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These posts always seem to focus on Bitcoin which of course is easy to dismiss and isn't likely to make any major changes anytime soon. If you want to talk abou

by Sargos 6y ago

These posts always seem to focus on Bitcoin which of course is easy to dismiss and isn't likely to make any major changes anytime soon. If you want to talk about a financial network and something end users would actually use then articles should focus on something like Ethereum which does support decentralized finance applications and has easy to use interfaces such as Argent that normal people can use without technical knowledge. >Crazy price gyrations are far too wicked for the regular money-using public to tolerate This is what stablecoins such as DAI and USDC are for. People will use stablecoins for their everyday lives as it's built for being a medium of exchange. >It's too awkward for most people This is still true to an extent but most people would have no problem using Argent. Average people need easy to use savings accounts. Easy ways to save and invest their money for the future. One click ways to purchase products. These can't happen on Bitcoin but they already exist on Ethereum and DeFi. All possible in a trustless way. There's a lot of development happening on web3 right now but if you focus entirely on Bitcoin you will miss the important parts of what make this space interesting.

mdoms 6y ago
"This article about Bitcoin only focuses on Bitcoin".
centimeter 6y ago
Stablecoins are either actually unstable or fully centralized. They aren’t germane to this discussion.
- Sargos 6y ago
  There are multiple decentralized stablecoins out there. DAI is the most well known and works pretty well. sUSD also works well. mStable is the best of both worlds and uses both decentralized and centralized stablecoins in a basket to form an even more stable, stable coin. They are very relevant to the discussion as stablecoins will be the primary way people interact with decentralized services and decentralized stablecoins retain the decentralized and trustless properties that make BTC and ETH valuable.
  - centimeter 6y ago
    No decentralized stablecoin actually makes economic sense. Several have collapsed. https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-the-peg-every-stablecoin-has-its-points-of-failure https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-the-peg-every-stable...
    - dnprock 6y ago
      DAI is made by pegging on Ethereum. Ethereum is a volatile asset due to its limited supply. DAI is inherently volatile. Its peg can fail. No amount of algorithm and automation can fix the problem. To be digital native, you need to accept some level of volatility. DAI promises the impossible. I wrote about this issue. https://bitflate.org/post/2020/03/14/the-problem-with-dai.html https://bitflate.org/post/2020/03/14/the-problem-with-dai.ht...
monokh 6y ago
> These can't happen on Bitcoin but they already exist on Ethereum and DeFi. All possible in a trustless way. In reality, just about every DeFi platform is not trustless nor are the usecases possible in a trustless way. Uniswap is one exception that comes to mind. The parallel is that you can have the existing financial systems replicated on Bitcoin, Ethereum, with some additional properties and tradeoffs. I don't think you could make that kind of comparison with ham radio?
- Sargos 6y ago
  >In reality, just about every DeFi platform is not trustless nor are the usecases possible in a trustless way While this is true in these early days where developers need the ability to upgrade contracts and quickly fix bugs it is not the long term state of these projects and all of the major ones have defined paths to full decentralization. It's important to note that even today all of these services are non-custodial which is already a huge step up from the status quo. The amount of centralization is also variable with some projects able to upgrade certain portions of their systems but not all of it and other projects simply having an emergency kill switch they can use in case of a critical bug but can't actually change the contract. It's definitely not perfect right now but it's already better than traditional systems with things becoming more trustless over time. Eventually these services will be as fixed as Uniswap/Balancer/etc as things get more stable.
  - monokh 6y ago
    "The path to decentralisation" for these projects are usually very primitive and don't actually arrive at the broad claims. Too often it's just putting wall paper over the hole in the wall. A DAO it self doesn't bring you decentralisation, the hardest problem is how you determine the members of the DAO. With how this is being played (tokens) you arrive at oligarchy or a federation, not decentralisation. The developers know this. That's why you don't see anything but baby steps forward with regards to decreasing their power over the protocols. Ditto on the non custodial claims, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've seen this term used to describe a product and for it to actually be the case.
fsewe20 6y ago
Totally agree. The amount of innovation in defi over the past year is stunning, the people still dismissing cryptocurrency as as some bubble/fad are missing out on really interesting tech both in finance and governance. A lot of people in the space made a lot of money a couple years back (on what was a bubble) but that means they are now are set for life and can dedicate themselves fully to working on the tech, and its all starting to click together. You don't have to buy into it with your money if you dont want too, you can still explore the tech. https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/ https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/ https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/

by Sargos 6y ago

mdoms 6y ago

"This article about Bitcoin only focuses on Bitcoin".

