Recently, I have heard too many people complain about Ethereum's infrastructure, complaining that VCs have invested in a lot of meaningless infrastructure, blaming the excess infrastructure for the industry's difficulties, and trying to create conflicts between application developers and infrastructure organizations. It seems that they describe the Ethereum ecosystem as a Niflheim that is not suitable for application development. This is very unfriendly and unconvincing.

Clear up misunderstandings, what is real infrastructure?

Does it have a grand narrative? Received investment from top VCs? Created a lot of bubbles? Nihilism? Lost your investment? EBOLA (EVM Bags Over Logic Affliction)?

Real infrastructure:

1. They include protocols, EIPs, frameworks, tool stacks, and non-application layer blockchain services.

2. They are used to solve some specific problems, improve application efficiency, user experience, decentralization, security, and privacy.

3. Their code is open source, accepting contributions and reviews from the community.

4. They provide free plans for application developers, or even complete public good.

5. They are built by a group of truly idealistic and optimistic people.

Development of blockchain infrastructure

I prefer to describe the development of blockchain infrastructure in the form of git branches.

Blockchain is like a new git branch. In the first stage of this branch, cryptography, P2P networks, consensus algorithms and other infrastructures are added. You can apply these infrastructures to build Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as other L1 networks.

In the second stage, various Ethereum-based facilities, tools and services have emerged, and developers can use them to build various wallets, DeFi applications, and layer2 networks.

Interestingly, after this commit, an onchain branch was created. The ultimate goal of this branch is to store user data completely on the chain, and the logic of the application is implemented through smart contracts. Developers can implement truly verifiable, composable, and interoperable onchain applications. We are currently in the construction stage of onchain infra of this branch, and I think we are on the right track.

What does infrastructure bring us?

1. Reduced monopoly

   For a certain field, developers have more options. Imagine if you are the founder of a startup and you want to provide transaction data query services for your network, are you willing to pay a high fee to buy a company's block scan service, or deploy a free Blockscout.

2. Improve efficiency

   Developers will migrate to more efficient tools and infrastructure. This is the change in my technology stack for building applications in the past year.

   Chain: Tendermint → OP Stack

   Development tools: Truffle/Hardhat → Foundry

   Contract interaction: Web3.js / Ether.js → Viem

   Storage: IPFS → BNB Greenfield

   Block browser: Etherscan → Blockscout

   Wallet: Extension Wallet → Coinbase Smart Wallet / AA

3. Enrich the diversity of applications

   Provide developers with enough infrastructure so that they can create interesting applications. A few years ago, we mainly built DeFi and NFT-related applications in the Ethereum ecosystem. Now you can use various infrastructures to build more interesting products.

   Cloud Platform: Fleek Authentication: Privy Game: MUD, Dojo, Paima Wallet Kit: Onchain Kit, rainbowkit Open Source Rewards: tea Full-stack ZK Proof service: polyhedra Ethereum's Trustless AI: ora IP: StoryProtocol

4. Make the startup cost of the application lower

   In fact, you only need to pay the gas fee for deploying the contract. Because the infrastructure is complete enough, even a small development team can quickly integrate infrastructure services to achieve the expected functions, and almost all infrastructure service providers will provide free plans for developers, which is enough to support and verify your early ideas.

5. Accelerating mass adoption

   This depends on the changes that infrastructure brings to non-financialized applications and user experience. I think this is also the reason why many builders have changed from developing consumer crypto apps to developing infrastructure. It’s not that developers are too focused on technology, because they must first solve the problems of efficiency and user experience friction, and then build applications to prove feasibility.

   We may need to go through several stages to achieve true Mass Adoption Infrastructure explosion period: multiple different solutions appear in the same field, just like Layer2 has OP, ZK, ZKEVM, Plasma. Infrastructure elimination period: the market will eliminate those meaningless and token-only infrastructures. Infrastructure stabilization period: some truly valuable infrastructures survive, and developers begin to build various categories of consumer applications based on them. Mass Adoption: The blockchain infrastructure at this stage is basically the same as the user experience provided to consumers by web2 services. Users do not need to understand how blockchain works to use various applications, which can bring users better benefit distribution, ownership of digital resources, privacy, and anti-censorship.

6. Reduce the impact of centralization

   Imagine if all our applications use the same infrastructure service, until one day, the government of a certain country shuts it down and starts arresting their core code contributors, or arrests its CEO, making it impossible to provide services to applications. But our infrastructure services are sufficient, and there are other alternative solutions, so that applications will not stop operating due to the paralysis of a certain infrastructure.

Keep building infrastructure

“Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” What Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley to lure him to Apple.

Now I want to ask you:

“Do you want to make and trade Memecoin for the rest of your life, or do you want to build Infrastructure and change the crypto world?”

Infrastructure is the engine of the industry, it brings new narratives and visions, even if it is a new standard, a proposal, an SDK. Countless builders need stories to strengthen their beliefs and maintain their enthusiasm. Why do we believe in Crypto? Why believe in Onchain? Why believe in AW? Be the one who builds the cathedral. If you don’t think you are "building a cathedral", you should find a different job.