I first explain DeFi (the new Wall Street), NFTs, Web3, and all the other mind blowing projects built on Ethereum...
The most effective meme I’ve found for Ethereum is “Digital Economy”
From there it’s easy to layout how Ethereum is the foundation for a variety of digital institutions (protocols) built upon the same principles of decentralization as Bitcoin.
1/
I first explain DeFi (the new Wall Street), NFTs, Web3, and all the other mind blowing projects built on Ethereum...
If BTC is like gold - an asset that people store value in but don’t use as money.
Then ETH is like money - the most liquid asset in Ethereum’s on-chain economy that is demanded for a wide range of economic uses.
...but also eventually as the ultimate source of security for the Ethereum blockchain, stretching the idea of what money is.
https://t.co/OGDmAHcWkD
More from Crypto
I'm sure someone else has explained this, but it is just so cool and I want to explain how this works.
So Curve is awesome for swaps between similar assets, right? The fact that they trade very close to each other is a key part about how Curve works, using it's custom swap invariant function.
That's step 1
Step 2 is that Synthetix is awesome for creating "synthetic assets" (aka synths) which are assets that trade like other assets, that are backed by another, entirely different asset. Basically, a plastic banana that I can buy and sell like a real banana.
Synthetix has a feature that lets you swap between any two synths with zero slippage and a flat fee. That's because it is simply converting the sythentic asset into another synthetic asset, the backing for the synth doesn't change it just uses a different price oracle now.
This is important. Absolutely no slippage, at any size
Swap $1m sUSD for $1m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
Swap $10m sUSD for $10m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
swap $100m sUSD for $100m sBTC? Well, there isn't that many synths in Curve, yet but you get the point. The only limit is the pool depth
— Andre Cronje (@AndreCronjeTech) January 15, 2021
So Curve is awesome for swaps between similar assets, right? The fact that they trade very close to each other is a key part about how Curve works, using it's custom swap invariant function.
That's step 1
Step 2 is that Synthetix is awesome for creating "synthetic assets" (aka synths) which are assets that trade like other assets, that are backed by another, entirely different asset. Basically, a plastic banana that I can buy and sell like a real banana.
Synthetix has a feature that lets you swap between any two synths with zero slippage and a flat fee. That's because it is simply converting the sythentic asset into another synthetic asset, the backing for the synth doesn't change it just uses a different price oracle now.
This is important. Absolutely no slippage, at any size
Swap $1m sUSD for $1m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
Swap $10m sUSD for $10m sBTC? flat 0.3% fee
swap $100m sUSD for $100m sBTC? Well, there isn't that many synths in Curve, yet but you get the point. The only limit is the pool depth
2020 was a game changer for Ethereum.
The vast majority of its success was fueled by #DeFi.
Here's what happened in 5 Tweets 🔽
1) Governance Tokens 🪙
Projects gave complete ownership of billion dollar protocols to their users, often using retroactive airdrops.
Early adopters earned tokens for past usage, and token-based voting now dictates all technical
2) Liquidity Mining ⛏️
Power users were the first to earn on-going distribution by providing liquidity.
$COMP sparked the wave, with $BAL coining the term a few weeks
3) Yield Faming 🌾
Projects coupled liquidity mining and governance tokens to boost 'yields' by combining lending rates with an incentive layer.
APYs peaked as high as 1M% during 'DeFi summer', leading to a 'food coin' craze like $YAM and
4) Fair Launches ✅
Who needs investment when you can launch using yield farming?
@iearnfinance debuted $YFI with no formal funding, seeding a community treasury for self-sustainability.
The notion of a core team and community became one and the
The vast majority of its success was fueled by #DeFi.
Here's what happened in 5 Tweets 🔽
1) Governance Tokens 🪙
Projects gave complete ownership of billion dollar protocols to their users, often using retroactive airdrops.
Early adopters earned tokens for past usage, and token-based voting now dictates all technical
It pays to be a web3 power user.
— Coopahtroopa \U0001f525_\U0001f525 (@Cooopahtroopa) December 9, 2020
Five networks that issued retroactive airdrops to value added actors \U0001f4dd
2) Liquidity Mining ⛏️
Power users were the first to earn on-going distribution by providing liquidity.
$COMP sparked the wave, with $BAL coining the term a few weeks
BAL is live!
— Balancer Labs (@BalancerLabs) June 23, 2020
The 435k BAL for liquidity providers of the first three weeks of liquidity mining (145k per week) have just been sent out to the wallets used to provide liquidity on Balancer.https://t.co/pkXFzwzPVC
3) Yield Faming 🌾
Projects coupled liquidity mining and governance tokens to boost 'yields' by combining lending rates with an incentive layer.
