Kain Warwick, X Hall of Flame

Infinex founder Kain Warwick has a few ideas on how hype could return to the fading asset that is Ethereum — but says there’s no “one easy narrative” to breathe life back into it.

“There’s no fucking certainty in ETH land right now,” Warwick tells Hall of Flame, but that doesn’t mean a comeback is off the table. “If there’s demand for ETH the asset, demand for block space on the L1, that will drive things,” he says.

Warwick, who admits he sold off 90% of his ETH bag since late 2020, thinks Ethereum could regain momentum if layer-2 networks finally start paying their fair share for using the base layer’s security. “Charging L2s more, capturing more of the value that L2s are generating and increasing that kind of margin on blockspace would be really bullish for the L1,” Warwick says.

Another possibility is if tokenization takes off and big players turn to ETH for its decentralization and credible neutrality. “People start putting structured products on Ethereum L1, do large block trades and actually use it as a financial rails that is permissionless,” he explains.

And Ethereum’s boring stability and yield is appealing to TradFi investor he says.

“I think some of these large allocators are looking for something that’s already working, they don’t want something that has a 3% chance of a 50X; they want something that has a 100% chance of a 7% gain next year,” Warwick laughs.

“We need to get to a level of actual adoption to bring some more certainty to the table. Then I think that you’ll have pension funds and stuff going in.”

DePIN, DeSci, AI may take off

Warwick says a new novel narrative blowing up on ETH would help. He has his eye on several crypto narratives that could help bring fresh interest back to crypto, like DePIN, which never “really had a big run,” Decentralized Science (DeSci), and even AI despite the “first version of AI slop agents” being “garbage.”

He also sees some reasons to be hopeful about blockchain gaming, even though he admits it “never really landed.” Warwick’s brothers run the Illuvium gaming project. “There’s some green shoots that are kind of there.”

“What’s interesting is that most of these possibilities exist on Ethereum,” Warwick says.

But Warwick has moved on from his ETH Maxi days, and during this week’s market crash which hit Ethereum harder than many other coins, he commented:

“Should have sold 100% of my ETH,” Warwick said in an April 6 X post.

ETH maxis have been dreaming of some “silver bullet,” Warwick says. “Oh, ETH’s going to be fine because Trump’s buying it, or ETH’s going to be fine because of whales,” Warwick laughs.

He says the market’s changed, and ETH needs a fresh influx of new buyers. He says everyone who wanted to back the idea of “venture style, world computer” jumped into ETH between 2016 and 2018.

Bitcoin-to-Ether rotation days are over

Another change this cycle Warwick has noted is that the old playbook where people took profits from Bitcoin and rotated into ETH and alts after all-time highs to try and accumulate more Bitcoin later probably won’t play out so black and white again.

Warwick says that market structure went out the window once institutions got their hands on Bitcoin as the big players have no interest in “playing rotation games” into alts. 

How did Kain Warwick grow his Twitter following?

Warwick rose to fame alongside the crypto derivatives platform Synthetix which emerged from a 2018 ICO and revealed this week that he now holds 35 million Synthetix (SNX) making him the largest holder. When asked what sent his X follower count soaring to 134,400, Warwick didn’t even pause: “DeFi summer” (2020)

“DeFi summer, I was adding 2,000 to 3,000 followers a week,” he laughs. This time around,…