Ethereum Sentiment Research Spotlight Study

State of Blockchain Q3 2016 | 1
ETHEREUM
SENTIMENT
Research Spotlight Study

CoinDesk – Leader in Blockchain News
• Headquarters in Times Square, New
York, 15 FTEs.
• News: 20 million readers have visited
CoinDesk since 2013.
• Data: Bitcoin Price Index serves as an
industry reference point.
• Events: 2,000+ have attended our
Consensus summits.
• Research: 750k views of our reports,
subscriptions available in 2017.

Spotlight Study: Ethereum Sentiment
Since our last report, interest and de-
velopment of ethereum has exploded…
but not without controversy.
• We are now dedicating a section of our
SOB coverage to ethereum and its market,
blockchain and community metrics.
• We conducted a “spotlight study” survey
with 240+ startup execs and enterprise
blockchain leads to assess the impact of
the DAO hack and subsequent hard fork
on ethereum sentiment.
Data Source: CoinDesk Ethereum Survey
Our goals:
• Determine if market events
caused direct change in sentiment
or use of ethereum’s technology.
• Identify effects of ethereum’s chal-
lenges on the extended block-
chain marketplace.

Ethereum Sentiment Spotlight Study: Findings
Data Source: CoinDesk’s 240+ person executive survey; full results start on slide 56
Opposed the ethere-
um hard fork (23%
weren’t sure if it was
the correct decision).
Reported no change
in their use of
ethereum due to the
hack or hard fork.
Responded the
hack did not neg-
atively impact their
sentiment towards
ethereum; those
whose sentiment
was negatively
impacted were al-
ready unlikely to use
ethereum.
Thought ethereum
has better govern-
ance than bitcoin
(while 34% feel both
communities face
governance chal-
lenges).
63% 48% 37% 33%

Ethereum Sentiment Study: Demographics
Data Source: CoinDesk
Our 243-person survey included technical leaders
from startups and enterprises who attended our
annual Consensus summit.
Of these respondents:
• 86% believe blockchain technology (broadly speaking)
would have an impact on financial services, while 14% said
it was “too early to tell”.
• 70%+ believe blockchain tech would also have an impact on
governments and businesses outside of financial services.
• 52% of bulls believe it would be 5-10+ years before block-
chain tech was widely adopted.

Ethereum Sentiment Study: Demographics
When it came to ethereum in particular:
• 63% reported they were “very familiar” with the ethereum
protocol; 70% said they were “very familiar” with the DAO
hack and hard fork.
• 58% reported using the ethereum protocol – 37% used
the public blockchain, 19% used a permissioned version
of ethereum, and 6% used a public fork of ethereum such
as ethereum classic, krypton, or shift.
• 67% planned to consider using the ethereum protocol in
the future – 49% planned to use the public blockchain,
with 26% planning to use a permissioned version and
12% planning to use a public fork.

One in Three Were Negatively Impacted
By the Ethereum Fork or DAO Hack
Were you or your organ-
ization directly impacted
in any way by the June
2016 DAO hack (i.e. lost
tokens, proof-of-concept
delayed or reconsidered
due to the hack)?
• 75% of those affected lost
money in the DAO.
• 11% said it made them lose
confidence in ethereum.
• 20% said it set back a pro-
ject or proof-of-concept.
“The hard fork hardened my opinion re:
ethereum’s governance problems.”
“We delayed anchoring into ethereum
because of the fork.”

One in Three Disagree with the Decision to Hard Fork
How do you feel about
the decision to hard fork
the ethereum (ETH) block-
chain?
• Majority of those who disa-
greed with the decision were
already skeptical of ethereum
and “not considering” using the
technology in the future.
• The decision to hard fork may
get more popular over time; for
those who changed their minds
at some point, “agrees” out-
numbered “disagrees” 7:1.
“I was worried the hard fork might undermine
the authority of the core dev team (or rather,
make it seem like they have too much power),
but those concerns seem to be overblown,
and all seems to be going well for now.”

