Original |Joseph Chalom, CEO of Sharplink
Compiled | Odaily Planet Daily Qin Xiaofeng(@QinXiaofeng 888 )
Editor's Note: This week, former staunch ETH bull and Bankless co-founder David Hoffman published an article explaining why he sold off his ETH, which resonated strongly within the Ethereum community. The article garnered an astonishing 1.8 million reads on the X platform. Amidst the overwhelming public sentiment, Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET), the second-largest listed company with an ETH treasury, couldn't sit idly by. (Odaily Note: Sharplink's treasury holds approximately 868,000 ETH, valued at nearly $1.8 billion, second only to BitMine.)
On May 30th, Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom published an article titled "Ethereum Going Back on Offense" to bolster confidence among ETH holders. He stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is fulfilling its core mission, focusing on the core protocol, security, and decentralization, which is the very foundation of institutional trust. He likened ETH today to Amazon during the internet bubble, undervalued and misunderstood (Odaily Note: Standard Chartered Bank has made a similar analogy, emphasizing the severe disconnect between ETH fundamentals and its price). Joseph Chalom believes the current market fear presents a prime buying opportunity, and that all parties in the ecosystem need to voice their support actively to drive an institutional adoption supercycle.
Below is the full text of Joseph Chalom's article, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy~
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The current controversies surrounding the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the noise driven by ETH price volatility are overshadowing the broader picture. While I understand these discussions, they are not what will determine who leads the financial infrastructure of the next decade.
This is a perspective from a stakeholder. Before leading Sharplink, I spent twenty years as a senior executive at BlackRock, overseeing fintech business and digital asset strategy. That experience gave me a deep understanding of what institutions truly need before deploying capital into new infrastructure.
I want to cut through the noise and offer a different perspective on where Ethereum stands today and where it is headed.
The Ethereum Foundation is Fulfilling its Core Mission
Take a step back. What has been delivered over the past decade? On the attributes most valued for institutional adoption—trust, security, and liquidity—Ethereum is far ahead. It is winning, and by a significant margin.
Look at the data: Ethereum settles the majority of the world's stablecoin value; it hosts far more tokenized real-world asset projects than any other blockchain; it is the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions. In these dimensions, competitors are playing catch-up.
This is no accident. It's the result of years of rigorous protocol development by the Ethereum Foundation (EF). Ethereum is the only blockchain that has successfully launched major upgrades at its base layer for a decade running: The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring a step-change in scaling, while the EF is leading the industry toward the quantum-resistant era. This is the most ambitious technical roadmap in the entire industry.
Decentralization is a Feature, Not a Bug
Some of the fiercest criticism of the EF frames decentralization as a weakness. This viewpoint completely inverts the logic for institutions. The Ethereum ecosystem has the largest developer community of any blockchain—and the vast majority of those developers are not affiliated with the EF.
No foundation should have full control over a blockchain. Institutions are not looking to lock themselves in, only to migrate from one proprietary system to another. They need assurance that the underlying properties they rely on cannot be arbitrarily changed by a centralized owner. In fact, no blockchain should be dependent on a single entity.
Ethereum's credible neutrality and decentralization are precisely why it is becoming the future settlement layer for finance. These are not flaws.
Between a foundation focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and the core protocol, versus one optimized for short-term marketing, I choose the former every time.
ETH's Value Parallels Amazon
History is filled with examples where foundational innovation was overlooked by critics enamored with newer, trendier upstarts—only for the pessimists to be proven wrong. Amazon is the archetypal case.
Early on, the consensus on Amazon was that it was just an online bookseller propped up by the internet bubble and consistently losing money. Shorts focused solely on its profit & loss statement, missing Jeff Bezos's long-term vision—he was building an entirely new structure for e-commerce. Its total addressable market (TAM) was never just book sales, but the entire retail economy, later expanding into cloud computing and media. Analysts fixated on Amazon's short-term stock price missed the bigger opportunity.
Today, Ethereum and ETH are in the same position. Their TAM is not cryptocurrency trading; it is the entire global financial system. ETH's intrinsic value is tied to the network's expansion. And the Ethereum network is at an inflection point for step-change growth in transaction volume—encompassing stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, DeFi, and the emerging wave of agentic finance. To secure such enormous transaction volume, Ethereum will be the in-demand incentive layer and ultimate trust infrastructure, with a corresponding monetary premium.
No ETH, no Ethereum. The asset and the network are inseparable.
It's Time to Make Money When Others Capitulate
In nearly every market cycle, the moment of maximum retail capitulation and lowest sentiment is precisely when disciplined capital moves in to build positions. Warren Buffett built Berkshire by buying quality assets at the point of maximum pessimism—from GEICO in the 1970s to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis.
For much of the past year, the Fear & Greed Index has reflected extreme fear. The smartest investors buy quality assets when the market is most fearful. They invest counter-cyclically, not pro-cyclically.
In the crypto winter following FTX's collapse, most institutions ran from Bitcoin and ETH exposure or shelved product launches. When I was at BlackRock, we did the opposite. We doubled down, invested in infrastructure, built ecosystem partnerships, and launched products bridging TradFi with crypto.
We can all learn a lot from Buffett and BlackRock.
Ethereum Needs New Voices
The EF is fulfilling its core mission. Going forward, it will focus even more on CROPS. (Odaily Note: CROPS is an internal framework prioritizing censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security. This shift means the Ethereum Foundation will focus on making Ethereum a "haven technology," prioritizing fundamental, long-term protocol security, user privacy, and resistance to censorship/control, rather than pursuing aggressive scaling and raw speed).
For most, it's clear the current gap is in go-to-market leadership; meanwhile, institutions are broadly eager to embrace Ethereum. I firmly believe stakeholders and participants in the ecosystem need to play a larger role in Ethereum's narrative and institutional adoption.
Since last summer, digital asset treasury companies and Ethereum's core stewards have played a crucial part in this. This includes Sharplink, Tom Lee of BitMine, Joe Lubin of Consensys, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, the EEA, and other ecosystem stakeholders. We also work closely with the small team within the EF focused on institutional education and adoption.
Sharplink is actively investing in this ecosystem. We were the first company to stake billions in ETH capital and have deployed hundreds of millions into high-quality DeFi protocols. We recently announced a $125 million DeFi yield fund with Galaxy Digital to provide capital to existing and emerging protocols.
That said, we can and will do more—actively advocating for Ethereum and proactively supporting the coming institutional adoption supercycle.
The future of Ethereum is happening now.
Recommended Reading:
"Bankless Co-founder's Confession on Selling ETH: Ethereum Did the Rightest Thing, But 'ETH as Money' Has No Future"
"Bankless Founder Sells Off ETH, Ethereum Faith Collective Shattered"
