Have you heard of the disguised unemployment? It refers to a situation in which a part of the workforce seems to be used, but does not contribute to the production of the economy. Consider the massive loss of capital expenses of ghost cities, which represent an unoccupied infrastructure.
Something similar can be said of the main intelligent contract block chains, which houses hundreds of decentralized protocols. Of these, only a minority is generating income, while the rest does not produce performance, which freely represents the ghost digital cities and a form of unemployment disguised.
According to Defillama, Ethereum is the world’s largest smart contract block chain, which houses 1,271 protocols. However, in the last 30 days, an amazing 88%, or 1,121 projects in total, did not generate income.
The rival of Ethereum, Solana, has a much smaller ecosystem, which houses 264 protocols, of which 75% has not generated income in recent days.
In other words, a large number of protocols in the two chains have not captured any value lately, as well as the workforce that attracts a salary but does not contribute to production, or ghost cities that are not being used to generate significant economic performance.
Key insights
Inactive projects are not necessarily a direct load on the processing power of the network in the same way that it is a congested network, but they propose an indirect burden in the following ways:
Storage load
Each intelligent, active or not, is stored in the block chain forever. These immutable data add to the size of the block chain, and all nodes in the network must store and maintain this history. As the total number of contracts grows, so do the storage and bandwidth requirements to execute a node. While the effect of a single inactive contract is minimal, a “ghost city” of thousands of them adds over time, increasing the long -term operating costs of the network.
Safety and vulnerability risks
The existence of a large number of inactive or abandoned contracts creates a larger attack surface. An intelligent contract, even if it is no longer used, can contain vulnerability that, if exploited, could have unforeseen consequences for other parts of the ecosystem or blocked funds within it. This introduces a systemic risk layer for the network that safety investigators and auditors must continually monitor.
Economic inefficiency
This is where the “disguised unemployment” analogy is more suitable. While these projects are not causing congestion, they represent a collective fault of capital time and developer to create a productive asset in the network. Funds, time and effort spent to implement these projects are effectively blocked in a non -productive state, which is a drag on the general efficiency of the ecosystem.
Just as a physical ghost city represents a massive investment of capital and labor that does not produce economic yield, the multitude of non -generating blockchains revenue protocols represents the effort and capital of the wasted developer that does not contribute to the productivity of the network.
Obstacle to user experience
A large number of inactive projects can make new users find and trust legitimate and active protocols. Samiting through a sea of missing or failed projects can be confusing and can subtract value from the general experience of the user.
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