Ethereum is no longer just another blockchain competing on speed or transaction fees. Instead, it’s increasingly functioning as an Internet-scale public good—a shift that demands a fundamentally different way of thinking about value.
In a recent guest thread published by the official Ethereum X account, blockchain author and investor William Mougayar argued that Ethereum behaves “like a global public good: non-rivalrous, non-excludable, and system-enabling.”
That framing places Ethereum in the same conceptual category as foundational technologies such as the Internet, GPS, and TCP/IP.
“Like the early Internet, its true value is largely invisible,” the Ethereum account wrote, stressing how infrastructure-level systems often deliver economic impact long before markets fully recognize or price it in.
From Information Protocol to Value Protocol
Mougayar’s report also draws a layered comparison between the Internet and Ethereum.
While the Internet operates primarily as an information protocol, Ethereum is increasingly emerging as a value protocol—a neutral settlement layer upon which large-scale economic systems can be built.
At the base level, both operate as public goods, allowing global participation without exclusion. Higher layers, however, support private goods, institutional applications, and commercial activity.
This layered architecture helps explain why Ethereum’s systemic importance cannot be measured solely by transaction throughput or fee revenue.
A New Framework for Valuing Ethereum
To address this gap, the report also introduces a three-part framework for valuing Ethereum as a public good: captured value, flow value, and trust surplus.
Captured value reflects traditional financial metrics such as fees and token economics. Flow value measures Ethereum’s broader economic contribution across decentralized applications, financial markets, and institutional use cases.
Trust surplus—the most novel component—captures the economic value generated by reducing friction across global transactions, writes Mougayar.
The Trust Dividend Compounding Globally
According to the Ethereum thread, trust surplus emerges through “reduced settlement friction, reduced verification cost, reduced counterparty risk, reduced fraud, and reduced reconciliation overhead.”
This “trust dividend,” as described in the report, compounds over time as more users and institutions rely on the network. Importantly, this reframing shifts Ethereum’s competitive environment.
Rather than competing directly with other blockchains, Ethereum is “competing with the status quo of global coordination.”
Competing With the Status Quo, Not Other Chains
Just as the Internet reorganized information flows, Ethereum is reorganizing how value moves, settles, and is trusted across borders. As a result, the report argues Ethereum’s long-term strength lies not in maximizing short-term revenue or raw transaction speed, but in enabling trust minimization, economic settlement, and institutional adoption at a global scale.
“If you want to understand Ethereum’s value to the world,” the Ethereum account wrote, “look at dependency, flows, and trust minimization. That’s where public-good value accrues.”
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