Lane Rettig, an Ethereum (ETH) core developer, has said that cryptocurrency “prices and usage were completely decoupled in 2017 and into last year.” He also argued that this “may still largely be the case today.”

Rettig, who’s is currently a part of the Ewasm (Ethereum Web Assembly) team at the Ethereum Foundation, told CryptoGlobe that there are currently several blockchain projects and networks with “zero usage, zero dApps, [and] some that still haven’t even launched that have sky high valuations.”

Crypto Project Valuations Are “Totally Nonsensical” And “Decoupled From Reality”

Commenting further on cryptocurrency platform valuations and actual usage, Rettig remarked: “So I tend to think that the market has been, still is, and for some time probably still will be totally nonsensical and decoupled from reality. That’s a roundabout way of saying that I don’t think valuation and usage really have anything to do with each other right now, which is why I tend to ignore valuation and focus on the fundamentals.”

He added:

I think we are doing the right things and we need to continue doing what we are doing: 1. Keep building out the infrastructure, scaling the base layer, etc. 2. Focus on UX (user experience), usability, and onboarding. In Ethereum, I think recent UX trends such as gasless meta transactions and universal login, and projects like Austin Griffith's Burner Wallet (https://xdai.io) will massively improve the UX of Ethereum dApps and lead to greater adoption. 3. Keep focusing on things like community and developer tools, which are awesome and improving rapidly in Ethereum.

Responding to a question about whether decentralized solutions are necessary when existing centralized solutions (for the same problem) already work just fine, Rettig said:

The vast majority of all applications are better served by centralized solutions. There is a very narrow set of applications that benefit from decentralization, and it tends to be applications that require things like censorship resistance, trust minimization, or in some cases strong privacy. But in these cases decentralization makes a massive difference–and in many cases it makes things possible that simply were not possible before.

“Ethereum Is Useful,” Even In Its “Present Form”

He continued: “I personally find Ethereum very useful in its present form. I use it every day to do things that weren’t possible before and that would not be possible without Ethereum. Ethereum has already found at least two killer apps: self-sovereign money (tokens) and self-sovereign organizations (DAOs).”

Top Five Blockchain Use Cases

When asked about what he thinks of the Ethereum Classic (ETC) project, Rettig noted: 

I'm happy that it exists. Ethereum is still an experiment, blockchain itself is still an experiment, and I think ETC represents another take on Ethereum, with a different set of values and a different path for the community and the technology. There is a lot that the two projects stand to gain from closer collaboration (which fortunately we've seen more of recently) and to learn from each other. In general, I support more experimentation.

According to Rettig, the top five use cases for blockchain technology are as follows:

  • “Self-sovereign money, tokens, value,”
  • “Self-sovereign ‘unstoppable’ organizations, DAOs, like the [Ethereum] Cat Herders,”
  • “Disintermediation, e.g., building ride-sharing without Uber, resulting in greater value capture by both sides of the market and less rent-seeking,”
  • “Self-sovereignty over data, and”
  • “Building better human institutions.”