Ethereum leaders must choose between supporting a capitalist or socialist economic system, but they can’t do both, according to digital assets market maker Wintermute CEO Evgeny Gaevoy.
“You are either building capitalism or planned socialism. I’m sorry, you really can’t have both,” Gaevoy declared in a June 6 post on X, following both Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap founder Hayden Adams’ recent comments regarding the surge of celebrity memecoins.
“If ETH fails in the future it won’t be because “Solana is faster,” it will be because the ETH “elite” is still stuck in a massive contradiction,” he claimed.
Gaevoy argued that Buterin, Adams and “many others” within the Ethereum community face a contradiction by claiming to want to build products that bring positive change to society and are ultimately “worthy” on top of continuing to attempt to solve maximum extractable value (MEV) — the maximum value that can be extracted from a block of transactions based on their ordering.
“Vitalik, Hayden, and many many others are trying to “solve capitalism” by saying that what we build can only be respected “if the end is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc)” or that “the best builders in the space are motivated by positive social change," he wrote.
Gaevoy argued that blockchain technology itself is “conductive to create purely capitalist incentive-based systems."
Buterin’s recent comments on celebrity memecoins
This follows Buterin’s recent comments on celebrity memecoins not providing anything “worthy” for society.
On June 5, Cointelegraph reported that Buterin believes the goal for a project should be that even if the tokens eventually become worthless, the average participant should still feel satisfied and happy to have been involved.
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Furthermore, he argued that financialization is only justified if it serves a purpose that brings value to society, such as improving healthcare, supporting open-source software and promoting art and creativity.
“I’m feeling quite unhappy about with this cycle’s celebrity experimentation so far,” Buterin wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Adams claimed to have “no issues” about celebrity memecoins. However, he criticized rapper Iggy Azalea for her condescending remarks toward Buterin, whom he described as the “best builder in the space.” Adams suggested that Azalea could have “used profits to donate to a social cause or something.”
On June 6, Cointelegraph reported that Azalea’s Mother Iggy (MOTHER) token defied the failure trend in other celebrity memecoins, reaching a new all-time high of $0.1272.
At the time of publication, MOTHER is trading at a new high of $0.1522, according to CoinGecko data.
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