Bankless Founder: As Trump tears down the old order, Ethereum is establishing new rules

Written by: David Hoffman, Founder of Bankless

Translated by: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

This year’s Davos Forum was truly spectacular.

It brought together many heavyweight figures from the cryptocurrency industry, including Brian Armstrong, Jeremy Allaire, CZ, and Larry Fink.

Although cryptocurrencies were the focus of this forum, what truly drew attention was the clear statement from the Trump administration regarding the phased shift in the global order.

Two important speeches were delivered at the Davos Forum, highlighting this point. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard gave a speech titled “Globalization Has Failed,” while Canadian Prime Minister Mark responded: “The rule-based international order is experiencing a rupture, not a transformation.”

Rule-Based International Order vs. Jungle Law

Since World War II, the international community has maintained a certain order and cooperation. The United Nations, although relatively weak in power, is highly respected in decision-making among countries and plays a pivotal role.

“International law” once truly existed, but mainly because we all believed in it. We collectively endowed it with meaning.

The Trump administration has decided to shatter this shared illusion.

Trump believes that the existence of this “rule-based international order” is solely because the United States allows it to exist. As the most powerful country with the strongest military, this means we are the true architects of this “rule-based international order,” and Trump’s “America First” policy indicates he no longer wishes to maintain friendly relations with other nations.

According to Trump, as Lutnick elaborated in his speech, this model is not in America’s best interest, so we need to find a new way.

Nic Carter is right—nations are the highest organizational entities created by humans. Before the emergence of nation-states, religion and monarchy were the highest levels of organization humans could create, and before that, it was feudalism and tribes.

We have tried to build higher-level organizational structures through “joint agreements” with institutions like the United Nations, but these agreements proved to be very fragile and had little impact on the world.

Therefore, our current situation is this: by 2026, the United States will have abandoned attempts to build higher-level unified organizational structures and will claim that it is better to be self-reliant.

It is worth noting that “pariah states” like Russia and Iran have grown precisely because of the weak international order. They have always adhered to the law of the strong and exploited the weaknesses of the “rule-based international order” to expand their power, committing human rights abuses that the United Nations merely condemns.

Although it is regrettable that attempts at global cooperation ultimately failed, at least we can now honestly point out that countries like Russia have never truly followed these rules.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Decentralized Crypto Protocols

Decentralized crypto protocols are powerful and autonomous “higher-level organizational structures” that have failed to realize the paradigm of the “rule-based international order.”

Trump’s division of the unified international community is precisely what Ethereum aims to balance.

When a unified world disintegrates and falls into regional powers, Ethereum will re-unify it in cyberspace.

These protocols do not enforce laws nor protect their members. They will not replace nation-states. However, they are an omnipresent, autonomous layer of coordination for the world to unite.

The dialogue between Brian Armstrong and the Governor of the French Central Bank exemplifies this power. The central bank governor made all the mistakes central bankers tend to make: misunderstanding and underestimating Bitcoin. Brian corrected him, pointing out that “Bitcoin has no issuer—it is a decentralized protocol…,” and then elaborated on Bitcoin’s most important role in unifying the world: “…[Bitcoin] is actually the most effective accountability mechanism for deficit spending.”

No, we cannot establish a “rule-based international order” through voluntary coordination and cooperation between nations. But can we derive a “rule-based international order” from a decentralized, cryptography-based internet protocol?

Bitcoin’s operating mechanism is an “if… then…” statement. To me, this sounds very much like a “rule-based international order.” Isn’t Ethereum extending the same principle to Turing-complete smart contracts?

Although the current cryptocurrency industry is filled with despair and negativity, I still firmly believe that we have not yet fully tapped into the potential of smart contracts.

So perhaps we cannot get a “rule-based international order” from the United Nations.

Perhaps we will find it somewhere unexpected.

Perhaps we will find it in Ethereum.