Going on Vacation

+ Insights from BUIDLAsia 2025

Apr 27, 2025

Hi everyone,

I’m finally going on vacation! HOORAY!

Before I go, I wanted to update you on what I’ve been up to these past few weeks and what I learned at ETHSeoul and BUIDLAsia.

For new subscribers, check out my introductory post, “Going Solo,” for important context about my journey as an entrepreneur.

Going Solo

Christine D. Kim

Apr 10

Hi everyone,

Read full story

WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO

Since publishing my “Going Solo” post, here’s what I’ve been up to:

I flew to Seoul, Korea.
Gave a presentation at ETHSeoul on the Fusaka upgrade
Moderated the “Will Ethereum Win?” panel with Matt Wright (Gaia) and Austin Federa (DoubleZero Foundation), also at ETHSeoul
Joined Dune wizards Danning Sui and “0xBoxer” for an episode of the Indexed podcast to talk about the upcoming Pectra upgrade
Spoke at BUIDLAsia on a panel titled “Can Ethereum Win Again?” alongside Jacob Arluck (Celestia Labs), Lane Rettig (NEAR Foundation), and “GM”
(Dragonfly)
Moderated a panel about futarchy and the future of on-chain governance at BUIDLAsia with Lane Rettig (NEAR Foundation), Zaki Manian (Sommelier), and Denisse Halm (Divvi)
Took a bunch of meetings with builders based in Asia
Published 8 more posts for the ACD After Hours newsletter
Ate tons of good food

Highlights from BUIDLAsia week. Thanks to June and Lena for the photos of my presentation and panels!

WHAT I’VE LEARNED

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, but in the best way possible. Between ETHSeoul and BUIDLAsia, I walked away with important takeaways, especially about refining my vision and sharpening how I communicate it.

To recap, my vision is to create essential resources and be a resource myself that helps industry stakeholders understand and engage with public blockchain protocols.

These protocols, which underpin the broader crypto movement for financial freedom, data privacy, and individual sovereignty, are not static technologies maintained by a single company or foundation. They are dynamic, living codebases, upgraded and governed by decentralized, amorphous communities.

As these protocols become more valuable because of the rising value of assets and applications being built atop them, the importance of understanding how they are governed grows. This is because it will become increasingly lucrative for malicious actors to attempt to capture, influence, or centralize these critical governance systems.

The long-term success of the crypto industry hinges on ensuring the stewardship of major open-source blockchain protocols remains sustainably transparent, open, decentralized, and credibly neutral. I want to be a force that helps these efforts by propelling wide coverage and awareness about protocols as evolving technologies governed by a social collective.

Yet trying to explain all of this — succinctly and clearly — to people I met at ETHSeoul and BUIDLAsia proved more challenging than I anticipated. It made me realize that refining my vision isn't just important for my own clarity — it's essential for being able to communicate my work and mission to others.

At BUIDLAsia, my official speaker title was “Ethereum core development whisperer”, which I initially thought described my work with the ACD After Hours newsletter in a cool and clear way. Little did I know that for the purposes of my name card, the title would be shortened to “Whisperer” and actually create more confusion about what I do than clarity.

My name tag at BUIDLAsia 2025. Samantha Yap and I had a good laugh about it. xD

Other titles that I experimented with throughout the BUIDLAsia week included:

content creator
researcher
whisperer
advisor
expert

Sometimes I used all these titles at once, which did not help. This experience reaffirmed that I still need a lot of work on:

Refining my vision.
Sharpening my pitch.
Building my launchpad for content.

Ironically, I wasn’t the only one struggling to explain their role and vision at the conference.

Ethereum’s identity crisis

I was on two panels at ETHSeoul and BUIDLAsia where the topic of discussion was the same. It was also the topic most discussed among speakers and attendees offstage. It was the topic of Ethereum’s future. The broad sentiment on this was, unsurprisingly, bearish.

Austin Federa from DoubleZero, a blockchain infrastructure project spun out of the Solana Foundation, argued on the “Will Ethereum Win?” panel that Ethereum developers' abandonment of the sharding roadmap to scale the base layer in favor of a rollup-centric roadmap was a mistake.

