Tom Dunleavy

Tom argues Ethereum is materially mispriced because fees are friction networks drive toward zero, not revenue—they've fallen from $50 per transaction to $0.20 while throughput tripled. Under proof of stake, ETH becomes the lock securing a vault: roughly $250B in stablecoins, tokenized assets, and L2 bridges sits atop only $72B of staked ETH. Using a framework where staked ETH should cover 3x the secured value, fair value lands near $6,900 versus $2,070 spot, scaling into the tens of thousands as stablecoin adoption and tokenized RWAs grow into the trillions.

Tom argues the $292M KelpDAO exploit and subsequent $13B TVL drain exposed severe DeFi mispricing: deposits earning 5% on major protocols like Aave accept BB-rated pricing for technically worse-than-CCC risk. Using TradFi credit frameworks, DeFi's 1.5-2.0% forward probability of default with 90% loss given default requires a fair yield floor of 12.55-13%, not 5.5%, because exploits cascade in minutes rather than quarters and composability failures create unauditable contagion that deposits absorb without protocol failure.