Most Influential 2021: Danny Ryan

Did Danny Ryan, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, make ETH “super sound money?” The jury is still out. More data needs to be collected to determine how deflationary the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization may have become following a network update Ryan led.

This summer, Ethereum’s much-anticipated London hard fork went live. And with it, Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) 1559, 3554, 3529, 3198 and 3541, or code upgrades that aimed to improve the Ethereum network’s user experience and value proposition. Most notable was EIP 1559, a change to the network’s gas protocol, which even if it didn’t make Ethereum burn more coins than it mints, made transaction fees more predictable.

Ryan also played a major role in the 2020 launch of the Beacon chain, the first step toward Ethereum 2.0, or the ambitious plan to move Ethereum to proof-of-stake. There’s more coming down the pike.

The Complete List: CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2021

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