Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not an expert. And you should do your own research.

Lots of countries got rich with their natural oil reserves. But this all happened within the last century or so.

Oil isn’t inherently valuable. It existed there for a long time. It only made you rich when you could use it.

In this case, cars and machinery needed oil.

Oil’s value comes from its practical use. I can stuff my family in a car. Drive them across the country. And visit an overpriced theme park. All thanks to oil.

Oil is an enabler.

And Ethereum will be the most valuable asset of the 21st-century for much the same reason.

Ethereum is an Enabler

Most people think of Ethereum as a cryptocurrency. It’s not. It’s a computer in the cloud. And the Ethereum in your wallet is the ability to use it. Ethereum‘s real power comes from the network built on top of it.

You can create decentralized applications, mint NFTs, launch your own tokens, and so much more.

And the best part?

All of it works together. You can easily build your own projects on top of other projects.

This is known as composability. Basically, everything is a Lego block. It natively works together. And all you have to do is make the pieces fit in an interesting way.

This is going to have powerful consequences.

As Chris Dixon put it in a recent podcast episode, “Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance.”

It’s the secret ingredient to create value like never before.

Positive Sum Game

Building projects in Web3 enables others. When you launch your project, anyone can use it and build on top of it.

And as more things get built, the more opportunity there is to build.

This is a stark contrast to Web2 where there’s a single winner in a category. And once they’ve cornered the market, competition is impossible.

Think Google. You can’t build features on top of Google unless you work there.

Google is a closed ecosystem. And Ethereum is an open one. That’s why Ethereum will win.

And this brings us to another important point.

Anyone Can Do It

The best part about Ethereum is that it’s permissionless and there’s no barrier to entry.

You don’t need to ask anyone for permission to build something. Do you have a great idea for a project? Great. Go figure out how to build it.

The only limit is your technical understanding.

Some of the most popular dapps were built by ambitious people with nothing but an idea. And with a few months of hard work, they brought it to life.

Ultimate Enabler

In earlier points of history, individuals were not all that powerful. But as technology advanced, things changed.

The printing press allowed one thinker to broadcast ideas to thousands of people.

The Internet allowed anyone to build massive organizations that create billions of dollars of value.

And Ethereum will enable you to do all that and more.

One person can create NFTs, communities, DAOs, systems, dapps, banks, new ways to govern, and so much more.

The opportunities are endless.

Competitors Can’t Keep Up

Ethereum stands to be the most valuable asset of the 21st-century. The more this network grows, the more valuable things are going to be.

It’s a very strong flywheel.

Ethereum understandably has lots of competitors. Other projects that want to capture all that value. Here’s why they were going to lose.

1st Mover’s Advantage + Network Effects

Ethereum has a lot of powerful benefits. The big one being the first movers advantage.

Let’s acknowledge that it doesn’t always secure dominance.

Myspace had the first mover advantage but lost in the end.

Why is that?

The problem was the people running the company. They got greedy and lazy. They stopped innovating. And continued to extract as much value from their product as possible.

This made their product suck. It was polluted with ads. And it made the user experience miserable.

This created an opportunity for a competitor. All they had to do was create a similar product and stop ad spamming.

Facebook came along and did just that. They didn’t even have to innovate that much.

First movers advantage gives you a lot of power. And it’s really easy to get drunk on it. But the Ethereum ecosystem is fully decentralized.

There is no board of directors trying to squeeze out every penny. The ecosystem continues to innovate. And builders see that. And that’s why they come here.

Network Effects

Ethereum also has a powerful network effect. There are more developers building on Ethereum than anything else.

And here’s the thing. Building is hard. It takes a lot of time to learn how an ecosystem works. And as more people build on Ethereum, the more documentation, tutorials, and projects you can draw from.

You don’t need to build a domain service from scratch. We already have ENS. You don’t need to build a DEX all by yourself. We’ve already got Uniswap.

The more people that build here, the more people will build here. That’s how composability works. And it’s going to keep Ethereum at the top.

Only Valid Criticism

There is one criticism of Ethereum that holds weight. The fees are too high.

As a believer in the ecosystem, I can confirm it. There are days when it costs $250 in fees just to buy an NFT.

Unless you’re crypto-rich, this is going to be a real pain point.

And this boils down to an age-old problem in crypto.

Can it scale?

Ethereum critics say that it can’t. And pump their own project as a viable alternative. They claim to have better tech. More research. Scalable solutions to the problems of the day.

But they are wrong.

It’s really easy to have an Ethereum competitor with lower fees because people don’t use these projects.

How many people are actually using Solana right now? Not that many.

As bad as the Ethereum fees are, people still use it. They’re using it right now. Millions of people as you read this article.

If these Ethereum killers had the same amount of volume, they would see similar problems. They can claim to be more scalable and secure all day long.

But until they prove that they are, you shouldn’t believe them.

Centralization

Let’s also acknowledge there are competitors that have a lot of volume. The best example being Binance Smart Chain.

But the only reason they can boast low fees and high volume is because the network is centralized.

They have larger requirements to run a node. In practice, this means only a small number of people can actually run a node. And here’s the thing.

That fundamentally undermines the philosophy of the industry.

You want a centralized service? Go back to PayPal. There are plenty of centralized networks out there. And they have a much better user experience.

10x Better

The only way to replace the market leader is by being 10x better. There’s no way around it.

And there’s simply no project that’s 10x better than Ethereum. In fact, they’re not even better.