The Lay of the Land

Crypto as we know it truly emerged with Bitcoin (BTC), anchored by one of the strongest founder myths: the story of Satoshi, which still provides much of its strength. Over the years, countless chains and ideologies have appeared, and some use cases have crystallized—mainly around tokenization and decentralized finance (DeFi). This focus on tokenization and DeFi has led to the core use case that dominates the entire space: capital formation. Yes, smart contracts enable new forms of capital efficiency, but it’s the capital allocation—whether through ICOs, memecoins, or NFT sales—that has truly unlocked entire new categories of ventures.

Other concepts are sticking slowly but growingly around, too. Artists continually explore blockchains as a medium (e.g., “the world sculpture garden”), and new forms of governance, provenance, and reputation, even automation around law and order have emerged. Still, it’s clear that the biggest mindshare has gone to games and utilities built around finance, and especially capital formation. Almost every narrative in recent months—whether about AI or memes—ties back to capital allocation and fundraising.

This dynamic has created a distinct game for crypto. Moneyness is the primary narrative. While crypto does serve the unbanked, enables cross-border payments, and offers safety through stablecoins in unstable markets, it has also created the world’s most massive casino—at least from a broader outside perspective.

I often find myself in a strange position. I move between different communities and see how deeply crypto is despised by some, even though we share clear overlaps in wanting an internet that is open, permissionless, censorship-resistant, composable, interoperable, and decentralized.

Ethereum’s Narrative Crisis

In Ethereum’s case, we seem stuck in a narrative crisis. Hence the rise of soft power grap by the marketeers that believe this can be solved with a marketing push: “We need more builders, more users,” etc. The technology has radically improved over the past few years—no question. But it hasn’t brought in massive numbers of new users yet, especially in the ethereum ecosystem itself. The high-activity hotspots are often elsewhere (Memecoins, NFTs) in what can feels like a casino environment.

So the sentiment arises: We need to get more aligned. But should we? Alignment and decentralization and permissionlessness kind of are slightly paradoxical.

I haven’t fully researched this, but having just finished reading Finite and Infinite Games, I suspect Vitalik had this book parts of this book in mind when he created and nurtured Ethereum over the years.

I want to use Finite and Infinite Games as a lens for where we are and what we might learn.

A World of Games

First and foremost, whether we like it or not, the internet is a place of massive multiplayer real-time games. Everyone is playing or trying to “game” it in some way. As we ask ourselves how to truly onboard the rest of the world into our tiny bubble, we have to consider what needs to be true. And if we play a finite game with winners or losers, or an infinite game we play for the game itself. No matter what:

• People won’t return if they believe “the game” is over or corrupted.

• There have been countless posts claiming crypto’s moral compass is lost. While I won’t dive into that here, it’s clear we’ve developed behaviors and lingo that are hard for a more "mainstream audience" to embrace.

Personally, I came for the technology (yes that is kind of a meme) and the vision of a new internet—the “world computer.” I believed in DeFi as a new market. Historically, anywhere a new market emerges (from the Silk Road to traditional bazaars), new cultures form. A technology built around continuously unlocking new markets is by its nature an accelerator for many new cultures. Some of those cultures has indeed emerged, but due to the space’s size, competition has grown fierce.

We’re still playing in a very narrow field. Our reach is limited, although, the president of the United States launched a memecoin. And now we’re seeing a split in distinct directions:

1. The Cypherpunk/Solarpunk/World-Computer Vision: changing the boundaries of what’s imaginable.

2. The Successful Financial Application: those who want to solidify the gains from crypto’s first big success (finance).

These two cultures don’t necessarily align anymore. Anything not done in the interest of “winning” might be ignored by those focused purely on the other. The roadmap of the chains evolution span potentially multiple bull and bear cycles, support for existing clearly attractive use cases, communities and applications fell too small and too late. Both sides have strong arguments.

I worry the debate is a losing cause because we’re introducing finite games (winners vs. losers) into what was meant to be an infinite game.

