Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin called ETH a store of value that could play an important role amid high inflation and economic instability. In his opinion, this asset has the advantages of gold and bitcoin, but at the same time offers broader possibilities thanks to the functionality of the Ethereum blockchain.
Lyubin shared his reflections in a post dedicated to the properties of Ethereum as the money of the future digital economy.
According to Lubin, the world is approaching a period of high inflation and significant economic and social volatility. Under such conditions, national currencies and other assets risk losing purchasing power, so it will be more important for investors to hold instruments capable of preserving or increasing value.
He called gold and bitcoin high-quality monetary assets that do not depend on debt obligations. At the same time, in his opinion, Ethereum has additional properties:
- censorship resistance. Transactions on Ethereum's base layer (L1) cannot be censored. This applies to both regular transfers and the execution of complex programs based on smart contracts;
- low storage and usage costs. Lubin noted that Ethereum is relatively cheap to maintain and safe to store. At the same time, Ethereum enables transactions of various scales — from $1 to billions of dollars;
- deflationary model. With high activity on the Ethereum network, it can become deflationary through the fee-burning mechanism;
- wide application. Ethereum is used in various segments of the Ethereum ecosystem, including financial applications and smart contracts. Lubin expects that as finance and other industries move to the blockchain, demand for the asset will grow;
- use as collateral. Ethereum can serve as security for financial transactions. Lubin believes that an asset whose value increases over time is a particularly effective collateral;
- role in the stablecoin ecosystem. Ethereum remains one of the main environments for stablecoins, which are used as a means of payment and a unit of account;
- programmability. Smart contracts make it possible to add logic to transactions and create financial instruments and business processes on the blockchain;
- privacy tools. Financial transactions on Ethereum can be public or private, and users can selectively disclose information and verify it using auditing tools. Among the examples, Lyubin named Railgun, stealth addresses, Kohaku, and zero-knowledge proofs;
- resilience to future threats. According to the forecast of an Ethereum co-founder, by the end of 2027 or the first half of 2028, ETH will become protected from quantum threats and artificial intelligence.
ETH as the foundation of the future digital economy
Lubin considers ETH the base monetary asset of the Ethereum ecosystem, which, in his opinion, will grow over the coming decades. He expects that as the blockchain spreads, retail users, companies, and states will have to hold a certain amount of Ethereum.
At the same time, the co-founder of Ethereum acknowledged that part of the asset's current monetary premium is speculative in nature. Despite Ethereum's leadership among smart contract blockchains, the ecosystem has not yet reached the full potential of mass adoption.
Separately, Lubin linked the future of Ethereum to the development of artificial intelligence. In his opinion, machine intelligence will accelerate scientific and technological progress and contribute to the growth of the world economy.
In this model, the Ethereum base layer and its modular L2 networks could become infrastructure for a significant portion of financial operations, payments, and complex business processes in the digital economy, where humans and AI will interact, the statement says.
Recall that earlier, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that ETH should be viewed as a store of value.