Ethereum as a Global Public Good: William Mougayar Proposes New Valuation Framework

Ethereum is no longer just a high-performance blockchain competing on transaction speed or fees—it is increasingly acting as a global public good. In a recent guest thread shared by the official Ethereum X account, blockchain author and investor William Mougayar argues that Ethereum exhibits the core traits of a public good: non-rivalrous (one person’s use doesn’t reduce availability for others), non-excludable (open to anyone), and system-enabling (it powers a wide range of applications and economic activity).

This framing places Ethereum in the same category as foundational technologies such as the Internet, GPS, and TCP/IP protocols. “Like the early Internet, its true value is largely invisible,” the thread emphasized, highlighting how infrastructure-level systems often deliver massive economic impact long before markets fully recognize or price it.

From Information Protocol to Value Protocol

Mougayar draws a clear distinction:

• The Internet functions primarily as an information protocol, enabling the global flow of data.
• Ethereum is evolving into a value protocol, providing a neutral, permissionless settlement layer for economic activity at scale.

Both are public goods at the base layer, while higher layers support private applications, businesses, and institutional use cases.

Solana as an Emerging Value Protocol

A similar shift is taking place with Solana. While it is often positioned as a high-throughput, low-cost alternative to Ethereum, Solana is also beginning to function as a value protocol—especially for real-time, high-frequency applications such as payments, trading, and tokenized assets.

Solana’s architecture (high TPS, low fees, fast finality) makes it particularly suitable for consumer-facing and institutional-grade value flows. Like Ethereum, it enables permissionless participation and serves as a foundation for DeFi, NFT marketplaces, gaming economies, and emerging stablecoin and remittance systems.

Although Solana’s model differs (single-layer, validator-centric vs. Ethereum’s rollup-centric modular approach), both networks are increasingly competing not against each other, but against the inefficiencies of traditional global coordination systems—banks, payment rails, and legacy settlement networks.

A Three-Part Valuation Framework for Public Goods

Mougayar proposes a new framework to evaluate Ethereum (and by extension, Solana) as public goods:

1. Captured Value Direct, on-chain revenue: transaction fees, MEV, token economics.
2. Flow Value Broader economic activity enabled across applications, markets, and institutions (DeFi TVL, stablecoin transfers, tokenized assets, enterprise use cases).
3. Trust Surplus The economic value created by reducing global frictions: settlement delays, verification costs, counterparty risk, fraud, and reconciliation overhead.

This “trust surplus” generates a compounding trust dividend as more users, developers, and institutions rely on the network. The larger and more diverse the ecosystem becomes, the greater the systemic trust benefit.

Competing with the Status Quo, Not Each Other

Ethereum and Solana are not primarily in a zero-sum race for dominance. Instead, they are both challenging the slow, expensive, and exclusionary status quo of traditional finance and cross-border coordination.

Their long-term value lies in trust minimization, global accessibility, and economic enablement—not just short-term fee generation or raw performance metrics.

As the Ethereum thread summarized: “If you want to understand Ethereum’s value to the world, look at dependency, flows, and trust minimization. That’s where public-good value accrues.” The same principle applies to Solana as it matures into a high-throughput value protocol.

FAQ: Ethereum and Solana as Public Goods

1. What does it mean for Ethereum or Solana to be a “public good”? It means the network is non-rivalrous (my usage doesn’t reduce yours) and non-excludable (anyone can participate), while enabling widespread economic activity—like the Internet or GPS.

2. How is Ethereum different from Solana in this context? Ethereum focuses on modularity and decentralization with a large rollup ecosystem, while Solana emphasizes high throughput and low latency on a single layer. Both serve as value protocols but cater to different use-case strengths.

3. Why can’t we just value them based on fees or TVL? These metrics capture only “captured value.” They miss the broader “flow value” (economic activity enabled) and “trust surplus” (global friction reduction), which are the real drivers of long-term impact.

4. What is the “trust dividend”? It’s the compounding economic benefit from lower settlement costs, reduced fraud, less counterparty risk, and faster reconciliation as more people and institutions rely on the network.

5. Are Ethereum and Solana competing with each other? Not primarily. They are both competing against traditional financial systems (banks, payment networks, legacy settlement rails) by offering faster, cheaper, and more open alternatives.

6. How should investors think about valuing these networks going forward? Look beyond short-term revenue. Focus on dependency (how many systems rely on it), flow value (economic activity enabled), and trust minimization (frictions reduced globally).