Good idea! But actually, it’s worth clarifying: the issue with DeFi on the EVM might be that it doesn’t support continuous millisecond-level price updates. And Ethereum (Mainnet) still has throughput issues, creating arbitrage opportunities due to the time lag.

the cool thing is LayerZero’s DVN and multisig could be 100% compromised across all signers & instances, and your application on the LayerZero protocol could remain 100% unaffected working perfectly fine with 0 losses if you just set up your config properly. 🤷🏼‍♂️

People might accuse me of grave dancing for saying it But we have to stop letting centralized things call themselves DeFi Admin key can drain all funds? CeFi Otherwise DeFi means nothing and it’s brand is destroyed No admin key can drain any version of Uniswap for a reason

A product is the thing you use to solve your problem or get a job done. People use products. Products thus serve those people. Not all people. Just the people with the specific problem the product aims to solve. The best products focus. If you have a loose screw, you reach for a screwdriver. Not a hammer. Not a penny. Not a multitool. A fucking screwdriver. A platform is a foundation for products. It's the technology, the infrastructure, the tooling, the resources. Eventually it is the ecosystem of people and APIs and libraries and other products and network effects. People do not use the platform. People build products on the platform. They build products that serve their users. The platform is the foundation. It is not the product. The best platforms are ones where every builder can build whatever they want without any blockers. You don't need approval. You know your users and their needs and you solve their problems. The platform unlocks and enables you to do that better, cheaper, more easily. If the platform does not allow you to create more value with the platform than without it then you don't use the platform. It's very simple. See: Base v OP Stack. The second-worst platform is a product that calls itself a platform. That non-platform end ups not empowering anyone while also not bothering to solving any problems or serving any user needs. It's bad, but mostly harmless (unless you are an employee there lol) No, the absolute worst platform is one that is actually a platform that actually has products built on it but suddenly fancies itself a product. If you are building on a platform that shifts to serve end-user directly, you should RUN THE FUCK AWAY. Their mission is no longer to empower anyone to build anything. It's to deliver their own products and solve their own user's needs. They will happily ignore/deprioritize/rug every other competing product. As they should. You cannot build a great product while building someone else's product at the same time. You cannot build a great platform if you are building a solution to a specific problem and specific user need. The EF is not building a product.

Great article! For a deeper look at the interactions, optimizations, and side flows within the ecosystem around @CurveFinance and @ConvexFinance, welcome to my research: dewhales.substack.com/p/the-…

Excellent breakdown of crypto neobanks by @0xfishylosopher. There are 20 crypto neobanks all essentially building the same product - differentiation is more critical than ever. The clearest opportunities: (1) small, geographic monopolies through stablecoin banking, or (2) novel credit primitives, such as undercollateralized lending models or unique private credit opportunities.

My gut feeling is that crypto natives are selling now because they expect a 1929 style crash. We're all watching Ray Dalio warn about the Big Cycle ending. We all see AI bubble posts. Watch same unemployment numbers, same WW3 fears etc. Then S&P doesn't dump. But crypto does. We're selling to each other. We're just vibe traders, always online, front-running each other. Being terminally online helped us be early on NFTs, memecoins, AI vibe coding before everyone else. But it also means we all trade the same direction at the same time. We FOMO as one and then we panic dump as one. Like in Pluribus on Apple TV, where a virus turns humanity into a hive mind. Everyone thinks and acts as one. That's basically us, just a dumber version. Boomers and institutions don't scroll CT 14 hours a day. They just hold. ETFs were supposed to bring in different time horizons with different types of holders. It hasn't happened. Crypto is still retail dominated. We think we're contrarians. But when every contrarian has the same thesis, that's just consensus. Maybe next cycle will be different.

1/ Scaling is finally working: Ethereum usage is up, but its footprint is down. For years, L1 and L2 activity were tied together: more usage meant more congestion, but that link is officially broken: post-Fusaka, they are negatively correlated (r = −0.67). 🧵Here is the visual proof that Ethereum has solved its scalability dilemma.

In fact, there could be many similar stories. At one point, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of crypto VCs loudly proclaiming themselves. But now it seems that things have quieted down. Where are all these VCs? Shima's story seems to shed light on their “quiet departure.”

Indeed, examining how current crypto cards work shows they take the worst of both systems. Banks can use DLT tech, but it barely connects with Web3 and DeFi (they're worlds apart). The future lies somewhere in between, but with the best qualities of both systems.

This story is insane. The founders of Fireflies AI (now worth $1B ) pretended to be an AI notetaker before the tech existed. The founders would: > Join meetings on mute as "Fred from Fireflies" > Take notes by hand while sitting silently > Send the "AI-generated" notes 10 minutes later They did this for 100 meetings to pay rent, before actually building the product that went on to become a unicorn.

👀👀👀👀