APYs peaked as high as 1M% during 'DeFi summer', leading to a 'food coin' craze like $YAM and
Check out @Cooopahtroopa's latest post for all the #DeFi farmers out there \U0001f468\u200d\U0001f33e
— Zerion \U0001f3e6 (@zerion_io) June 26, 2020
Turns out @synthetix_io & @CurveFinance were ploughing the fields long before $COMP & $BAL came along.
Learn how to put your #crypto to work with this #yieldfarming 101 \U0001f4b8
\U0001f449 https://t.co/zYUKtqx3BK
4) Fair Launches ✅
Who needs investment when you can launch using yield farming?
@iearnfinance debuted $YFI with no formal funding, seeding a community treasury for self-sustainability.
The notion of a core team and community became one and the
2/ What is a Fair Launch?
— fair launch capital (@fairlaunchcap) August 26, 2020
A FL enables founders to bootstrap new crypto networks that are earned, owned, and governed by their community from the outset.
In this dynamic, everyone participates on equal footing\u2014there is no early access, pre-mine, or allocation of tokens.
0/ The Great Crypto Reversal
Key difference between the '17 and roaring 20s in crypto is that back then everyone was aping a16z and Naval.
Today everyone apes 3AC wanting to be the next Degen.
'17 was an idealistic *saving the world* kind of thing
20s is *me against the world*
1/ The financialization of crypto means more volatility but pretty long ascend to the top.
Multi-year bull and an ATH surprising even to the biggest bulls as the infinite Cantillon "wealth" is pumped into crypto
Crypto becomes the ultimate Cantillon insider circle-jerk.
2/ This will be one the most iconic ideological reversals in history, comparable to Google who was firmly against advertising but turned into the most powerful ad company ever.
3/ This scenario reminds me of the 90s privatization period in the post-socialist countries.
The regime transition allowed the communist party elite to benefit from the wild west form of "capitalism" that ensued, transferring (and multiplying) their wealth into the new regime.
4/ We are far from Satoshi's original vision . But words and intentions of *prophets* were used to manipulate and corrupt all throughout human history and this time it is no
Key difference between the '17 and roaring 20s in crypto is that back then everyone was aping a16z and Naval.
Today everyone apes 3AC wanting to be the next Degen.
'17 was an idealistic *saving the world* kind of thing
20s is *me against the world*
1/ The financialization of crypto means more volatility but pretty long ascend to the top.
Multi-year bull and an ATH surprising even to the biggest bulls as the infinite Cantillon "wealth" is pumped into crypto
Crypto becomes the ultimate Cantillon insider circle-jerk.
2/ This will be one the most iconic ideological reversals in history, comparable to Google who was firmly against advertising but turned into the most powerful ad company ever.
3/ This scenario reminds me of the 90s privatization period in the post-socialist countries.
The regime transition allowed the communist party elite to benefit from the wild west form of "capitalism" that ensued, transferring (and multiplying) their wealth into the new regime.
4/ We are far from Satoshi's original vision . But words and intentions of *prophets* were used to manipulate and corrupt all throughout human history and this time it is no
At "forever" Cantillon insiders are infinitely wealthy. Everybody else lives in pods & eats what the livestock eats, or joins the harem or household staff of an infinitaire.
— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) January 21, 2020
I've just read one of the most lucid, wide-ranging, cross-disciplinary critiques of cryptocurrency and blockchain I've yet to encounter. 1/
It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/
It comes from David "DSHR" Rosenthal, a distinguished technologist whose past achievements including helping to develop X11 and the core technologies for Nvidia.
https://t.co/tkAMShno4k 2/
Rosenthal's critique is a transcript of a lecture he gave to Stanford's EE380 class, adapted from a December 2021 talk for an investor conference. 3/
It is a bang-up-to-date synthesis of many of the critical writings on the subject, glued together with Rosenthal's own deep technical expertise. He calls it "Can We Mitigate Cryptocurrencies' Externalities?"
The presence of "externalities" in Rosenthal's title is key. 4/
Rosenthal identifies blockchainism's core ideology as emerging from "the libertarian culture of Silicon Valley and the cypherpunks," and states that "libertarianism's attraction is based on ignoring externalities."
This is an important critique of libertarianism. 5/
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So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
If everyone was holding bitcoin on the old x86 in their parents basement, we would be finding a price bottom. The problem is the risk is all pooled at a few brokerages and a network of rotten exchanges with counter party risk that makes AIG circa 2008 look like a good credit.
— Greg Wester (@gwestr) November 25, 2018
The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.
This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.
The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."
This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.
