The big ugly problem facing the crypto space: Will any of the products and protocols funded by speculation use cases have any use at all for mainstream use cases? Do Curve or Aave or DAI matter for people who aren’t using the blockchain like an underregulated casino?
There’s an ongoing quest for legit non-speculation use cases: Private blockchains for enterprise coordination. Banking the underbanked. P2P payments. Payroll. Identity. Fundraising. But we’re trying to develop these narratives around people and projects mostly just here to gamble. Those are the early adopters.
To me, crypto's core differentiating proposition is "credible neutrality" Ie, you can count on network to enforce whatever digital thing you value (not just money, but also info, social graph, etc) With good Govs and good Corps, you don't really feel a need for this. But when they turn adverse... bam! it's useful.
I read this as “the guy problem facing the crypto space” I have no idea why. Some meta?
I think the problem is most people still think of crypto as a finance industry when it’s just a tech industry. Finance is a set of activities - the medium on which we do it is just a tool. Making a token or a stock (.com bubble) doesn’t magically create value - it’s just information. In the future. . .
I don't think the earliest examples of crypto / DeFi need to define the value the industry will provide long term Aave, for example, is a super strong team that has continued to ship innovative blockchain products Now many more users know about Lens and they might not care at all about Aave
Classic Crossing the Chasm At what point do they find the mass adoption use case that’s not just mass speculation?
100%, just not in its raw form. unfortunately, the challenge has been cooperating in a normally pvp game. imho we need scalability more than anything because the automated pvp behavior can be abstracted away to a different layer and more regen instruments can encapsulate that.
If anything they are incredible learning experiences on how to build credibly neutral, permissionless, composable systems. I’ll take it for just that.
In my view the best use case already exists, it’s an opt out of traditional banking. The power and benefits of self-custody haven’t been exposed to the masses yet, although the 2023 cracks in fractional reserve banking could be speeding this up. Improved self-custody UX will onboard them with time.
I agree the casino narrative is strongest right now. But that's not surprising. The oldest asset is a something “coin” and created as a reaction to a flawed tradfi system after all. The casino narrative has just had the most time to mature. You can see mainstream use cases coming into production though.
I think the lack of legal clarity is the primary reason we don’t see mainstream use cases. At least more so than the tech not being able to provide them. Fwiw, DAI has like 700m in RWA backing I think
I dont agree with this framing at all. First of all, many businesses operate on speculation. Casinos are often profitable businesses. The returns from the stock market are driven by only a small subset of stocks. Most stocks do not actually deliver returns. But no one argues that these are not valuable.