People sometimes ask me what my vision of DeFi is. This is a very tough question. DeFi is very messy with thousands of experiments happening. But high level, I think DeFi will go through 2 phases:

During the 1st phase (next 2-5 years), we'll continue to build games, casinos, and speculative products.
This sounds uninspiring. But it has two main important consequences.

1) This will ultimately lead to hundreds of millions of users to install wallets and get uncomfortable with the UX.

2) This will force the tech (especially scaling) to mature.
Once we've achieved these two goals, phase 2 begins. In phase 2, products that serve real economic activities / integrated with the real economy will be built and flourish.
Right now, such products barely exist. @terra_money comes to mind. But this is the kind of products that I really look forward to. They are more economically sustainable, and create more value.
In a way, we saw the same 2 phases with #BTC. In the early days, BTC was primarily a speculative asset. Nowadays, it still is, but it's transitioning into the 2nd phase where it's considered an 'emerging store of value'.
Matter of fact, arguably the most important component of capital markets is lending / credit / fixed income. In TradFi, this function is largely manipulated by central banks. In DeFi, it's driven by speculative activities aka phase 1.
In hindsight, phase 1 has also played a critical role in bootstrapping the lending / credit / fixed income market in DeFi. This will pave the way for phase 2.
Moreover, in phase 2, I don't expect DeFi to become a 'parallel financial system'. Instead, I expect traditional financial services companies to build their products in DeFi. Just like traditional media companies moved their business onto the Internet.
If 'the Internet' existed before 'finance' did, I think that's exactly how finance would've been built. On open protocols. Rather in wall gardens.

At the end of phase 2, the 'De' in DeFi will just be removed, and it will just be 'finance'.

More from Tech

I think about this a lot, both in IT and civil infrastructure. It looks so trivial to “fix” from the outside. In fact, it is incredibly draining to do the entirely crushing work of real policy changes internally. It’s harder than drafting a blank page of how the world should be.


I’m at a sort of career crisis point. In my job before, three people could contain the entire complexity of a nation-wide company’s IT infrastructure in their head.

Once you move above that mark, it becomes exponentially, far and away beyond anything I dreamed, more difficult.

And I look at candidates and know-everything’s who think it’s all so easy. Or, people who think we could burn it down with no losses and start over.

God I wish I lived in that world of triviality. In moments, I find myself regretting leaving that place of self-directed autonomy.

For ten years I knew I could build something and see results that same day. Now I’m adjusting to building something in my mind in one day, and it taking a year to do the due-diligence and edge cases and documentation and familiarization and roll-out.

That’s the hard work. It’s not technical. It’s not becoming a rockstar to peers.
These people look at me and just see another self-important idiot in Security who thinks they understand the system others live. Who thinks “bad” designs were made for no reason.
Who wasn’t there.
"I really want to break into Product Management"

make products.

"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."

Make Products.

"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."

MAKE PRODUCTS.

Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics –
https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.


There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.

You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.

But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.

And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.

They find their own way.

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