I. The Problem with Being a Tenant

Deploying on Existing Chains

Most blockchain projects deploy smart contracts on established networks—Ethereum, Polygon, Solana. This is sensible for many use cases. You inherit security, liquidity, and tooling. You focus on your application, not infrastructure.

But this approach carries assumptions:

You are a guest on someone else's infrastructure. The chain's priorities may not align with yours. Validator incentives, governance decisions, and protocol upgrades happen around you, not with you. You adapt to the host's evolution.

Your constraints are contractual, not architectural. If you want to prevent speculation, you write code that blocks transfers. But the underlying infrastructure still assumes transferability as default. You're fighting the architecture rather than building with it.

Your permanence depends on the host's permanence. If the host chain fails, migrates, or changes incompatibly, your infrastructure fails with it. You've built on rented ground.

For financial applications, these tradeoffs are acceptable. For cultural infrastructure meant to last generations, they are not.