I was talking to someone about Ethereum and I made the observation that Ethereum is about to have a Second Coming in terms of the return to it's overwhelming dominance of Decentralized Finance.
The words of Vitallic Buterin, the creator of Ethereum and the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which made smart contracts and decentralized finance possible, sound almost prophetic now; he said that Ethereum would scale not arithmetically ; as in 2,4, 6, 8 and not geometrically, as in 3, 9, 81, but exponentially, as in 10, 100, 1000, via second layer solutions, which would eventually allow one million fold increases in transaction volume throughput through each one.
This was how ethereum would keep up with an industry which grew 1000 fold in one year. Second layer solutions.
Everything else, Proof of Stake, Sharding, etc. etc.. all were just temporary fixes, to allow time for Roll-ups, the ultimate second layer technology to develop.
The history of decentralized finance revisited
I recalled history for my friend; Decentralized FInance began on Ethereum with the Makerdao, the first cryptobank and current champion of banks in the crypto world. This was followed by Uniswap which became the largest decentralized exchange in crypto history.
This was followed by the famous DEFI Summer of 2021, in which in a one year time investment in decentralized finance on Ethereum went from millions to billions in one year, a 1000 fold increase in the industries size.
A historic increase in size, more then any business in recorded history.
Pause
Wow!
A historic rise in business, 1000 fold, more then any other in recorded history.
This corresponded with the last Bull Run with Ethereum the token needed to pay transaction fees on Ethereum increasing in price from 155 dollars to over 3000 dollars.
In fact here on Hive, and Leofinance, @khaleelkazi had created a bridge to Ethereum called wleo and a trading pair on Uniswap wleo-ethereum.
The year following that move was characterized by a ten fold increase in the price of Leo from 10 cents to over a dollar.
At the time Leo was worth more then Hive in market value.
It was pretty amazing.
pause to reflect
Unfortunately high ethereum prices equaled high transaction costs..
This increase in the value or market price of Ethereum increased the price of transacting on decentralized finance on ethereum to 40-50 dollars and soon 100-200 dollars.
As one involved in decentralized finance I can tell you that it sometimes it takes 4 transactions to participate in decentralized finance, so literally thousands of crypto defi investors found themselves unable to pay these high transaction fees and still make any profit.
So they left ... and went first to Binance Smart Chain and later they went to Polygon.
the pent-up demand was so great that these platforms blew up in size to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Flight from Ethereum to Binance Smart Chain.
Ethereum was and still is an incredibly successful blockchain, and still has billions of dollars invested in decentralized finance there.
And the words of the BInance CEO "There is more then enough business for all of us" came true.
As Binance Smart Chain decentralized exchange PanCake Swap and their version of a bank Venus both were huge financial successes soaring to billions of dollars invested in a year.
Soon there was over ten billion dollars invested in each; ethereum and binance smart chain.
Surprisingly there was no end to the money, and a little over a year later Polygon launched and Sushiswap soon grew to a huge decentralized exchange, which rivaled Uniswap and PanCake Swap in size.
Here on Inleo @khaleelkazi created projects on Binance Smart Chain, Cubfinance and Polygon, PolyCub.
The return of Ethereum
Meanwhile...back on Ethereum second layer solutions were launched.
Second layer solutions are basically new blockchains, which are created to solve Ethereums two big problems: transaction costs and transaction time.
Ethereum was, compared to newer blockchains slow.
Ethereum was compared to newer blockchains expensive.
Second layer solutions, compared to Ethereum were cheap and fast.
It's been over two years since defi summer of 2021 and second layer solutions have evolved fast and there are a lot of them.
At this point all the theoretical solutions have become a reality, and they are growing fast and growing big... I think because people are coming back to Ethereum.
The circle of life
I have lived long enough to see things be popular, fall into obscurity and then return to popularity.
And I have been here on Hive for six years and on Inleo since the beginning, so I was here on Leo when we invested on Ethereum with the wleo-ethereum trading pair, then on Binance Smart Chain with Cubfinance, then on Polygon with Polycub and now we appear to have come full circle where we were briefly going to use a wleo-cacao trading pair, literally going back to Ethereum, but then we pivoted and went with an Ethereum second layer solution Arbitrum, and we have the Arbitrum Leo - Cacao trading pair on Maya blockchain.
I feel like we have come full circle and we are now invested in a second layer solution of ethereum.
I think we are joining several thousands of crypto investors in the Great Return to Ethereum visa vie the second layer solutions.
