A standalone operating system is insufficient to achieve a significantly larger market capitalization. If Ethereum aims to attain greater success, its core development team may need to take a more hands-on approach in building applications natively on Ethereum.
Since its inception, Ethereum has undergone two major explosive growth cyclesโfirst with ICOs, followed by DeFi. If Ethereum experiences a third major wave of expansion, it will likely be driven by
#Ethscriptions, which can be viewed as an evolution of NFTs.
Leveraging Ethscriptions could be a strategic breakthrough for Ethereum applications. While smart contract-based apps are well-suited for third-party development, Ethscriptions engage more deeply with Ethereum's core infrastructure. This area remains largely untapped, offering significant room for innovation and growth.
Should the Ethereum team actively develop on-chain applications, it could achieve monumental success akin to giants like Google or OpenAI.
Consider the analogy with Cisco, a foundational internet infrastructure provider. Ciscoโs peak market cap of around $500 billion occurred during the dot-com bubble of 2000โa valuation it has never surpassed since.
#Ethereum is remarkable, but its price may struggle to exceed previous all-time highs, mirroring Ciscoโs trajectory. Infrastructure providers, while essential, often fail to outperform applications in market valuation.
Apple broke this mold largely because it offers integrated products like the iPhone and Macโnot just the iOS operating system. An operating system alone cannot command such massive valuation. Similarly, Googleโs Android contributes very little to its overall market cap. What truly drives Googleโs valuation is its vast base of end-user products and services.
A company focused solely on an operating system is unlikely to achieve a higher market cap than one that builds applications or devices on top of it. This is precisely why
#LLM companies must launch their own
#LLMApps or future hardware products to capture greater value.