Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted harsh criticism of Ethereum over the weekend, saying that the blockchain “has many single points of failure” and projects built on Ethereum are “not interesting” to him.
Dorsey isn’t known for his Twitter timidity. Last week, he dragged the Robinhood trading app and its CEO, Vladimir Tenev. Before last Christmas, he jumped on a crypto thread by musician Cardi B to lambast Web3 venture capital firms.
Dorsey is a proud Bitcoin maximalist and says all other cryptocurrencies “don’t factor in at all.”
Last summer, he said “no” when someone tweeted that it was “only a matter of time” before the Block CEO invested in Ethereum. A month and a half later, he not-coincidentally shared an anti-Ethereum tweet.
Still, Dorsey’s criticisms of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency remained obscure—until last weekend.
Dorsey’s beef with Ethereum
It started with a tweet from Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin.
Buterin referred to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s recent purchase of a 9.2% stake in Twitter, which several people, including Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer, believe could lead to a takeover.
Buterin wrote that while he is not opposed in principle to Musk taking over Twitter, he fears the move would set a dangerous precedent for less liberal individuals and organizations.
Dorsey replied “same” and, in another tweet, added: “I’m [sic] don’t believe any individual or institutions should own social media, or more generally media companies. It should be an open and verifiable protocol. Everything is a step toward that.”
At this point, Deso, the crypto-powered social network formerly known as BitClout, jumped on the thread to do some self-promotion.
Jack replied that if DeSo is an Ethereum protocol, he’s not interested. Fortunately for DeSo, it’s not.
Jack Dorsey’s Decentralized Twitter
Before leaving Twitter last November, Dorsey had wanted to design a decentralized standard for social media platforms to conform to.
In 2019, he funded an initiative called “Blue Sky,” led by Twitter’s then-CTO Paral Agrawal, to work towards this goal.
In August 2021, Dorsey tapped Jay Graber, creator of events social network Happening, who took over from Agrawal as project lead. Agrawal then became Twitter CEO after Dorsey’s departure.
If you want to read more about how billionaires envision a decentralized and Web3-integrated Twitter, check out yesterday’s Crypto Twitter roundup, where we covered Tron CEO Justin Sun and FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s suggestions.
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