Original Author | Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom
Compiled | Odaily Planet Daily Qin Xiaofeng(@QinXiaofeng 888 )
Editor's Note: On June 15, ETH staged a strong rebound, skyrocketing over 10% in a single day, sweeping away its previous weakness. Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink, published a lengthy post on X titled "Milestone: Ethereum Developers Surpass One Million."
He stated that Ethereum's core advantage is not speed, but its aggregation of the largest and deepest talent pool; its true moat lies in the long-term ecosystem built through composability, standard-setting, and credible neutrality. These builders are focused on cutting-edge issues like scalability and quantum resistance, continuously solidifying Ethereum's position as the default operating system for the financial internet. (Recommended reading: "Sharplink CEO: Selling ETH Now is Like Selling Amazon During the Internet Bubble")
Below is an appreciation of Joseph Chalom's original text, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy~
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I just returned from Asia, where I engaged with Ethereum developers and ecosystem leaders. I'd especially like to mention Seoul's Nonce Classic, Four Pillars, and DSRV, as well as our friends at SNZ, and the recently launched Ethereum Community Hub in Hong Kong—Asia's first permanent physical Ethereum community space, supported by the Ethereum Foundation.
What struck me most was not only the passion but also the rigorousness and ambition of the local builders. The quality of projects, the spirit of experimentation, and the long-term thinking emerging within the global Ethereum ecosystem deeply impressed and inspired me.
And these vibrant individuals give a true face to a number: According to Electric Capital's data, Ethereum's lifetime developer count has surpassed one million—specifically, 1,012,824 unique contributors. No other ecosystem in crypto can rival this.
A Milestone Worth Pausing For
One million is a round number, often abstract. But this time, it's different. It represents the largest pool of technical talent ever assembled around an open, permissionless blockchain network—and, more importantly, a talent pool that is continuously deepening and expanding.
Among this one million, approximately 232,000 developers have remained active over the past twelve months.
Why Ethereum: The Truly Critical Question
For years, crypto discussions have revolved around speed, fees, and throughput. Every new chain claims to be "faster than Ethereum." But the most important question in crypto has never been "which chain is the fastest?", but another:
"Where will the best builders choose to build for the long term?"
On this front, Ethereum remains unparalleled. Its advantage lies not only at the technical layer but is institutional, cultural, economic, and composable—a cumulative sedimentation of a decade of developers, infrastructure, standards, tools, liquidity, research, applications, and social coordination that no other ecosystem can replicate.
Ethereum has become the default operating system for programmable finance and internet-native capital formation.
What Are These One Million People Building, and How Does It Deepen the Moat?
The critical importance of one million developers lies in what they are doing right now. The current focus is on the most difficult, highest-stake issues in the industry: core protocol scalability, privacy, quantum resistance, and the agentic systems that will run on it.
Glamsterdam — Preserving core values while innovating. The Glamsterdam upgrade, planned for 2026, demonstrates how Ethereum advances while guarding its core values. Key changes include: built-in Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), Block Access Lists (BALs) enabling parallel execution and higher throughput, and a potential increase in the Gas limit—significantly enhancing Layer 1 capacity. Scaling for future demand while ensuring credible neutrality, security, and MEV fairness—this is the dynamic nature of the moat.
Synchronous Composability — Making numerous Rollups feel like one chain. Composability has always been Ethereum's superpower; the next leap is extending it across Layer 2. Native Rollups and "Based Rollups," paired with synchronous composability, are the solution. A contract on one Rollup can directly call a contract on the mainnet or another Rollup within the same atomic transaction—no bridges, no waiting. Teams from Linea, the Ethereum Economic Zone, Gnosis, Zisk, and the Ethereum Foundation are implementing this design coupled with real-time proofs. The result: dozens of Rollups no longer feel like isolated networks but begin to work together like one chain. This is a direct response to the 'fragmentation' critics point out.
Quantum Resistance — Ethereum's most significant lead. No other major ecosystem is preparing for the post-quantum era as thoroughly as Ethereum. The "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, the Ethereum Foundation's dedicated post-quantum security team established in early 2026, the pq.ethereum.org information hub, and over ten client teams running weekly post-quantum interoperability devnets—all constitute a coordinated open-source migration plan, targeting around 2029. When quantum risk materializes, the single greatest concern for institutions hosting trillions in assets will be: which chain prepared earliest and most thoroughly?
The Moat Beyond Developers: Composability, Standards, and Trust
This developer advantage self-reinforces, stemming from how Ethereum is built. Its deepest network effect is not liquidity but the depth of composability: various applications—lending, stablecoins, exchanges, wallets, tokenized assets, oracles, Layer 2 Rollups—interact like interoperable financial Lego bricks, all through shared standards, so developers never have to start from scratch. The EVM is crypto's application layer; Solidity skills work on Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, zkSync, Scroll, Linea, and hundreds of other networks.
Learning the Ethereum stack maximizes optionality, which drives a flywheel—more developers, more tools, more liquidity, more institutions, attracting even more developers to build composable protocols and assets. Liquidity begets liquidity, composability begets composability.
Moreover, Ethereum dominates where true value aggregates, not just where the noise is loudest:
Three forces further deepen this lead:
- Credible Neutrality — Ethereum is secured by over 900,000 validators (Solana has about 800). This decentralization and platform neutrality is highly valued by large institutions.
- Modularity — Rollups like Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism aren't fragmenting Ethereum; they are expanding it into an increasingly interconnected modular internet economy, inheriting the mainnet's security.
- Culture — Ethereum disproportionately attracts the top researchers, cryptographers, and EIP standards authors who set the direction for the entire industry. This final advantage is the hardest to fork.
There Is Only One Ethereum
Generating on-chain activity is one thing; becoming the long-term coordination layer for internet-native finance—the layer trusted by the world's largest financial institutions—is another. Ethereum holds a dominant place in the minds of large asset owners, and these institutions prioritize trust, security, and liquidity. I saw this firsthand during my time at BlackRock.
In technology markets, ecosystems consolidate over time around standards, liquidity, and developer mindshare. This is Ethereum's moat.
After speaking with these developers, builders, and ecosystem leaders in Seoul and Hong Kong, I am more convinced than ever of Ethereum's competitive advantage. I met the talent building the next generation of financial infrastructure—the future founders and architects of agentic finance in our industry. It is these individuals and teams who will change the world.
The future of Ethereum is happening right now.
