Ether Price Dropped, But Ethereum Growing Rapidly With dApp Adoption
Martin Köppelmann, the founder of Ethereum-based prediction market platform Gnosis, said that despite the decline in the price of Ether, the Ethereum network is growing rapidly.
According to Köppelmann, the most important metric to consider in analyzing the growth of Ethereum is the performance of decentralized applications (dApps) and the interconnectedness of dApps on the blockchain.
Ethereum is Blooming
In an official blog post, Köppelmann said that the drop in the value of Ether from $1,500 to $300 is a non-issue as long as the open-source developer and dApp community continues to demonstrate progress in scaling, adoption, and development.
Köppelmann further noted that the price of Ether will follow the usage of the Ethereum protocol and dApps, and if the network effect of dApps consistently increases in the long-term, the price trend of Ether will reflect the rapid rate of adoption of dApps. Köppelmann said,
“The numbers we care about is the usage of decentralized applications. And as a next step, the number to look out for is DAPPs that seamlessly interact with each other and draw a benefit from being on the same platform. As a side effect, ultimately the price of ETH will then be a function of the demand for the use of applications in this reliable, open, and interlinked environment.”
Previously, Köppelmann emphasized that Ethereum needs to be evaluated based on the usage of dApps, not its transaction volume or number of active users. More importantly, he noted that the interconnectedness of dApps must improve in order for the entire decentralized ecosystem to flourish.
For that to happen, dApps must rely on each other’s services, protocols, and products to ensure that decentralized applications can operate in a purely peer-to-peer manner.
For instance, projects like Radar Relay, Paradex, and Melonport rely on the decentralized exchange protocol of 0x to facilitate the trading of digital assets. Because the 0x protocol exists on Ethereum, every trade facilitated by 0x is done in a peer-to-peer manner and dApps that utilize the 0x protocol can form an interconnected ecosystem in which dApps rely on each other to provide efficient services.
Moving forward, primarily to set an example for other industries, Köppelmann said that Gnosis will only utilize dApps to conduct most of its operations moving forward, primarily to kickstart the adoption of Ethereum and decentralized systems.
The Gnosis team stated that it will utilize Ethereum-based Twitter Peepeth for Tweets, Akasha to release blog posts, the Gnosis prediction markets to track the organization’s milestones, and Maker to finance its operations.
Crucially, Köppelmann disclosed that the project has sufficient funds to continue the development of its project for six to seven years without having to use 200,000 ether it has in reserve, and most solvent projects that have raised capital through Ether in the past 12 months are in a similar situation.
Kickstarting Adoption
This week, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, revealed that 90 percent of the company’s employees have opted to be paid out in BNB, better known as Binance Coin, instead of fiat money or cash.
Just one of the interesting things @cz_binance told me this week at @lcx event: 90% of binance employees choose to receive their salary in BNB tokens. Smart people.
— Michael Arrington (@arrington) August 18, 2018
ETHBerlin, the biggest Ethereum meetup, has been solely utilizing dApps to facilitate all of the event’s operations, including ticketing, raffles, hotel booking for speakers, and live streaming.
It is optimistic for the long-term health of Ethereum and the rest of the cryptocurrency sector that early adopters are depending on decentralized alternatives to process day-to-day operations.