I have expressed regret more than once about Ethereum's performance 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 if it is 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 previous bull market.
During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, I carefully read several articles by Vitalik (https://bridge.zkasino.io/) last year and this year on the second-layer expansion.
From his articles, I seem to see signs of the future.
Regarding Ethereum’s second-layer expansion, Vitalik made his attitude very clear in the article: he hopes that most applications will eventually run on the second-layer expansion.
Moreover, his view on Ethereum's second-layer expansion 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, which are allowed to develop freely under the ultimate discretion of Ethereum, the "general manager".
Thinking from this perspective, I changed my previous view.
Previously, I always thought that there are too many second-layer extensions. The existing second-layer extensions cannot be used up, and new extensions are still emerging. How much significance do these seemingly "duplicate" 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 second-tier extensions have clearly developed their own unique characteristics and circles.
For example, social (MEME) applications are obviously active on Base, wildly growing but quality-assured applications are active on Arbitrum, applications with more institutional support are active on Optimism, and in the future, gaming applications are likely to be active on Treasure and Redstone...
As the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together.” As these extensions gradually develop 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 expansions, each with its own culture, values, and community atmosphere.
Today's communities are constantly issuing coins (NFT, MEME), and future communities are likely to be constantly issuing chains (second-layer expansion) - in fact, this phenomenon has already appeared in the Ethereum ecosystem: the earlier Degen chain and the Ham chain that has been popular these days are both like this.
If this trend continues, what Ethereum will build in the future is not just an ecosystem, but a federation of cyber nations based on blockchain, and Ethereum will be the ultimate authority of this federation.
This ultimate authority only technically guarantees the finalization and execution of transactions, while the various federal small countries under it are free to sprout and grow wildly.
This kind of freedom and barbarism is the best soil for breeding 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 were only nurtured on the soil of Ethereum.
I guess that the next innovation in the Ethereum ecosystem will be nurtured in countless sub-chains based on second-layer expansion. That kind of explosion will no longer be an explosion of individual application scenarios, but an explosion based on chain ecology.
The explosion of chain ecology will be the resonance of applications around a specific theme or a specific culture. That is to say, once a chain (second-layer expansion) 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 gestate 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 conditions?
Now, the gradual growth of Ethereum's second-layer expansion culture and atmosphere is likely to lay a new foundation and create new momentum for Ethereum's next outbreak.
