Alon Muroch is the founder of the SSV Lab, which has contributed to the SSV Network, the second-largest staking infrastructure provider for Ethereum. For a long time, Muroch has been passionate about supporting Ethereum, the second-ranked digital currency in the crypto industry. Long before Ethereum shifted to the proof-of-stake mechanism, he had already contributed to the initial clients of Ethereum. However, the lackluster performance and relatively low price of Taifang have greatly troubled him.
Muroch explained: “Most of the negative feedback Ethereum has received so far is about its token, not necessarily the technical aspect.” The Ethereum community needs to recognize this and prioritize it, as such a divergence will become extremely dangerous. The SSV network has 100,000 Ethereum validators, protecting approximately 10% of the staked Ether. Therefore, Muroch is very eager to see the price of Ethereum tokens rise, and his sense of urgency is obvious.
He believes: “We haven’t paid enough attention to the narrative and reasons for holding Ether, and that’s the reason for the current situation of Ether.” The current price of Ethereum hovers below $1,800. There are differences in the community regarding its development direction. Meanwhile, there are many alternative smart contract platforms offering better, faster and cheaper services. When asked if Ethereum still holds a core position today, Muroch said, “To some extent, not to some extent.” The Ethereum blockchain itself is innovative. The Rolling-up-centered roadmap has proven itself and continues to do so. In terms of the scale of Ethereum, its technology is very innovative. They know how to take risks. Obviously, some blockchain technologies are more risky or more cutting-edge, but they are much smaller in scale and therefore easier to achieve. The usage of Ethereum is at an all-time high, which is a positive aspect.
Muroch has repeatedly mentioned the widening gap between the Ethereum blockchain and its native token. He pointed out that in terms of tokens, it is clearly lagging behind, and this divergence is quite dangerous for Ethereum. He also said that the current challenges faced by Ethereum are not technical but mainly narrative issues. Traditionally, Ethereum has not paid much attention to narrative, marketing and public relations, but times have changed and these aspects can no longer be ignored.
Nowadays, institutional investors’ attitudes towards cryptocurrencies have changed. In the past, institutions would come to the crypto field to learn and then directly choose Ethereum because it was the only option at that time. But now, Wall Street may understand the concepts of decentralization and self-sovereignty, but it doesn’t care about them. Muroch emphasized that Ethereum needs to find a convincing narrative to make ordinary investors understand why they should hold Ether. For instance, Bitcoin has a narrative of “a total of 21 million coins”, Solana has a narrative of “being able to defeat Ethereum”, and as the largest smart contract platform, Ethereum needs to find new reasons for its existence, especially in an industry where not everyone “participates for the sake of technology”. When Ethereum fails to generate the expected returns and its price keeps falling, Muroch is faced with a tough task.
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