Finite vs. Infinite Games

Of course, I want to see DeFi succeed and token prices rise (at last I am a holder), but focusing solely on that is playing a finite game. This single-minded approach breeds a sort of false or limited patriotism around Ethereum: pull as many people over as possible to increase your power. And in today’s internet, power often means capturing attention. Outrage travels faster than reasoned thought, so we fuel the fire. But the more one side gains or loses, the more internal competition it faces or creators and builders are leaving. We see this happening within clearly with Ethereum now.

Some other chains or centralized systems, outside of the original vision to break ore reimagine the system, whether you like it or not, can benefit by stirring that conflict. This chain vs. chain, nuance vs. nuance culture restrains us from exploring genuinely new territory.

I might be naive or romantic, but for me, crypto was about challenging existing systems—progressing collectively through and with technology. It was a vision that drove me: that through collective creation and action, we move toward a horizon to discover what lies beyond. But we’re stuck rehashing the same space bounded debates, not inspiring anyone to go beyond them.

When boundaries become rigid, conflict intensifies, and we adopt more military jargon. We want a “wartime CEO.” We fight over boundaries, losing sight of the horizon. The heated debates—initially about “self-protection” or preserving token price—become ultimately questions of self-identity.

In any war, physical or ideological, winning can be as destructive as losing. What do we gain if the memecoin economy, a specific existing community moves to Ethereum or not? In my opinion likely more clearly defined boundaries that reduce gradually but then all at once Ethereum’s original vision of being a something new and different, the world computer.

Machine or Garden?

We’re now at a stage where we try to align around language. A meme is growing—“Powered by Ethereum.” We want to align on language but unintentionally create limitations. Its transactions and contracts that are "powered", but it us that powers their creation.

For me, we’re at a crossroads. Both sides have their legitimacy. But it matters whether you see Ethereum as a machine or an ecosystem—a garden. The Ethereum Foundation’s mission seems aligned with the garden metaphor: growth, spontaneity, exploration. Meanwhile, a more “mechanistic” view sees Ethereum as something that can be controlled and directed toward immediate outcomes.

Machines represent technical rationality and predictability; a garden is about growth and spontaneity. Focusing solely on machine-like characteristics leads to finite games with winners and losers, undermining the original infinite game of evolving or breaking existing systems.

Machine and nature aren’t mutually exclusive. Machines can exist within gardens, just as finite games exist within infinite games. But when the infinite game is reduced to the finite, something is lost. Machines can support growth but can also deplete the environment. Right now, we’re exhausting our most valuable resource: attention. We spend it on internal conflicts instead of sharing a compelling vision of what lies beyond the horizon.

Cleaning Up Our Own Garden

Crypto is a perfect example of our collective existence. Some build machines and some tend the garden, but we must all handle the waste we’ve created if we want to bring more people in. Only the most hardened degenerate enjoy a “Mad Max” wasteland solely consisting of memecoins, rug pulls, ponzis, and insider trading. These aren’t accidental byproducts of our industry; they are what we’ve built—the product choices we’ve made. Not all of us, but enough to define the public narrative. And in reality the first narrative that reaches the broad audience is the one that sticks. This is the one that we need to overcome in the first place.

It doesn’t have to end this way. We’ve dealt with toxic byproducts throughout our entire human history before and can do so also online, but we need to refine, reimagine, rewrite the vision. We can’t expect people to return if they believe the game is rigged against them or already over.

So while we debate which wars to fight—internally or across chains—we need to articulate the cause more effectively. Infighting only erects more barriers, especially for outsiders who already doubt us. A future powered by Ethereum or any blockchain might be an end state we want to manifest, but if it’s framed as a zero-sum race (a finite game), it’s unappealing to many who share our broader values.

Towards a Horizon

The question is: What stories and myths do we need to tell so that others who share our horizon of decentralization, interoperability, composability, permissionlessness, and censorship resistance can align with us again? Communities like local-first, protocols not platforms supporters, and general open-source share many of our values but often dismiss crypto because of our infighting and manifactured culture.

Instead of endlessly debating one chain’s “power” over another in front of a small set of wallets largely focused on speculation, perhaps it’s time to rethink how to power the entire garden so it can grow beyond its current boundaries.

It's not powered by Ethereum.
Its built, secured, owned, used by you.

Edited with ChatGPT-o1-mini