But have we truly grasped the *economic* ripples that every proposal sets in motion?
Each pivot, upgrade, and idea impacts more than just the blockchain itself.
It shapes the experiences, challenges, and fortunes of:
1. Developers 2. Users 3. Validators 4. Service Providers 5. And Investors
That’s why I created a dashboard on @tokenterminal breaking it all down.
Past. Present. And Future.
A 🧵with some insights from the dashboard + a link at the end for those looking to go deeper 👇
Starting with EIP1559 in August of '21:
$12.4b has been “burned” or bought back since it’s implementation.
1/7
Shifting to ETH 2.0 and the move to Proof of Stake in Sept. '22:
Annual issuance dropped 88% overnight.
Impact on Validators:
1. Now compensated with tips from users (fees paid in excess of the base fee for block inclusion) + new issuance.
2. Compensation from new issuance was reduced by 88% overnight (from roughly 13.5k ETH/day to 1.7k ETH/day).
3. Overhead costs (energy) reduced by 99.9%.
4. Compensation from fees + new issuance is now determined by the validator's portion of ETH staked pro-rata to the amount of ETH staked on the network.
[see dashboard for impact on ETH holders]
2/7
Moving on to The Shapella Upgrade (staking withdrawals) in April of '23:
Validators increased 58% in the first 6 months post-Shapella.
Impact:
1. Validators: decrease in yield 2. Tokenholders: drop in yield can impact demand for ETH 3. Network security: more validators = more secure network. 4. Applications: @LidoFinance was the largest beneficiary.
3/7
March '23 EIP4844: Introduction of “Blobs,” a new data structure that lowered costs for L2s.
Impact:
1. Users: reduced transaction fees on L2s an order of magnitude.
2. L1 Validators: the reduction in L2 fees has reduced the fees paid to L1 and the yield paid to validators/stakers.
3. L2 Sequencers: fees are down while transactions are up. Transaction volume will need to increase exponentially to backfill the loss in revenue from a lower avg. cost to transact.
4. Tokenholders: the reduction in fees at the L2 has also decreased fees at the L1 level, reducing burned ETH and yield paid to validators/stakers.
5. L2 Margins: increased from roughly 75% to 99%.
6.Applications/Developers: reducing costs on L2s can enable use cases that were previously not possible.
4/7
The result? Ethereum is scaling as designed.
90% of transactions within the ecosystem now come from L2.
5/7
But the million-dollar question remains: Where will the most value accrue?
The market still values the L1 at 13x the combined valuation of the top L2s.
6/7
Want to go deeper and come to your own conclusions? 👇
Please tear it up and leave your comments below so that we can make it even better 🤝
So many bad takes on the timeline regarding Ethereum vs Solana right now.
It's about time we cut through the noise with a data-driven approach.
That's why I created an absolute banger of a dashboard comparing the economics of the two networks across:
1. Go-To-Market Strategy 2. Value Accrual 3. Total Economic Value 4. Cost to Produce $1 Fee Revenue 5. Network Fundamentals 6. Performance & Valuation
It's both quantitative and qualitative.
A quick 🧵with some takeaways + a link to the dashboard via @tokenterminal at the end 👇
Takeaway #1: It's now about 50% cheaper to transact on Arbitrum than Solana. In fact, it's cheaper to transact on half of the top L2s.
1/7
Shifting to Total Network Fees:
Takeaways:
1. Ethereum + the top L2s have done nearly $20b in all-time fees
2. 97.5% has come from the L1 ($479m from the top L2s)
3. Solana has produced $495m in all-time fees, with 87% of that coming this year.
4. The trend is the friend of Solana, which has produced 41% of Ethereum's top-line network fees over the last 90 days (not including MEV)
5. Why am I including L2s? Because they create demand for ETH + settle transactions down to the L1. We'll stop including them if those two economic ties are severed.
2/7
Next is Protocol Revenue (burned tokens, which accrue value to non-stakers):
Takeaways:
1. 64% of Ethereum's all-time transaction fees ($12.4b) have been burned, accruing value to ETH tokenholders.
2. 50% of Solana's all-time transaction fees ($247m) have been burned (2% of Ethereum).
3. L2s have no value accrual mechanism for tokenholders today.
. @Uniswap did 81% of @coinbase trading volume in Q2.
It did 65% of @RobinhoodApp's volume.
Meanwhile, Uniswap has just 3% of Coinbase's workforce and 4% of Robinhoods.
A 🧵on @Uniswap's market share within crypto across 6 different KPIs using @tokenterminal new dashboard feature.
___
Starting with Fees - Uniswap currently controls a 55% market share. Notably, the protocol generated $45m for Uniswap Labs via it's interface fee over the last 6 months.
That's 9% of what was paid to Uniswap LPs ($503m) over the same period.
*please note all data excludes Solana DEXs (coming soon)
1/7
In terms of active users, @Uniswap currently has a 60% market share — twice as high as one year ago.
Uniswap had over 9 million active users in August. For reference, Coinbase has 8 million monthly active users. Robinhood has 13.7m.
Data: @tokenterminal
2/7
In terms of trading volume, Uniswap currently has a 42% market share across crypto DEXs (excludes Solana)
In August the DEX did $52b (down from $90b in March).
Again, Uniswap did 81% of Coinbase's volume in Q2 and 65% of Robinhood's volume.
Every qtr I spend a week writing The Ethereum Investment Framework while combing through hundreds of KPIs throughout the Ethereum Ecosystem.
10 insights from the Q1 update which was published yesterday.
Shout out to @artemis__xyz for supplying the data.
A 🧵
Newer blockchains may be stealing some mind share from Ethereum, but in terms of where the value still sits, the King still rules:
- 5x higher TVL than the second-largest L1
- 10x higher TVL than #3
As of 3.31, Ethereum has over 118 million non-zero wallet addresses, a KPI that has been growing at a compound annual rate of 40% since 2018. At 3.31, Ethereum has over 2.3x more non-zero wallets than the Bitcoin network.