crypto's Eternal September

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ILY,

Deana

Writer: Deana

Editors: Miranda & Natasha

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One of my favorite bits of internet lore is the concept of Eternal September, which is the moment in 1994 when AOL flooded an early version of the internet with new users. The small hacker community that had defined internet culture up to that point suddenly lost control of the room. The tech obviously thrived, but the culture shifted forever.

Last week, among a string of recent corporate blockchain announcements, Stripe and Paradigm shipped Tempo, a payments-first EVM blockchain. One of Tempo’s most notable qualities is that it’s not an Ethereum L2, for many reasons as laid out here. This choice, in their words, signals a prioritization for predictability, speed and control without relying on Ethereum’s (implied to be slow-moving) technical roadmap.

Also, because their distribution is frankly insane, they have the leverage to make those choices, beholden to no man or crypto twitter. Network effects from existing crypto users truly means fuck all when your starting lineup includes…Visa.

On the other side of the debate are the Ethereum maxis, who argue that the tradeoffs meaningfully compromise Tempo’s decentralization. Tempo may be EVM-compatible, but if the network launches with a curated validator set for example, or tight corporate governance, you reintroduce trusted intermediaries and raise the censorship risk. Crypto values are irrevocably diluted, even if the plan is to shift to permissionless operations later. To them, this is AOL showing up on Usenet.

For the maxis, it might feel like the culture they forged with blood sweat and tears over the past 10 years is about to be steamrolled by corporate interests.

For end users, the question barely registers. If it’s cheap and fast and stable, who cares? These are the AOL users in our analogy, and though they haven’t arrived yet, I doubt very much that they’ll come in quote tweeting Mert and fighting on discord servers.

Though personally I do feel we, as an industry, owe it to this group to stay vigilant.

So here is the Eternal September question for crypto: when corporate players spin up chains that prioritize enterprise needs over community-entrenched norms, what is the cost?

And who gets to define what “crypto” means once the flood shows up?

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