5 Reasons Sapien Believes in Ethereum

A short blog post on why I think Ethereum rocks ??

Sapien is already one of the world’s largest Ethereum-based social network. In anticipation of the upcoming Constantinople Fork, I thought we should celebrate what makes Ethereum great.

The Sapien team chose to build our community on Ethereum for a number of reasons, but these are the ones that stood out to us the most:

1. The Team

The people behind a vision are just as important as the vision itself. The Ethereum Foundation boasts incredibly smart and talented individuals (many of whom are paid in ETH for their contributions). They’ve successfully built a platform that can process over a million daily transactions and is worth more than $25 billion. In doing so, The Foundation has also managed to make an erudite product mainstream and recognizable to millions of people. Not only does the Foundation’s Research & Development refine the Ethereum project, but quite significantly, the blockchain space as a whole.

But what compels me most about this team is their dedication to the vision. They believe that decentralization and the blockchain will change the world.

That is powerful motivation.

It’s also worth noting that it is in The Foundation’s interest for ETH to appreciate. Vitalik Buterin must be aware that his technology’s financial performance matters even if the platform itself is exceptional. It’s difficult to get the attention of markets and consumers without financial gain. And strong financials are tied to more investment, development, and adoption of Ethereum. The Foundation knows this, and must therefore be all the more committed to lifting Ethereum to even greater heights.

2. Development Activity

New technologies do not magically become mainstream; it takes the work of programmers and visionaries to push a platform to consumers. Fortunately, Ethereum consistently tops the list of platforms with the most active development with more than 100 repositories and 14,000 code commits.

More developers are critical to refining and utilizing a platform’s potential. Greater activity also increases the chance of individual technological breakthroughs (such as a truly decentralized blockchain that isn’t dependent on delegated nodes). While Bitcoin remains (so far) unhackable and canonical to its code, Ethereum is actively striving to improve and develop smarter technological approaches. That activity figures to increase as the technology spreads.

In business, they say follow the money. In technology, I say follow the code.

3. Proof-of-Stake

Ethereum 2.0 will eventually use Proof-of-Stake (PoS). PoS reduces the need for issuance, which is critical to reaching full decentralization. Unlike Proof-of-Work (PoW) models, Stakers can receive rewards from the transaction fees of the blocks. This approach is best paired with a fixed supply of ETH.

Already, the Foundation has reached consensus to reduce issuance from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block in Constantinople. This is a 33% reduction with only Casper FFG (Ethereum’s currently proposed hybrid PoS/PoW system) providing finality every 50th block. As the chain is migrated over to PoS, I suspect issuance will reduce further.

Proof-of-Stake is also a better model for blockchain technology for numerous reasons. There’s a reason we modeled Sapien and our SPN staking economy after it. PoW is dependent on large numbers of miners and wastes a ridiculous amount of energy. Ethereum’s PoS Casper upgrade, on the other hand, is not susceptible to these problems. It also promises to increase the speed of the blockchain and protect it from the 51% and selfish mining attacks to which PoW is subject.

4. Scalability

I am stunned that ETH holds the second highest market capitalization despite its low transaction volumes and relatively high fees (Dogecoin, for example, is almost 100x cheaper). Fortunately, Ethereum’s developers have been working on fixing these scaling problems for months, suggesting that once they are solved the platform could support expansion by a factor of 10,000x or more.

Their solution involves a complementary implementation of plasma and beacon side chains (a level two fix) with sharding (a level one fix). They’ve also implemented additional scalability measures on their testnet, such as aggregate signatures.

Imagine the possibilities of an Ethereum blockchain that can process more transactions per second than Visa. Now imagine its market capitalization. It’s no surprise that companies like Omisego (and Sapien!) are working hard on scaling techniques to anticipate mass adoption.

5. Adoption

None of the aforementioned reasons matter without adoption. Vitalik agreesas well. For Ethereum, though, adoption is as much about users as it is about dApps and their network effect. Ethereum’s smart contracts become far less powerful and appealing without a wide variety of dApps, offering users a variety of Web 3.0 user experiences.

Arguably, dApps are initially more important than the users themselves, since their network effect is critical to the mainstream use of the Ethereum platform. Thankfully, there is already a vibrant dApp community on Ethereum that promises to grow quickly. Now, as dApps begin communicating with each other, mainstream adoption will be accelerated by applications tapping into each others’ network effects. Already, we see solid projects like MakerDAO coming to life and accelerating mainstream crypto adoption.

To a certain extent, I consider Sapien a progressive dApp primed to tap into the mass market.

Sapien has tremendous potential to bring the power of blockchain and decentralization to the masses.

It is a social platform that offers significant value over other social platforms. There is a good chance we will be at the frontier of converting some of the first mainstream users to a tokenized social network built on Ethereum.S

— Ankit, CEO & Co-Founder @ Sapien

TL;DR

And to keep Compliance happy:

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent official policy or position of Sapien Network, Inc. The information in this presentation was compiled from sources believed to be reliable and is for informational purposes only. Sapien Network, Inc. does not guarantee the accuracy of this information or any results and further assumes no liability in connection with this presentation. In addition, Sapien Network, Inc. does not guarantee the timeliness or completeness of the information contained within this presentation and the information contained in this presentation is subject to change without notice. This presentation may contain statements regarding Sapien Network, Inc.’s intent or current business expectations. No reliance is to be placed on these forward-looking statements, and Sapien Network, Inc. does not undertake any obligation to publicly release the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Any and all information contained herein does not constitute any purchase or other advice, does not constitute an offer to purchase or sell, nor does it constitute a promotion or recommendation of any token or cryptocurrency or any other type of product.

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