Original Text｜Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom
Translation｜Odaily Planet Daily Qin Xiaofeng（@QinXiaofeng888）
Editor's Note: This week, former ETH bull and Bankless co-founder David Hoffman published an article explaining why he sold all his ETH, resonating strongly with the Ethereum community, with the article receiving an astonishing 1.8 million reads on the X platform. Amidst the public sentiment, the second-largest listed ETH treasury company Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET) could not sit still (Odaily Note: Sharplink's treasury size is approximately 868,000 ETH, worth nearly $1.8 billion, second only to BitMine).
On May 30th, Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom published an article “Ethereum Going Back on Offense” to try to boost the confidence of ETH holders. He stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is fulfilling its core responsibilities, focusing on core protocols, security, and decentralization, which is the basis of institutional trust; today's ETH is akin to Amazon during the internet bust, and its value is underestimated (Odaily Note: Standard Chartered has also made a similar analogy, emphasizing the serious divergence between ETH's fundamentals and its price). Joseph Chalom believes that the current market fear presents a great opportunity; all parties in the ecosystem need to speak out actively to promote institutional adoption in a super cycle.
Below is the full text of Joseph Chalom's article, translated by Odaily Planet Daily, Enjoy～
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The various controversies surrounding the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the uproar caused by ETH price fluctuations have overshadowed the larger macro picture. While I understand these discussions, they do not determine who will lead the financial infrastructure over the next decade.
This is the perspective of a stakeholder. Before leading Sharplink, I spent twenty years at BlackRock, serving as an executive responsible for fintech business and digital asset strategy. These experiences have given me a deep understanding of what institutions need before deploying funds into new infrastructure.
I want to set aside the noise and provide a different perspective on Ethereum's current situation and future direction.
The Ethereum Foundation is fulfilling its core responsibilities
Stepping back, what have been the results delivered over the past decade? On the attributes that institutions value most: trust, security, and liquidity, Ethereum is far ahead. It is winning, and the advantages are clear.
Looking at the data: Ethereum processes the value settlement for a large portion of stablecoins globally; it has far more tokenized real-world asset projects than any other blockchain; it is the default venue for high-value DeFi transactions. On these dimensions, other competitors can only look on in envy.
This is not by accident; it is the result of the Ethereum Foundation's rigorous protocol development over the years. Ethereum is the only blockchain that has successfully launched significant upgrades continuously for a decade at the foundational layer: The Merge, EIP-1559, Dencun, Pectra, Fusaka. The upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will bring a leap in scaling, and EF is leading the industry into the quantum-resistant era. This is the most ambitious technology roadmap in the industry.
Decentralization is a feature, not a flaw
Some of the fiercest criticisms of EF view decentralization as a weakness. This perspective completely reverses institutional logic. The Ethereum ecosystem has the most developers of any blockchain—and the vast majority of these developers are not affiliated with EF.
No foundation should have complete control over a blockchain. Institutions will not lock themselves in just to migrate from one proprietary system to another. They need to be assured that the underlying attributes they depend upon will not be arbitrarily changed by centralized owners. In fact, no blockchain should rely on a single entity.
The trusted neutrality and decentralization of Ethereum is precisely why it is becoming the future layer for financial settlement. These are not flaws.
Between a foundation focused on security, privacy, quantum resistance, and core protocols, and a foundation optimized for short-term marketing, I always choose the former.
ETH's value benchmarks Amazon
History is filled with examples of foundational innovations being overlooked by critics who then flock to trendier newcomers, only to prove the pessimists wrong. Amazon is the most typical example.
In its early days, the market consensus about Amazon was that it was just an online bookseller sustained by the internet bubble, continually making losses. Short sellers focused only on its profit and loss statement while neglecting Bezos's long-term vision—he was building an entirely new market structure for e-commerce. Its target market (TAM) was never just book sales but the entire retail economy, later expanded to cloud computing and media. Those analysts who only focused on Amazon's short-term stock price missed the larger opportunity.
Today, Ethereum and ETH find themselves in the same position. Its TAM is not merely cryptocurrency trading but the entire global financial system. The intrinsic value of ETH is closely tied to the network's expansion. And the Ethereum network is at a critical point of achieving exponential growth in transaction volumes, covering stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, DeFi, and emerging agentic finance waves. To support such a vast transaction volume, Ethereum will become a highly demanded incentive layer and the ultimate trust infrastructure, with its monetary premium rising accordingly.
No ETH means no Ethereum. The asset is inseparable from the network.
When others surrender, it's time to make money
In almost every market cycle, the moments when retail investors surrender and sentiment is at its lowest are indeed the best opportunities for disciplined capital to enter the market. Buffett famously built Berkshire by purchasing quality assets when sentiment was most pessimistic—from GEICO in the 1970s to Bank of America and Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis.
For most of the past year, the fear and greed index has reflected extreme fear in the market. The smartest investors buy quality assets when the market is most fearful. They invest counter-cyclically, rather than pro-cyclically.
In the crypto winter following the FTX collapse, most institutions shunned exposure to Bitcoin and ETH risk, or delayed product launches. Meanwhile, when I was at BlackRock, we did the opposite. We doubled down on infrastructure investments, built ecosystem partnerships, and launched products that connect traditional finance with the crypto world.
We can all learn a lot from Buffett and BlackRock.
Ethereum needs new voices
EF is fulfilling its core responsibilities. In the future, it will focus more on CROPS. (Odaily Note: CROPS is an internal framework prioritizing censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security. This shift means that the Ethereum Foundation will focus on making Ethereum a "harbor technology," prioritizing fundamental, long-term protocol security, user privacy, and the ability to resist censorship/control, rather than pursuing radical scaling and raw speed).
For most people, it is evident that the current problem lies in the leadership of market promotion; meanwhile, various institutions generally wish to embrace Ethereum. I strongly believe that stakeholders and participants in the ecosystem need to play a larger role in the narrative of Ethereum and institutional adoption.
Since last summer, treasury firms for digital assets and core guardians of Ethereum have played important roles in this regard. This includes Sharplink, Tom Lee of BitMine, Joe Lubin of Consensys, Etherealize, Nethermind, Aave, Morpho, EEA, and other ecosystem stakeholders. We also closely collaborate with a small team within EF focused on institutional education and adoption.
Sharplink is actively investing in this ecosystem. We were the first company to stake billions of dollars in ETH capital and have deployed hundreds of millions to high-quality DeFi protocols. We recently announced a $125 million DeFi yield fund in collaboration with Galaxy Digital to provide capital for existing and emerging protocols.
That said, we can and will do more, actively advocating for Ethereum and proactively supporting the upcoming super cycle of institutional adoption.
The future of Ethereum is happening right now.
Recommended Reading:
“Bankless Founder Sells All ETH, Collective Disillusionment of Ethereum Belief”
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