From left to right: Me, Matt Wright (Gaia) and Austin Federa (DoubleZero Foundation).

Jacob Arluck from Celestia Labs said on the “Can Ethereum Win Again?” panel that Ethereum’s data availability improvements in forthcoming upgrades like Fusaka are too little and too late.

From left to right: “GM” (Dragonfly), Jacob Arluck (Celestia Labs), Lane Rettig (NEAR Foundation), and me.

(Recordings of all the panels and presentations from BUIDLAsia week should soon be available to watch online. I can share links to these once they’re up.)

In all my discussions about Ethereum’s future, the most important question that was raised was, “What is Ethereum?” GM asked his panelists this question at the beginning of the “Can Ethereum Win Again" panel. It highlighted how differently people view Ethereum.

People’s opinions, concerns, and predictions about ETH price, value accrual mechanisms, and even Ethereum’s technical roadmap depend on what they believe Ethereum is trying to be.

As an open-source technology, Ethereum is undeniably winning. No smart contract programming language or execution environment is as widely adopted as Solidity and the EVM. In terms of stablecoin volumes and total value locked, Ethereum still leads as the top general-purpose blockchain for decentralized finance activity.

But as a business, Ethereum is failing. ETH as a store of value (SoV) or an asset akin to a tech stock is failing.

In a future where Ethereum succeeds as an open-source technology, similar to the success of Linux, Ethereum could fail as a revenue-generating business, and ETH could fail as a profitable investment.

Conversely, if Ethereum succeeds as a revenue-generating business, it could fail as a widely adopted open-source technology.

So, the answer to the question of whether Ethereum can “win” depends on what you think Ethereum is.

What I think Ethereum is

I view Ethereum primarily as an open-source technology, not as a vehicle for financial speculation.

While Ethereum’s native asset, ETH, currently plays a dual role—as both a gas token and a potential store of value—I have argued in the past that it is not likely to maintain both identities long-term.

ETH is primarily used today as a gas token, and all gas tokens are inherently vulnerable to commoditization.

As users migrate to Layer-2 rollups, direct interaction with Ethereum’s base layer will shrink, and fee payments with ETH will increasingly be abstracted away and replaced by payments using stablecoins or app-specific tokens. Ethereum becomes the back-end infrastructure for user-facing applications and protocols. Further, ETH, as the token used to pay for this infrastructure, becomes just another input cost for businesses built atop Ethereum’s base layer.

Without a strong narrative or mechanism supporting ETH as a desirable asset to hold, its utility-driven demand will flatten. Over time, I believe all gas tokens face the same fate. I expect ETH to converge toward a minimal, utility-only value for securing Ethereum as a proof-of-stake blockchain, nothing more and nothing less.

As with all long-term theses, the important questions are how long exactly this trend will take to play out and what factors along the way would confirm or disprove my views on the utility of Ethereum and ETH, the asset.

But rather than tackle those hard questions now, I’m going to go on a much-needed vacation. ;)

TAKING A BREAK

That’s right, I am gearing up for a month-long break from crypto starting this week. I plan to mute notifications from all messaging and social media platforms and pause my ACD After Hours newsletter until June.

I spoke with several founders in the lead-up to and following my departure from Galaxy, and the one piece of advice I repeatedly got was to take an extended break before starting my business.

While I’ve been tempted to ignore this advice, what with the Pectra upgrade just around the corner, I know I need this break, and I need to take it now. Otherwise, I may not get this chance again.

So, I’m off. Be well, everyone. I’ll be back in June. Don’t unsubscribe while I’m gone, please.

But if you haven’t subscribed, and want to surprise me with your follow when I’m back, here’s how to get signed up:

Thank you to everyone who shared initial feedback on the soft launch of this site. Thank you also to everyone who gave me advice over the past month about my entrepreneurial vision and brand.

I look forward to returning to you all in the summer, refreshed and ready to tackle what’s next!

Yours Truly,