Sharplink CEO: The future of Ethereum is unfolding

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Author: Joseph Chalom

Translation: Jiahui, ChainCatcher

The current farce surrounding the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the disputes over ETH prices reveal no real big picture. I fully understand these debates, but they do not determine who will lead the financial infrastructure of the next decade.

This is just a stakeholder’s perspective. Before leading Sharplink, I spent twenty years as an executive at BlackRock, responsible for fintech business and digital asset strategy.

These experiences have taught me: what institutions truly value before investing in a new infrastructure.

I want to step back, avoid the noise, and offer a different judgment on Ethereum’s current state and future direction.

The Ethereum Foundation is doing its job well

Taking a step back to look at what has been delivered over the past decade. In terms of the three attributes most valued by institutions—trust, security, and liquidity—Ethereum has earned its qualification to win. It is winning, and with a huge advantage.

Look at the scorecard. Most of the world’s stablecoin value settlement happens on Ethereum. Its tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) far exceeds any other blockchain, and it is the default platform for high-value DeFi transactions.

In these dimensions, no competing chain can compare.

This is not accidental but the result of years of rigorous protocol development by the Ethereum Foundation. Ethereum is the only blockchain with a ten-year record of major upgrades at the protocol level.

The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka—these have all been milestones. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring exponential scalability, and the foundation is still leading the way toward quantum resistance. This is the most ambitious technical roadmap in the industry.

Decentralization is an advantage, not a flaw

Some of the fiercest criticisms of the foundation treat decentralization as a weakness. This is precisely the opposite of the institution’s logic. The Ethereum ecosystem has the most developers among all chains, and the vast majority of them are not working inside the foundation.

No foundation should control a chain. Institutions will not give up their existing systems just to lock themselves into another proprietary ecosystem.

They need to be confident that the fundamental properties they rely on cannot be arbitrarily changed by a few controllers. In fact, no chain should depend on any single participant.

Ethereum’s reliable neutrality and decentralization are exactly why it can become the future financial settlement layer. These are not flaws.

If I had to choose between two foundations: one focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and core protocols, and the other only serving short-term marketing, I would always choose the former.

Using Amazon as an analogy for ETH’s value

History is full of examples: foundational innovations are dismissed by skeptics, their momentum is taken by trendier newcomers, and skeptics end up proven wrong. Amazon is the clearest case.

Early on, the market consensus was that Amazon was a money-losing online bookseller supported by the internet bubble. Pessimists focused on the profit and loss statement but missed Bezos’s long-term vision.

He aimed to build a completely new online marketplace structure. Its potential market was not just selling books but the entire retail economy, later expanding into cloud computing and media. Analysts fixated on short-term prices missed the bigger opportunity.

Today, Ethereum and ETH are in the same position. Its potential market is not just crypto trading but the entire global financial system. ETH’s intrinsic value is tightly linked to the network’s expansion.

And this network is on the brink of exponential growth in transaction volume, covering stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi, and emerging smart agent finance waves.

To secure such massive transaction volume, ETH will become a highly demanded incentive layer, the ultimate trust carrier, and its currency premium will rise accordingly.

Without ETH, there is no Ethereum. Assets and the network are inseparable.

Others are fearful, I am greedy

Almost every market cycle, moments when retail investors cut losses and sentiment hits rock bottom, are opportunities for disciplined capital to enter.

Warren Buffett built Berkshire Hathaway by buying quality assets during the worst market times: from GEICO in the 1970s to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis, all the same.

Most of the past year, the fear and greed index showed extreme fear. The smartest investors buy quality assets when everyone else is panicking. They go against the cycle, not with it.

During the crypto winter after FTX, most institutions avoided exposure to Bitcoin and ETH or paused product launches. But at BlackRock, we took the opposite approach.

We doubled down, investing in infrastructure, building ecosystem partnerships, and launching products connecting traditional finance with crypto. We should learn from Buffett and BlackRock’s experience.

Giving a new voice to Ethereum

The Ethereum Foundation is doing its job well. Going forward, it will focus more on CROPS—censorship resistance, capture resistance, open source, privacy, and security.

For most people, the question is clear: as institutions are eager to embrace Ethereum, there is a leadership gap in market promotion.

I strongly feel that stakeholders and participants in the ecosystem need to play a more significant role in Ethereum’s narrative and institutional adoption.

Since last summer, digital asset custody firms and core Ethereum managers have played an important role in this.

Including Sharplink, Tom Lee of BitMine, Joe Lubin of Consensys, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, EEA, and other ecosystem participants. We also work closely with the small internal team focused on institutional education and adoption within the foundation.

Sharplink itself is investing in this ecosystem. We were among the earliest to stake billions of ETH and have invested hundreds of millions in quality DeFi protocols; recently, we co-established a $125 million DeFi yield fund with Galaxy Digital to support existing and emerging protocols.

Even so, we can do more—and we will do more: becoming outspoken advocates for Ethereum, actively supporting the upcoming institutional adoption supercycle.

The future of Ethereum is unfolding right now.