Here’s Why Ethereum Is Stronger and Better Than It’s Ever Been
It’s not just Bitcoin that’s been on a bull run lately.
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The world’s best platform for building DApps with the largest developer community is flexing its muscles once again. 2018 may not have been the best year for Vitalik’s brainchild. ICO dumping, market manipulation, and scalability issues plagued the Ethereum community. But last week, Ethereum showed New York (and the rest of the world) that it’s still very much the dominant player in the space.
Ethereal Summit
New York Blockchain Week started off with Ethereal Summit. Already in its third year, this key Ethereum conference is hosted by ConsenSys, a company created by one of Ethereum’s original co-founders Joseph Lubin. ConsenSys fosters blockchain projects and builds solutions on the Ethereum blockchain.
Thanks to all who came out to #EtherealNY this weekend. We had so much fun meeting everyone and learning about the incredible projects being built by this community. The future is bright ?? JuiceStorm.com/GG5jcoY0kx
— Ethereal (@EtherealSummit) May 12, 2019
It’s a major player in building out the Ethereum blockchain, and Ethereal Summit this year was bigger and better than its previous versions. To those who believe that Ethereum may be surpassed by a more scalable technology, the $30 million that the Ethereum Foundation decided to invest in the ecosystem this year proves otherwise.
In fact, Jinglan Wang of Plasma Group was clearly infuriated when she remarked:
“Ethereum does f***ing scale. All these other chains are doing is marketing and leaning harder. The community can help Ethereum if it tweets: Ethereum DOES scale!”
Digitex CEO Adam Todd has sung his praise for Ethereum on various occasions. He said, “All the really smart people I meet in this industry are the Ethereum guys! It’s the back end of a quarter of all coins and with something like 400,000 developers in its community, you’d better believe they’re doing everything in their power to make sure Ethereum wins the race.”
plenty of hot topics for debate happening at Ethereal, and no one doubted Ethereum’s role in the revolution over the next few years, from leading decentralized finances to bringing about a decentralized web.
Lubin’s keynote was of particular interest as he spoke of a future in which the web has become completely decentralized and all assets eventually tokenized.
To conclude the third annual @EtherealSummit in Brooklyn last weekend, @ethereumJoseph gave his customary keynote speech with a futurist twist. #EtherealNY https://t.co/PF1IOBw6Ob
— ConsenSys (@ConsenSys) May 14, 2019
Major Businesses Working with Ethereum
Not only were the Ethereum cheerleaders out in force at Ethereal, but plenty of household names are placing their bets on Ethereum for their business development.
In fact, 32 of the companies on the Forbes Blockchain 50 list have chosen Ethereum as their platform of choice. We’re talking major names from JPMorgan and Amazon to Citigroup and Foxconn.
Moreover, as rumors abounded that Deloitte was abandoning Ethereum in favor of VeChain, the company’s Global CTO for Deloitte Blockchain Antonio Senatore quashed any speculation at Consensus. He said:
“Deloitte believes strongly in multi-platform development, and 50% of our projects are built on Ethereum.”
With the price of Ethereum leaping from $168 one month ago to over $260 during Consensus, it would appear that Ethereum is reminding the world just how powerful and relevant it still is today. To use the words of SpankChain’s CEO Ameen Soleimani:
“My assumption of what’s about to happen is that #Ethereum is going to eat everything.”
ETH New York
Digitex Futures CMO Lidia Yadlos managed to bag an entry to the ETH New York hackathon. There she met up with one of our lead developers at SmartDec Petre Korolev (who you’ll be hearing a lot from very soon!) and stood just behind Vitalik himself!
Petre is one of the founders of Matter Inc. (now Matter Labs). The company is partially funded by the Ethereum Foundation and is working on scaling solutions for Ethereum including Plasma and zkSNARKS.
“His research and development is behind finding the solution to this… and Digitex will be the first to have this technology once he does,” Lidia enthused.
“The culture amongst the developers at ETH NY was incredible… Petre knows so many of the major projects like Fluence network, Scale Lab, and Makoto Inoue of ENS… they were all collaborating. Petr was there sharing news about the Digitex project and everyone was keen to share their input and help where needed as the project progresses… if only the entire world worked like this it would be a far better place!”
The emphasis this year was on education and the social impact that decentralized financial applications will have. With that in mind, Head of Smart Contracts at the MakerDAO Foundation Mariano Conti dedicated his time to speaking directly to high school students.
Decentralized finance throws up a lot of questions, from how to protect your own money to other usability and security issues. At ETH New York, most of the topics were centered on these areas, with discussion subjects from what smart contracts are, to how to set up an Ethereum wallet.
Hacking teams were encouraged to focus on applications that would have an impact for social good. Oskar Paolini of TORUS startup told Coin Desk:
“I’m sick of your bots, kitties, zombies, your ‘gotcha’ games… There’s a lot of games but now it’s about industrial application. That’s where market demand is right now.”
All this action from the Ethereum community shows how much the blockchain has matured and how ready it is for more real-world use cases.
It’s no longer about gaming or lousy DApps with low user numbers that run out of steam. Ethereum is being adopted by major brands. It’s proving its ecosystem is still thriving and growing, and that its technology is still undoubtedly the number one in the space.
Together with SmartDec, Digitex can’t wait to complete building the next game-changing application on Ethereum. With non-custodial accounts, fast centralized order matching, and a seamless user experience, we’ll be helping drive mass adoption sooner and better than you think.