Thread by @cburniske

Over the years I've watched $BTC maxis get more and more bitter over the successful experimentation around them that they rejected at an early stage.

I fear $ETH maxis could walk the same path 🧵

What's tough is crypto's directionally going through "ideals dilution," where each successive wave of adopters are less in it for the "ideals" and more in it for the cool stuff, money, and because everyone else is doing it.

$BTC and $ETH are the most popular, ideals-driven cryptonetworks. Many of the competing layer-1 smart contract protocols are much less ideals-driven, and so long-time $ETH devotees feel repulsed.

But new developers and new users largely only care about where cool stuff is happening, and what's easy to use.

$ETH has the cool factor over other layer-1 SC protocols, but its ease of use is lagging some.

(Devs care about censorship resistance, users less so)

As a result, other layer-1 SC protocols will be able (and are already) to copy $ETH's culture and get more users this cycle. That will be painful for $ETH maxis.

But keep an eye on who is establishing their own, original culture, with a committed, independent dev community that builds towards a better future in the next bear.

Even if some of the founding story of a layer-1 SC protocol is F'd, dApps built using that protocol may not be, and eventually the founding story will be mostly whitewashed anyway.

Part of crypto's lineage is free open-source software. In that world, experimentation at low cost is a benefit.

When that free open-source software has an asset attached to it, however, feelings become convoluted amongst the experimenters.

Be mindful of your feelings.