Alias knew it was inevitable. The moment Pegged gained traction, people would compare it to Ethereum. Not because it was similar, but because Ethereum had become the default reference for "programmable money," "DAOs," and "decentralized finance." It was a trap, a category mistake waiting to happen, and Alias needed to kill the confusion before it spread.
He grabbed his notebook. The five core principles of Pegged were already set in stone. Finality, trustless execution, utility over speculation, usage over adoption, and independence from the system. How did these differ from Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum? The differences were obvious to him, but they needed to be precise, sharp, irrefutable.
1. Pegged is Final. Ethereum is Flexible.
Ethereum prided itself on being programmable, adaptable, upgradable. It was an evolving ecosystem, not a fixed system. Hard forks, rollups, layer-2 scaling—Ethereum was a living experiment in modular finance. Pegged, by contrast, was not an experiment. It was a conclusion. Immutable, irreversible, untouchable. No planned upgrades, no evolving roadmaps. The moment Pegged launched, it was finished.
Ethereum aimed to be a world computer. Pegged aims to be an irreversible execution layer.
2. Pegged Does Not Ask for Trust. Ethereum Compromises to Maintain Network Effects.
Ethereum had started with noble intentions—unstoppable smart contracts, censorship resistance, trustless computation. But the reality was different. The DAO hack had set the precedent: the chain could be reversed. The Merge had demonstrated another truth: Ethereum was willing to centralize in order to scale.
Pegged would never make these trade-offs. It would never fork, never roll back, never transition to a different security model. The code is set at deployment, and that is it. Ethereum optimized for coordination. Pegged optimizes for absolute execution.
3. Pegged Is Not an Investment. Ethereum Thrives on Speculation.
Ethereum’s lifeblood was yield-seeking behavior. Staking, MEV extraction, DeFi farming, liquidity pools—it was a system designed to attract capital. The promise of perpetual innovation kept investors engaged, developers funded, and institutions interested.
Pegged has zero tolerance for speculation. There are no staking rewards, no ever-expanding roadmap of “new features”. Pegged’s lotteries absorb speculative pressure so that the stablecoin ($PEG) remains purely transactional.
Ethereum encouraged financial engineering. Pegged discourages it.
4. Pegged Does Not Seek Adoption. Ethereum Seeks Legitimacy.
Ethereum wanted institutional acceptance. It fought for regulatory clarity, integration with corporate finance, and compliance with governments and central banks. Pegged, on the other hand, is not a competitor to the system—it is indifferent to it.
Ethereum wanted to be part of the financial infrastructure of the world. Pegged wants to be ignored until needed. No lobbying. No marketing. No conferences. Pegged doesn’t "seek adoption" because it doesn’t need adoption. It simply functions.
5. Pegged Does Not Fight the System. It Ignores It.
Ethereum played a political game. It engaged with regulators, tried to frame itself as useful for institutions, sought to establish public-private partnerships.
Pegged doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t present itself as a revolution. It is designed to slip past attention, not to fight for legitimacy.
Ethereum wanted to be part of the conversation. Pegged wants to be left out of it entirely.
Alias lit his pipe, satisfied.
Ethereum’s strength was also its weakness: it was too big to be ignored, too open to avoid capture, too adaptable to resist centralization pressures.
