[alexambarch]

> You can already rent compute globally and perform computation in an environment orders of magnitude faster than on the EVM

True, but Ethereum also has the benefit of having a globally agreed upon state that is transparent and traceable when a change occurs. Not saying this setup couldn't be done any other way, but the fact that all you need to enable yourself to make those changes is a digital token is what I find interesting about it. The use of this token combined with the fact that people arguably care about the state of this system is what I feel gives it intrinsic value.

[threeseed]

The problem is the shared state is so small and expensive that the majority of the state gets managed elsewhere and is merely linked to the chain.

And so it's debatable if you've really achieved all that much.

[yunohn]

What does this state hold exactly?

[alexambarch]

What entity an ENS record is registered to, who owns what JPEG, who sent who some Ether...

Ethereum is one big state machine so that state holds everything.