Nostr Web Client

Ethereum is NOT a protocol, you know things like TCP/IP and HTTP. The crypto world is in a mass psychosis. VC funds have blossomed on the thesis that L1s are the “protocols” for finance.

No, these are language and compute environments.

ETH was the first language to gain popularity for DeFi apps. But it was created before they knew what DeFI needs were.

We have seen this before… COBOL, Fortran, Lisp, C, JS, Rust.

Every language builds from learnings from the past and upon the needs of new domains. Old languages continue to be used, but many wane, new languages gain adoption.

ETH’s Solidity is COBOL.

To be clear:

- A protocol is a standard for messaging.

- A language is a standard for compute.

The former has longer and stronger network effects.

Bitcoin is more of the former while ETH is more of the latter.

There will be a ongoing market for better decentralised compute networks. Like COBOL it’s quite unlikely Solidity will be what we build DeFi apps on in say 20 years.

8ecad31c... 2y ago 💬 1

So could u maybe outline WHY this is important to understand for the +99% of the world who are not tech savy and pls as if u had to explain it to a 5 year old?

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Discussion

Willy Woo 2y ago

Key point is that a protocol has longevity and lock-in like the Internet’s TCP/IP and HTTP for the web. Meanwhile languages each have their time in the sun and then slowly lose favour. ETH is a language / compute environment so it doesn’t mean it will last forever like a protocol. BTC is more of a protocol. The time is coming when apps will not be written for ETH because it’s too long in the tooth, and too hard to build on.