Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin: Most Interesting Ether Applications Will Combine Elements Of Finance And Non-finance

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the second-largest blockchain ecosystem by market cap Ethereum ETH/USD, believes that it needs to expand beyond decentralized finance (DeFi).

What Happened: “The Ethereum ecosystem needs to expand beyond just making tokens that help with trading other tokens,” said Vitalik in his keynote speech at the Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC).

While noting that Ethereum being defined by DeFi is better than Ethereum being defined by nothing, Vitalik said that it’s now time to go further.

“Moving beyond DeFi is not about being against DeFi. I actually think… the most interesting Ethereum applications are going to combine elements of finance and non-finance,” he said.

In his view, the natural path forward for the community should be towards something that is both useful and something that “enough people can get behind.”

NFTs Craze: An existing use case for Ethereum outside of DeFi is NFTs, but Vitalik isn’t convinced that the right people are dominating that specific industry.

“There’s been all sorts of celebrities launching NFTs,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a long list…I was going to say Kim Kardashian, but she was just pumping EthereumMax at Miami so I think we should just cancel her.”

The Ethereum co-founder wants NFTs to benefit the wider society, beyond just celebrities.

Read also: Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Tells Dogecoin Bull Gary 'I Love The Doge Every Day'

According to Vitalik, Ethereum could reshape the social media segment by building out an Ethereum social media ecosystem – a concept proposed by AAVE founder Stani Kulechov earlier this week.

Blockchains are good at building credibly neutral mechanisms and censorship resistance, which Vitalik views as important capabilities when trying to solve some of the social media industry's existing issues.

Price Action: At press time, Ethereum was trading at $1,990, gaining 7% over the past 24-hours. The coin saw a 20% increase in daily trading volume overnight, which exceeded $20 billion at the time of writing.

Photo: Marc van der Chijs via Flickr