The rise of Ethereum and broader blockchain ecosystem share many attributes with the early days of the internet. In 1995, the World Wide Web was a vast, bare and open platform. The internet we know and love today — Facebook, Gmail, WhatsApp, online banking, Airbnb and Uber are built on top of these protocols. These open source internet protocols are critical pieces of our internet lives and yet we don’t even realize they exist. The same pattern is unfolding with blockchain assets and the decentralized web with one major difference.
The invention of Bitcoin and Ethereum has created a new type of internet and with it, a new web stack. The best investments during the early internet were technology companies that used the internet to dis-intermediate incumbent service providers. Ironically, the HTTP, TCP/IP & SMTP protocols that these businesses were built on captured none of the value that was created. These web infrastructure protocols resulted in a 0% ROI for the developers, stakeholders and investors that worked on them.
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