51 Insights – What Matters in Digital Assets Ethereum's Endgame: Why Credible Neutrality Beats Speed, with William Mougayar
Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️
“You cannot build a reputation based on what you are going to do. Trust must be earned over time. The track record matters.”
William Mougayar on why Ethereum’s 10-year record matters more than competitor speed claims.
William Mougayar, an early internet pioneer and one of the first to recognise the potential of Ethereum, has been in the technology business for nearly four decades. He met Vitalik Buterin in late 2013 and has had a front-row seat to the evolution of the blockchain industry ever since. He advised the Ethereum Foundation through its early growing pains, served as chairman of the Kin Foundation during Solana’s 35-cent days, and has spent four decades watching technology waves from Hewlett-Packard to peer-to-peer protocols.
His thesis: The general-purpose L1 wars are over. Ethereum won. What remains is specialization, consolidation, and the infrastructure layer maturing into a $700B capital base.
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🎧 Jump to the best parts
* (07:03) → The double-spend solution and programmable money: William traces blockchain’s lineage from 1990s Cybercash to Napster’s peer-to-peer revolution to Satoshi’s breakthrough, explaining why “if this, then that” logic with money attached changed everything.
* (17:05) → The first principles of blockchain: William argues that trust, decentralisation, and credible neutrality are far more critical than speed, explaining why institutions prioritise consistency and fairness over flashy performance metrics.
* (28:48) → Why Ethereum sacrificed L1 activity by design: The intentional shift to L2s wasn’t weakness—it was strategic expansion. “Ethereum is no longer just the L1. Ethereum is an ecosystem.” Why comparing Solana’s base layer to Ethereum’s base layer is intellectually dishonest.
* (34:40) → Debunking Solana’s narrative: DEX volumes, app revenue, L2 value extraction, capital turnover, and speed. William systematically dismantles each with data: Ethereum does 8.4B in DEX volume vs Solana’s 5B when L2s are included. Top 10 Ethereum apps revenue: $4B; Solana: $2B.
* (40:03) → A new valuation for blockchains: Why traditional metrics like P/E ratios and discounted cash flows fail to capture the value of public blockchain infrastructure, and why network effects and the flow of money are better indicators.
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We sat down with William Mougayar, author of The Business Blockchain and founder of the Ethereum Market Research Center, to cut through the noise and return to the first principles of what makes a blockchain valuable and enduring.
Why it’s important: As the Layer 1 landscape becomes increasingly competitive, narratives often diverge from fundamentals. With billions of dollars at stake, understanding the core tenets of decentralization, trust, and credible neutrality is crucial for investors, builders, instituions and enterprises. William provides a masterclass in separating hype from reality, drawing on his decades of experience in technology cycles.
Where to find
* X: @wmougayar
* Blog: https://wamougayar.xyz
* Research: https://ethmrc.com
🎙️ In our conversation, we discussed:
* Pre-Bitcoin digital cash and peer-to-peer technologies
* What made Ethereum’s smart contracts a revolutionary leap forward
* Why the “Layer 1” label is a misleading oversimplification for Ethereum
* The critical importance of credible neutrality and censorship resistance
* A detailed rebuttal of common anti-Ethereum arguments, particularly regarding Solana
* The flaws in using “revenue” as the primary metric for valuing a blockchain
* How value accrues to ETH through its role as a productive, foundational asset
* The evolution of valuation models from the early internet to today’s blockchain ecosystems
* What’s next for blockchain adoption, from institutional finance to consumer apps
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My biggest takeaways from this conversation:
1. The “general-purpose blockchain” game is over