“We were dead wrong,” Synthetix founder Kain Warwick wrote in a blog post published on Tuesday; a reference to the “harsh reality” of the Sydney-based startup’s costly decision to explore building concurrently atop each of the Ethereum and EOS blockchain networks.



Warwick’s words come a little over a year since he gallantly declared in a blog post that Havven—as it was then called prior to rebranding to Synthetix—intended “to lead by example” when it came to investing resources in multiple blockchains. This decision “will inspire other projects to consider this approach,” he added at the time.



“Probably the only valuable lesson for the community is the exact opposite of what we proposed in the original article,” reflected a now wiser Warwick in Tuesday’s post-mortem. “Our brief foray into EOS was enough to conclusively demonstrate for the time being that we must focus all of our efforts on Ethereum.”



Where Warwick Went Wrong



The Synthetix founder shared on Tuesday his realisation that his August 2018 post “contains a flawed assumption:” that the distribution of infrastructure protocols is random and thus projects should mitigate risk by building across multiple blockchain networks. Citing “empirical evidence,” Warwick now suggests that this distribution—just like the above four-word alliteration *self fives*—does in fact have order. That is, Ethereum will “ALWAYS” host the components required to develop a killer DeFi app. Explaining further, he wrote:



“The original post took a fairly agnostic approach to the question of infrastructure on decentralised systems. At the time there were very few deployed smart contract systems live on Ethereum. We have significantly better data on Ethereum and other platforms now, what has become clear is that network effects on Ethereum are likely far more powerful than many people, including myself, anticipated.”



Why did so many under-estimate the power of network effects on Ethereum? In Warwick’s opinion, it was because those like him who were both using and building atop Ethereum “became confused about” where layer-one solutions belonged in the technology stack. “Sure, you can use ether for value transfer” he acknowledged, “but that is not what the majority of users will be doing. They will be using DeFi apps, NFT-based games and decentralised social platforms. Users don’t care what applications run on, they just want the best user experience.”



Synthetix Genuinely Hearts Ethereum



For the Synthetix project, their decision to devote several months’ worth of research to deploying its eponymous decentralised synthetic asset issuance platform on EOS likely set them back between three and six months, according to Warwick. “We have recovered somewhat from this mistake last year,” he added on Tuesday.



Looking ahead, he closed by sharing that Synthetix is “excited to put all of [its] energy into Ethereum as we witness the incredible proliferation of infrastructure improvements that are emerging each week.”



Wanting to learn more about Synthetix? Watch below for Nugget’s News founder Alex Saunder’s interview with Warwick recorded earlier this year from EDCON. That not enough for you? Here’s a longer video chat between the two from last December.