I’m strongly endorsing this, having done the same thing you did (spent two evenings looking at this stuff) and having come up pretty much exactly with the same picture, and the same set of questions/uncertainties.
Something I found very interesting is the fact that Ethereum is poised to move from proof-of-work (miners who solve a cryptographically hard problem to verify transactions, minting new coins in the process) to proof-of-stake (where one “stakes” coins for a chance to verify transactions, earning interest in the process — I’m not entirely comfortable with the ideas yet, but here’s an article on the topic by Ethereum’s creator: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/04/07/sharding.html).
If Ethereum successfully transitions to proof-of-stake, this should theoretically greatly lower the transaction costs and make the whole ecosystem more viable.
I’m strongly endorsing this, having done the same thing you did (spent two evenings looking at this stuff) and having come up pretty much exactly with the same picture, and the same set of questions/uncertainties.
Something I found very interesting is the fact that Ethereum is poised to move from proof-of-work (miners who solve a cryptographically hard problem to verify transactions, minting new coins in the process) to proof-of-stake (where one “stakes” coins for a chance to verify transactions, earning interest in the process — I’m not entirely comfortable with the ideas yet, but here’s an article on the topic by Ethereum’s creator: https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/04/07/sharding.html).
If Ethereum successfully transitions to proof-of-stake, this should theoretically greatly lower the transaction costs and make the whole ecosystem more viable.