The latest Chain Reaction Podcast did a good job of helping me understand the Cosmos/Polkadot roll-your-own-chain value proposition.

A few thoughts below.

It feels like Ethereum will increasingly be seen as a chain for sandboxing networks. Once a network has clear product/market fit and is at scale it will seek to optimise.

Luis Cuende made it clear that this is what Aragon are doing. The base economic architecture of Ethereum is suitable for broad smart contract programming, but isn’t optimised for a DAO management network.

It reminds me of software applications that make their way deeper and deeper down the stack until they’re embedded in silicon.

Also of the classic “integrated -> modular” theory that Clay Christensen talks about. A product category initially has a simple, heavily controlled UX and featureset necessary for early adoption. As users understand those features and become sophisticated they demand more control.

This has played out to a degree with iOS (integrated) and the Android (modular) with the latter growing as users demand more and more control.

Obviously in the case of smart contract platforms we’re talking about network developers rather than users, but this definitely seems to be what’s playing out.

Ethereum is to Cosmos/Polkadot for network developers as the iPhone is to Android for smartphone users.

If I’m right I think we’ll see more and more networks which are already established start moving to their own chains.

As we see that happening I’ll be building my Polkadot and Cosmos positions.