Crypto and Defi Explained
Crypto and Defi Explained
I’m seeing a major uptick recently in DePin (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure) projects. The basic idea of DePin is to expand the sharing economy to computation. Rather than restricting compute providers to a few tech-oligarchs like Amazon the DePin movement is democratizing that access. BTC and ETH PoW were the early permissionless players for decentralized computation …
One of the cornerstones of permissionlessness is that each participant must have something at stake. The standard thing at stake for almost every protocol, whether on-chain or chain-adjacent, is some provably scarce token that is subject to some kind of slashing condition. I commonly see this referred to as stake but that term is often …
As part of my tokenomic consulting work I’m building a kind of meta-inventory of tokenomic patterns and anti-patterns in my head. This is akin to things like tvtropes for writers or design patterns for programming but for game-theory. I call the set of anti-patterns Moloch’s Toolbox. These are qualitative criteria amongst actors in an ecosystem that lead …
The most beautiful thing about mankind isn’t our ability to understand the world as it is, it is to imagine the world as it isn’t and shape it. The denizens of the deepest parts of The Rabbit Hole, the areas furthest from common understanding, are dreamers. They can imagine a world where you are in …
3/18/23 DID (Decentralized ID) systems are a hot topic right now. They are needed for everything from free to play games, social media networks, and airdrops to governance systems like OPs Citizens House. There is (rightly so) a lot of buzz and various takes on how to approach this topic. I think this is one …
1/29/23 I’ve written before about existing forms of NFTs that were popular in the last bull run. Briefly you can lump them into the following categories: If these aren’t where the next opportunity is have NFTs already peaked like utility tokens did in 2017? I think not, but the form of them will be different …
11/28/22 I’d like you to consider a question we only seem to entertain in the throws of a bull market: what if we’re right? There is a very real chance that the wealth we will have acquired in a few dozen years from this whole internet of money thing will be life changing not just …
11/12/22 With the recent implosion of FTX the topic of self-custody has become suddenly popular again. So, let’s review some strategies for how to self-custody your assets safely. I know some of this is intimidating. If this is your first time doing it, you have never been exposed to cryptography primitives before. It can all …
Sometimes people ask me why I’m passionate about crypto. Yes, there are fortunes to be made here but I’ve made money in stocks before with far less time and interest invested. It’s not simple curiosity. There’s endless knowledge to be gained in a variety of technical fields and I’m plenty curious about genetics and AI …
This post is targeted at more of a developer audience than my usual writings. Whatever technical jargon is here shouldn’t distract from the point too much if you just skim past it and keep reading. Whenever I see the too-often FUD about some country evicting miners, KYCing wallets, or suing some company or other I …