs on venture capital funds (like @TheLAOOfficial), art collectives (like @FlamingoDAO), and new ways to work. Over the next 2-3 years, my sense is we'll see this part of the Ethereum ecosystem turn hyperbolic, much like DeFi today.

Another area of growth is personal, community, and social tokens (w/e you want to call them). These tokens aim to monetize other smaller "networks." They serve as a shelling point for communities and supporters of creative workers (and eventually influencers) to circle around.

Started by trailblazers like @AlexMasmej, @bramanathan, and @r_ross_campbell and expanded by experiments by @RAC and great tooling from folks like @tryrollhq, @ourZORA, and @Collab_Land_, these tokens are absolutely fascinating.

They aim to quantify the value of individuals or specific communities. Once fully developed, they could solve hard monetization problems faced by networks-of-networks like Reddit. They also point towards a future where social networks are broken apart and more transportable.

The last area is infrastructure. Ethereum has come along way, but there is a loooong way to go to make development easier on blockchains.

Fortunately, now, there is a density of "dapps" to serve as customers to a growing ecosystem of projects handling knotty dapp-development / smart contract issues, related to gas management, smart contract management, messaging, decentralized storage, and others.

These projects often lurk in the background but are critically important. They strengthen the foundation for the above and give me hope that this ecosystem will continue to develop.

These trends likely will define the next 5-10 years of Ethereum development. They are broadly what we're focused on in @TheLAOOfficial and @FlamingoDAO. And, they're all deeply encouraging.

Eth was designed to be used and that's what we're seeing. It's great to witness