Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Consensys, emphasized the significance of venture capital (VC) funding in advancing the world’s largest smart contract network, despite rising concerns within the industry regarding the impact of investment funds on Ethereum.
According to Lubin’s Monday X post, the primary aim of VCs like Paradigm is to “extract as much value as possible from the Ethereum and broader ecosystem,” while their secondary intention is to “move the systems toward rigorous decentralization,” asserting that there is “no reason for concern.”
His remarks follow the recent exit of two prominent Ethereum researchers, which has rekindled worries about the potential dominance of centralized funds in Ethereum’s evolution.
Last Friday, longtime researcher and developer Dankrad Feist from the Ethereum Foundation revealed his transition to Tempo, a layer-1 blockchain for payments and stablecoins led by Stripe and Paradigm.
Earlier in January, former Consensys researcher Mallesh Pai joined Paradigm as a research adviser, subsequently taking on a full-time role at Tempo in September, as noted on his LinkedIn page.
In light of Paradigm’s increasing influence on Ethereum, Lubin interpreted the new hires as a positive indicator of the blockchain industry’s rising mainstream acceptance.
“The gold rush of corpo-chains is validating for the traditional economy and signals our mainstreaming,” he commented in the X post.
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Crypto needs VCs “for now” to bridge global capital gap, Lubin says
Amid increasing concerns regarding VC influence in the blockchain sector, the industry continues to rely on traditional investment funds to draw more mainstream capital for ongoing growth.
“We need VCs for now because they provide a comfortable pathway for global capital to enter our ecosystem,” Lubin stated, adding:
“Very soon, better, fairer, more broadly accessible on-chain investment platforms with healthy tokenomics will develop sufficiently, making it necessary for VCs to operate on these platforms to remain competitive.”
Lubin elaborated that VC involvement is essential to foster the “progressive decentralization” required for establishing a “secure global information infrastructure.”
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Paradigm’s Tempo blockchain aims to create a network governed by a select group of validators, primarily operated by Stripe, representing a significant shift from Ethereum’s decentralized, open-source principles.
Paradigm initially announced its vision for the payments-oriented blockchain network in September, identifying a “growing need for optimized infrastructure” to facilitate global payments.
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