Are Ethereum and the NFT Ecosystem a Hypercapitalist Ecological Disaster?

Note: The author of the original text is William M. Peaster, and the following is the compilation of the full text.

Note: The author of the original text is William M. Peaster, and the following is the compilation of the full text.

Some people in mainstream society talk about Ethereum and NFTs as monsters breaking out of their cages.

But for those of us in the know, we will not swallow our breath.

In today's article, I offer some rebuttals and critiques of these critics. I don't have all the answers, and I don't have all the insights, but ultimately I hope to further the discussion about how and why much of what we do in the cryptoeconomy is important, and should be defended.

So, the following:

Let's get straight to the point. Some mainstream critics believe that the Ethereum and NFT ecosystem is a giant hypercapitalist bubble that is destroying the environment. For these slanders, we can resist in various ways.

First, an international user community is collectively building Ethereum as a credibly neutral "civilized trust layer," or a "global utility and settlement layer." Due to this structured nature and the arbitrary programmability of smart contracts, the economic and political possibilities here are limited only by our imagination.

For example, I estimate that in 100 years every union will be a DAO. Or consider that, even now, you could undoubtedly program a DAO based on the People's Bank, an anarchist credit union designed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the "Father of Anarchism". Therefore, seeing Ethereum and NFTs as inherently, thoroughly hyper-capitalist is tantamount to seeing the forest for the trees. They're DIY public goods that mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people over time. Believe it.

As for the ecological catastrophe claim, it is rhetorically overblown. Currently, Ethereum appears to consume less energy per year than the US video game industry; also, it is estimated that soon at a base layer, "Ethereum will only use the [annual energy] equivalent of 710 to 1650 average Australians" . Not bad for a 21st century public culture and financial settlement layer, right? What would the energy figures consumed by Visa and Mastercard look like in comparison?

Did you know that "gm" means g'day mate (a common Australian term for "hello, friend")? 😄

Also, note that the great "modular" layer 2 migration is also just beginning, and going forward, the proliferation of these layer 2 scaling solutions will support millions if not billions of users in a green way. That's the way, and it's already happening.

Well, from a utilitarian standpoint, given how many and what types of people Ethereum and NFTs have empowered (kind, proactive, and smart by and large), I think their energy use so far is pretty reasonable of. Considering 1) how much activity Ethereum + L2 will dephysicalize or green over time, and 2) Ethereum and NFTs will increasingly facilitate the type of eco-friendly activity in terms of coordination, such as green DAOs And other ways, it's quite reasonable.

So we can easily question and defend the "hypercapitalist ecological disaster" critique, right. I wouldn't even bother with the statement "all NFTs are scams" because it's completely fictional. So what should we do? Why do people say these things?

“So, it turns out that the hater mob of NFTs won’t stop at all times when the environment is friendly — it’s just their first line of attack, and they’ll find new ones soon [… ] It was never really an environmental issue." - Jackson Dame

Alas, I get the feeling that most of these Ethereum/NFT naysayers are uninformed proxies of the mainstream status quo that just doesn't work. They resist what might disrupt the status quo for reasons of comfort or discomfort, and they defend the status quo and amplify it.

It all reminded me of John Carpenter's 1988 movie "The Live" with Roddy Piper as "Nada" and Keith David as "Frank".

As this IMDb summary written by Melissa Portell states:

"Nada, a hapless construction worker, found a special pair of sunglasses. Putting them on, he was able to see the world as it really was: people being bombarded with messages from the media and government like 'Keep Chaos', 'Lose Imagination' , 'obedience to authority.' Even more frightening, he was able to see that some of the normally normal-looking people were actually ugly aliens responsible for a massive campaign to bring humanity to its knees."

To know what I mean here, you can swap out "media and government" and "alien" for the general "mainstream status quo" I mentioned earlier.

From there, there's this great scene in the movie where Nada tries to get Frank to put on his glasses and see what's really going on, and they have an argument over it. At first Frank couldn't accept that Nada might be right until eventually he saw it (fight scene, violence/verbal warning).

I think those of us around Ethereum and NFTs are a bit like Nada, and many others are like Frank right now. We are the old savages who stand at the gate, have seen and lived beyond the walls of the world. While they still live inside the city, they fear but actually need the open land outside the city. Will they wear glasses too? Will they also become nomads against the state apparatus?

"These new ways are wrong and should be avoided," opponents currently say, "you should do things the way they are."

In other words, you shouldn’t be wearing those weird glasses; you should be shipping physical prints instead of selling NFTs; you shouldn’t be starting a DeFi app when you can legally start a bank; Let's stay inside the walls together!

"In an era where old things are dying and new things are not being born, there may be what appears to be a monster."

This article comes from Tao of Yuan Universe, reproduced with authorization.