Blockchain and financial applications have been linked from the beginning. When Satoshi Nakamato published the original Bitcoin white paper in 2008, he titled it, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” Today, the lion’s share of crypto headlines are about financial losses. So it’s understandable that people associate chains with financial assets. But open, public blockchains have massive utility beyond financial applications. One of the first innovators to recognize this potential was Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin*. In Ethereum, the Russian-Canadian computer programmer has conceived, developed, and upgraded a decentralized chain with smart-contract functionality and made it into a transformative piece of infrastructure that enables new forms of political, corporate, and social organizations. (USDC circulates on many blockchains; as of January 12, 2023, a majority of the supply circulates on Ethereum.)In a conversation they recorded this past September in San Francisco at Converge22, Circle’s inaugural ecosystem summit, Vitalik and Jeremy Allaire reviewed Ethereum’s important technological progress, impediments to scaling utility, and the new models of cooperation this base layer of trust can enable.