The Growth of Midgard

Midgard flourished at a speed that even Thor had not anticipated. In two thousand and seventeen, the ICO summer caused thousands of projects to emerge in weeks. CryptoKitties, a simple digital game of collectible cats, congested all of Ethereum in December of that year. Not by being large. By being popular. And popular was only the beginning.

DeFi began to emerge. Contracts executed on their own. Uniswap, Compound, MakerDAO built new kinds of markets upon Thor's world. Each protocol added a layer. Each new user added a transaction. Each new block arrived fuller than the one before. Gas fees began to rise, slowly, then quickly, then absurdly: one hundred dollars to move tokens. Two hundred to use a DeFi protocol. Three hundred to participate in a launch.

Ethereum’s execution capacity was limited by gas per block, not a fixed transaction count. Complex operations consumed more of that budget than simple transfers. Midgard’s streets had become too narrow for growing demand.

Thor saw the problem. Scaling required years of research and multiple approaches. The Merge, still ahead, would change consensus; it did not promise a direct capacity increase or lower gas fees. Smaller mortals needed room to act before all construction was complete.

Ymir watched. Not with urgency. With the quiet certainty of those who know that when the earth cracks, the moment of the giants has come.