Sharplink CEO: The future of Ethereum is unfolding

By: rootdata|2026/05/31 03:45:00
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Author: Joseph Chalom

Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher

The current farce surrounding the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the disputes about ETH prices do not reflect the real big picture. I completely understand this debate, but it does not determine who will lead the financial infrastructure of the next decade.

This is just one 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 made me understand what institutions truly value before investing in a new infrastructure.

I want to take a step back, avoid the noise, and provide a different judgment on the current state and future direction of Ethereum.

The Ethereum Foundation is doing its job well

Looking back at the achievements delivered over the past decade. In the three attributes most valued by institutional adoption—trust, security, and liquidity—Ethereum has already qualified for victory. It is winning, and the advantage is significant.

Look at the report card. The settlement of the value of most stablecoins globally occurs on Ethereum. Its tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) far exceeds any other blockchain and is the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions.

On these dimensions, no competing chain can compare.

This is not a coincidence but the result of years of rigorous protocol development by the Ethereum Foundation. Ethereum is the only blockchain with a decade-long record of significant upgrades at its core.

The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka have all come this far. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring a leap in scalability, and the foundation is also leading the way towards quantum resistance. This is the most ambitious technology roadmap in the industry.

Decentralization is an advantage, not a flaw

Some of the harshest criticisms of the foundation treat decentralization as a weakness. This precisely reverses the logic of institutions. The Ethereum ecosystem has the most developers of any chain, and the vast majority of them do not work within the foundation.

No single foundation should control a chain. Institutions will not abandon their existing systems to lock themselves into another proprietary system.

They need to be assured that the underlying attributes they rely on will not be arbitrarily changed by a few controllers. In fact, no chain should depend on any single participant.

Ethereum's reliable neutrality and decentralization are precisely why it can become the future financial settlement layer. These are by no means flaws.

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

Using Amazon to Analogize ETH's Value

There are many historical examples where foundational innovations were dismissed by naysayers, only to be overshadowed by trendier newcomers, ultimately leaving the naysayers with egg on their faces. Amazon is the clearest case.

In the early days, the market consensus on Amazon was that it was an online bookseller propped up by the internet bubble, losing money. Bears focused on the profit and loss statement but failed to see Bezos's long-term ambition.

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

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

And this network is on the brink of a leap in trading volume, encompassing stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi, and the emerging wave of financial agents.

To provide security for such a massive trading volume, ETH will become a highly demanded incentive layer, becoming the ultimate trust vehicle, and its monetary premium will rise accordingly.

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

When others are fearful, I am greedy

In almost every market cycle, the moments when retail investors cut losses and emotions hit rock bottom are precisely the opportunities for disciplined capital to enter.

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

For most of the past year, the fear and greed index has shown extreme fear in the market. The smartest investors buy quality assets when panic is at its peak. They go against the cycle rather than follow the tide.

In the crypto winter following FTX, most institutions chose to avoid exposure to Bitcoin and ETH or postponed product launches. But when I was at BlackRock, we did the opposite.

We doubled down on investments, built infrastructure, established ecosystem partnerships, and launched products connecting traditional finance with crypto. We should all learn from Buffett and BlackRock's experiences.

Voicing New Perspectives for Ethereum

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

For most people, the issue is clear: at a time when institutions are eager to embrace Ethereum, there is a gap in leadership for market promotion in this area.

I have a strong feeling that stakeholders and participants in the ecosystem need to play a more significant role in the narrative of Ethereum and institutional adoption.

Since last summer, digital asset treasury companies and core Ethereum managers have played an important role in this matter.

This includes ecosystem participants like Sharplink, Tom Lee from BitMine, Joe Lubin from Consensys, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, EEA, and others. We have also closely collaborated with the small team within the foundation focused on institutional education and adoption.

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

Even so, we can do more and will certainly do more: to become outspoken advocates for Ethereum and actively support the upcoming institutional adoption supercycle.

The future of Ethereum is unfolding right now.

-- Price

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