In Terms of Perception, the Drama Has Taken Its Toll:
Bad for Ethereum, Good for Bitcoin
How has the DAO hack and the ethere-
um hard fork affected your sentiment
towards using:
• Sentiment skewed negative for both ETH and ETC.
• 49% negative vs. 26% positive for ETH.
• 50% negative vs. 15% positive for ETC.
• “bad precedent”, “broke immutability”, “lack of
quality control & testing”, but “pragmatic”.
• Many believed this cast bitcoin in a more positive
relative light.
• 39% positive vs. 17% negative.
• “only production ready blockchain”, “stability and
predictability are key”.
• Muted impact on sentiment towards other public
blockchains.

For the Majority Whose Sentiment Was Negatively
Impacted, Governance Was the Primary Concern
If the the DAO hack and/or
Ethereum hard fork negative-
ly impacted your sentiment
on using Ethereum, what are
your specific concerns?
• 47% concerned with how the
ethereum blockchain and pub-
lic protocol was governed.
• 38% concerned with the block-
chain’s compromised immuta-
bility.
• 33% fear regulatory risks due to
the coordinated response.

Despite Setback, Ethereum Perceived to Have Better
Governance Than Bitcoin (Though Both Have Flaws)
Please select the choice you believe best re-
flects your opinion of current Ethereum and
Bitcoin governance:
“ETH vs BTC vs ETC rivalries
need to stop; these technolo-
gies are too new to take sides.
Instead of coming together,
there are obvious lines being
drawn.”
“I’d be more optimistic if univer-
sities embraced and increased
resources not only for bitcoin
but ethereum, and other DLTs.”

Public/Enterprise Ethereum Users
See Different Strengths in the Technology
Respondents Use Public (ETH) Version
of Ethereum for These Reasons.
Respondents Using Private/ Permissioned
Version of Ethereum for These Reasons
• Both groups emphasized the quality of the ethereum community.
• Ethereum users placed more emphasis on Turing Completeness.
• Enterprise users emphasized developers, flexibility and maturity.

Ethereum’s Developers Continue Upgrades
“Casper” – Two prominent ethereum developers (Vitalik Buterin,
Vlad Zamfir) continue work on new blockchain consensus algorithm.
• Would see ethereum migrate from bitcoin-like proof-of-work to
more decentralized proof-of-stake alternative.
• Zamfir, Buterin remain split on best paths forward.
Formal verification – soundness of smart contracts continues to
be both practical and enterprise concern.
• Startups are working to provide specialized software to mathe-
matically check for issues.
EMV upgrade – ethereum language compiler continues to face
performance issues, problems with IoT compatibility.
• Compiler works in 256-bit ’chunks’, too slow for appliances with
smaller bit registers.
• Plan is to migrate to new EVM (EWASM) unveiled at Devcon2 con-
ference in Shanghai.

Our Respondents Predict Ethereum’s ‘Proof-of-Stake’
Switch Will Occur in 2017
How likely do you
think it is that the
following will be
deployed by the
Ethereum commu-
nity by the end of
2017?
• 82% believe that ethereum’s most challenging hard fork – a switch to a new consensus algorithm
called “Casper” – has a 50% or greater chance of being implemented in 2017.
• Our respondents believe the Mist browser is the most likely 2017 release, with 62% saying they be-
lieve this is somewhat or very likely vs. 11% that believe it is unlikely.
• Respondents were split on the release timing of the Swarm storage platform, and two scaling solu-
tions: state channels and sharding.

Hard Fork? That’s the Easy Part
We asked whether there was anything more
technically challenging on the development
roadmap than ethereum’s switch to proof-of-
stake:
“While some acknowledged the Casper
switch was the biggest milestone in the
near-term roadmap, respondents over-
whelmingly noted that “sharding” was
the most technically complex project
being tackled.”
“by far the hardest”, “represents a sea
change in how these systems work
entirely”, “there is not enough capacity
on the network before worrying about
sharding and parallelism”.
What is Sharding?
(From CoinDesk’s research report ‘Un-
derstanding Ethereum’)
Sharding is a scaling solu-
tion where portions of the full
ethereum blockchain are held
on separate servers in order to
distribute the network’s com-
putational load and improve
its performance. This solution
could allow businesses, indi-
viduals or entities to run a pub-
lic or private blockchain (with
distinct transaction validators)
on a platform that uses the
security and functionality of a
public platform.

www.coindesk.com
ETHEREUM SENTIMENT Study

Ethereum Sentiment Research Spotlight Study

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