Author: 0xNatalie
At the end of August, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin transferred 800 ETH to a multi-signature wallet. On September 4, the Ethereum Foundation sold 100 ETH. On September 23, the Ethereum ETF saw its largest outflow of funds since July. This series of events, coupled with the continued decline in Ethereum prices in the second half of the year, has led to widespread concerns and speculation in the market about Ethereum's future performance. Recently, Bankless tweeted: "ETH is money." This simple view quickly sparked debate in the community about the nature and future development of ETH, and many community members, developers, and project founders expressed their views. The discussion gradually expanded from the original design of ETH to its multiple attributes at the economic level.
The collision of diverse community perspectives
Apriori, founder of the intention protocol Anoma, believes that this is a kind of propaganda. Currency is not something fixed, but a concept that is gradually formed through social consensus and usage habits. Whether ETH is a currency depends on how people use it, not its own properties. Therefore, he believes that all statements like "ETH is a currency" are essentially propaganda in nature.
Cathie, chief scientist of ORA, an AI project in the Ethereum ecosystem, has expanded the role of ETH to a wider range of areas. She believes that ETH is not just a currency, but also a symbol of decentralization, security, community and transparency. Currency is just one of the many functions of ETH.
Alex Salnikov, founder of NFT platform Rarible, raised an interesting question: why do Layer 2 solutions like Base choose ETH instead of USDC? In his view, we are entering a new social system similar to the "Internet country", which requires a new currency with an independent monetary policy, and ETH has the potential to play this role. It has the characteristics of decentralization and can evolve into a currency that adapts to this new country without being affected by traditional monetary policy.
Péter Szilágyi, a member of the Ethereum Foundation and head of Geth development, forwarded and responded that ETH was not designed to be a currency from the beginning. The original intention of ETH was to provide basic support for the decentralized world, as the "fuel" of the network, to power various decentralized applications, rather than as a currency for daily transactions. He believes that the value of ETH is mainly reflected in its support for decentralized networks, rather than as a currency.
This forwarding further triggered a clash of different opinions:
Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang retweeted it and stated that Ethereum is a complex and evolving ecosystem. Although the founders of ETH did not originally intend for it to become a currency, as the community grows, the role and function of ETH are also changing, which may include becoming a currency.
David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, also joined the discussion, emphasizing that the future use of Ethereum is determined by the entire community, not by the original developers (OG). Whether ETH can become a currency depends entirely on whether the community is willing to accept it as a currency. The position of OG developers who do not want ETH to become a currency makes ETH more credible as a neutral currency. Because ETH was not designed as a currency with a specific purpose, but was gradually given this function by the community, it makes it more neutral and fair than those tokens that were designed as currencies from the beginning.
Sam, the founder of the stablecoin protocol Frax, pointed out that although Ethereum was not originally designed to be a currency or a business model, it has now developed a set of economic mechanisms (such as token destruction). Ethereum has not fully realized its potential in economic model design, which is the fault of Ethereum core developers and leadership team in economic decision-making. In response, KOL DCinvestor countered that the implementation of the burning mechanism is to reduce transaction fees, which is a correct decision. Although core developers can decide the content of the code, miners, pledgers and the community must also reach a consensus, so core developers do not fully grasp the definition and use of ETH, and it is unfair to blame the core developers entirely.
At the same time, some people in the community believe that Bankless’s view is to shill for ETH, implying that holding ETH is equivalent to holding wealth. This interpretation ignores the true pattern and potential of ETH as a core asset in the decentralized ecosystem.
Summary and Thoughts
This discussion around "Is ETH a currency?" shows the multiple roles and possibilities that ETH carries as a core asset in the crypto world. Whether ETH is a currency depends on different perspectives. Whether it is based on the initial technical vision or based on today's community consensus, it has evolved from a simple network token to an asset that carries more social, economic and technological value.