centimeter 6y ago

Stablecoins are either actually unstable or fully centralized. They aren’t germane to this discussion.

Sargos 6y ago
There are multiple decentralized stablecoins out there. DAI is the most well known and works pretty well. sUSD also works well. mStable is the best of both worlds and uses both decentralized and centralized stablecoins in a basket to form an even more stable, stable coin. They are very relevant to the discussion as stablecoins will be the primary way people interact with decentralized services and decentralized stablecoins retain the decentralized and trustless properties that make BTC and ETH valuable.
- centimeter 6y ago
  No decentralized stablecoin actually makes economic sense. Several have collapsed. https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-the-peg-every-stablecoin-has-its-points-of-failure https://cointelegraph.com/news/breaking-the-peg-every-stable...
  - dnprock 6y ago
    DAI is made by pegging on Ethereum. Ethereum is a volatile asset due to its limited supply. DAI is inherently volatile. Its peg can fail. No amount of algorithm and automation can fix the problem. To be digital native, you need to accept some level of volatility. DAI promises the impossible. I wrote about this issue. https://bitflate.org/post/2020/03/14/the-problem-with-dai.html https://bitflate.org/post/2020/03/14/the-problem-with-dai.ht...

monokh 6y ago

> These can't happen on Bitcoin but they already exist on Ethereum and DeFi. All possible in a trustless way. In reality, just about every DeFi platform is not trustless nor are the usecases possible in a trustless way. Uniswap is one exception that comes to mind. The parallel is that you can have the existing financial systems replicated on Bitcoin, Ethereum, with some additional properties and tradeoffs. I don't think you could make that kind of comparison with ham radio?

Sargos 6y ago
>In reality, just about every DeFi platform is not trustless nor are the usecases possible in a trustless way While this is true in these early days where developers need the ability to upgrade contracts and quickly fix bugs it is not the long term state of these projects and all of the major ones have defined paths to full decentralization. It's important to note that even today all of these services are non-custodial which is already a huge step up from the status quo. The amount of centralization is also variable with some projects able to upgrade certain portions of their systems but not all of it and other projects simply having an emergency kill switch they can use in case of a critical bug but can't actually change the contract. It's definitely not perfect right now but it's already better than traditional systems with things becoming more trustless over time. Eventually these services will be as fixed as Uniswap/Balancer/etc as things get more stable.
- monokh 6y ago
  "The path to decentralisation" for these projects are usually very primitive and don't actually arrive at the broad claims. Too often it's just putting wall paper over the hole in the wall. A DAO it self doesn't bring you decentralisation, the hardest problem is how you determine the members of the DAO. With how this is being played (tokens) you arrive at oligarchy or a federation, not decentralisation. The developers know this. That's why you don't see anything but baby steps forward with regards to decreasing their power over the protocols. Ditto on the non custodial claims, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've seen this term used to describe a product and for it to actually be the case.

fsewe20 6y ago

Totally agree. The amount of innovation in defi over the past year is stunning, the people still dismissing cryptocurrency as as some bubble/fad are missing out on really interesting tech both in finance and governance. A lot of people in the space made a lot of money a couple years back (on what was a bubble) but that means they are now are set for life and can dedicate themselves fully to working on the tech, and its all starting to click together. You don't have to buy into it with your money if you dont want too, you can still explore the tech. https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/ https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/ https://gitcoin.co/ https://gitcoin.co/