Why ETH should never be a legal tender: The metaverse theory

• ETH the asset and Ethereum the blockchain are two completely distinct entities. Ethereum's end game is to host every possible traditional mortar and bricks institutions, including but not limited to banks. In this paradigm, ETH secures the Ethereum blockchain in the form of staking issuance and gas fee. It is not designed to be a BTC-style regular currency. The logic is simple: why on earth people will use something that appreciates exponentially in value to buy groceries? Hmm, stablecoins on Ethereum are there for a reason, right? Too bad Bitcoin doesn't have the ability to host stable tokens and trust me, El Salvador will find the drawbacks the hard way

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• Coming back to the metaverse theory, one can think of Ethereum as the state and at the same time the monetary engine of the metaverse. It hosts and powers all sorts of financial institutions built on top of it. Imagine the AAVEs and the Uniswaps as the virtual institutions running autonomously by paying Ethereum the blockchain Tax in ETH (gas fee). Such Dapps will eventually end up in Optimism and Arbitrum style cities (L2 platforms) bridged by hopping protocols just like new york and new jersey are separate yet connected cities hosted on a sovereign nation. Once you enter the metaverse cities (Ethereum L2), you can live there, enjoy all sorts of dapps, hop between them, and never need to move mack to L1 again, smooth huh!

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• In the future, Txs will occur mostly on Layer 2 thus easing the gas fee burden on Layer 1. In fact, by the time sharding rolls out, L2s should already take over and sharding might not seem as dearly anticipated as it is right now (source vitalik dot ca).

The bottom line: utility as a legal tender is not where Ethereum's promise lies, Ethereum is the metaverse and ETH ensures the metaverse is a safe home to its inhabitants.