Joseph Lubin, the co-founder of Ethereum and ConsenSys, a New York-based software technology firm dedicated to improving the Ethereum (ETH) platform, the world’s first blockchain-based network for developing decentralized applications (dApps), has said that “you get trust from decentralization, you get greater trust from greater decentralization.”
In a short explainer video posted to ConsenSysMedia’s official YouTube channel, Lubin mentioned that:
Ethereum is different from Bitcoin in that it was realized as a platform for decentralized applications (dApps), whereas Bitcoin was proposed as a sort of an experiment in monetary theory.
Web 3.0 Technology
Notably, Lubin acknowledged that Bitcoin, which he considers an “experiment in monetary theory”, has “caught on” and has grown to be “quite successful.” While comparing the world’s most dominant cryptocurrency to Ethereum, Lubin remarked:
[The] Bitcoin network exists in support of the bitcoin token whereas the Ethereum token (ether) exists in support of the Ethereum platform.
The former Goldman Sachs executive further noted that Ethereum “already interoperates with other decentralized protocols” such those that have been developed for “storage, bandwidth, … [and] heavy compute.” He added:
Ethereum’s really all about developers building applications on a new kind of platform… [and] on a new kind of world wide web.
Although there’s currently no widespread agreement on which particular set of protocols or core technologies will be considered part of “Web 3.0”, Lubin referred to Web 3.0 as the “decentralized world wide web.” According to the computer science and electronic engineering graduate from Princeton University, “Ethereum is one of the foundational protocols that will be part of” Web 3.0.
“Decentralized Identity” And “Proof of Location”
He explained that the smart contract-enabled cryptocurrency platform “brings trusted transactions, automated agreements, [and] smart software objects.” Moreover, “decentralized identity” and “decentralized proof of location software” have already been developed by using the Ethereum protocol, Lubin revealed.
He continued:
We can envision Ethereum as essentially the base layer, [or] the layer one trust infrastructure and upon that we’re already seeing many layer two technologies, state channels, different kinds of sidechains, plasma mechanisms … those are all being built and sort of anchored into Ethereum to garner that trust property from the base layer of Ethereum.
Interestingly, Lubin believes that Ethereum will become “more decentralized” as it transitions from a proof-of-work (PoW)-based consensus algorithm to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. He noted that “the barrier to entry to participating, to validating transactions on the system, and securing the network … [will] drop quite dramatically” when Ethereum begins to use PoS as its consensus mechanism.
