1 Is Soneium good for the Ethereum ecosystem?
The Soneium second-layer extension built by Sony will definitely have a positive impact on the Ethereum ecosystem, but this effect is only potential. Whether it can play a direct role depends on whether there are any beautiful applications on it.
I feel that such a chain will not issue coins in theory. But now it has launched a test network and a DEX running on the test network, so there are already users online using test coins to perform related operations, hoping to get some benefits. I suggest that you just play around with it if you have the time and energy, and don't be too serious about getting some benefits.
As I write this, I think of another popular second-floor extension, Linea.
The project recently broke the news that one of its co-founders left the project in July. It was rumored that he had a disagreement with other members of the project team on the vision of Linea.
The biggest shock to the community from this news is that they are worried that the project will not issue tokens. Regardless of what the impact will be, it will definitely have a bad impact on Linea in the short term.
This incident also reflects a dilemma of the current Ethereum ecosystem from another perspective: how can numerous second-layer extensions continue to develop and survive without application support?
I’m afraid Linea won’t be the last second-layer extension to have this kind of problem. If the bear market continues, I expect more and more projects to have problems.
2 From the last round, large institutions are keen to support new chains, even if there are major vulnerability risks, such as FTX and LUNA.
When I saw this message, I thought of a group of new projects that I saw on the Internet in recent days, including some new projects invested in the crypto ecosystem by well-known venture capital firms including A16Z.
In these projects, these venture capitals invested in the early stages, many of which were "pre-seed round" or "seed round". This shows that these big capitals still have a high risk appetite for these projects, or would rather take risks and participate in these projects.
I looked at these projects carefully, and the more popular ones are: DeFi and games.
Among them, DeFi mainly refers to projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, and also includes some Bitcoin and Solana projects.
Game projects are mainly game platforms and rarely game projects.
In addition to these two categories, there is also a second-layer extension of Ethereum, which claims to achieve better results in terms of speed, second-layer cross-chain, and finality.
I think these projects still don’t have many unique features. In my opinion, most of them are still repeating the same thing without any breakthroughs in application.
3 The Ethereum team continues to sell off a large amount of tokens. Does this indicate that there are disagreements within the Ethereum team? Is there corruption?
According to the Ethereum team's own explanation for the sell-off, it was to support related projects and cover various expenses, but I have not checked the relevant information and data, so I cannot judge whether this reflects differences within the team.
However, the Ethereum team had disagreements very early on. The departure of co-founder Gavin Wood was a major blow to the Ethereum core team. He was the author of the Ethereum Yellow Paper, the main contributor to the first version of the client, and the main contributor to Geth.
As for the Ethereum Foundation, it has always been criticized. Not only this time, but the Ethereum Foundation has long been criticized for its lack of transparency and openness. And frankly speaking, we haven't seen much improvement from them over the years.
I think the main reason for this may be that this organization is a non-governmental organization and not a listed company, so there is a lack of supervision in terms of legal regulation.
There are definitely problems with the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum Foundation, and the Ethereum core team, and some of these problems may not be easy to solve in the long run.
But what I can think of is: looking at the entire crypto ecosystem, I really can’t find a second ecosystem and team better than Ethereum.
I recently started to pay attention to the Ethereum Foundation by reading in detail an AMA they recently held. I shared the content of this AMA and my feelings about it in an online exchange last weekend.
In general, I feel that the several Ethereum Foundation members who spoke gave me a good impression. The most fundamental reason is that they have not deviated from the spiritual core of Ethereum, and have proposed new solutions in terms of anti-censorship and sharding.
So despite its imperfections and various problems, I still feel that Ethereum’s core motivation and spirit are still there, and it will continue to move forward with difficulty.
