Ok I just read through vitalik’s paper and if the vision he outlined is executed the implications are absolutely insane especially for the app layer. The paper is basically Eth’s plan on how they will enable computation off chain with Eth verifying the result (ensuring computation occurred and what it did etc etc). Now what this means is the definition of “onchain” itself changes, because instead of every part of an app having to execute inside a smart contract you can push a huge amount of complexity elsewhere and still inherit ethereum’s guarantees, this really does open up a huge amount of design space especially for DeFi. For example with lending you could have really sophisticated systems analysing collateral, liquidity, borrower behaviour and market conditions offchain, with multiple solvers or execution systems competing to produce the best outcome, like the cheapest liquidation route, best refinancing rate, best collateral swap or best way to match borrowers and lenders all while the protocol only accepts outcomes that satisfy its rules. So basically a lot more of the smart stuff behind a financial product can happen outside the smart contract, while Eth still acts as the final layer that checks the rules were followed and makes sure the money moves exactly as it should. The MEV implications here are quite interesting too because more economic activity happening before settlement means more value moves upstream into who gets the information first, who computes the best outcome and what gets presented to Eth. But the thing I’m most bullish on is what this does to the TAM of Eth just because this vision means ethereum doesn’t have to be fast enough to do everything itself it just has to be able to verify everything that matters. And that’s an enormous difference. It’s literally a world computer.