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The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have

The only cash flows into the ecosystem have been from ICOs. The SEC is cracking down on such activities. Besides investment cash flow, I don't think there have been any revenue generating ventures that cater to customers outside the Web3 ecosystem. The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. I am curious how people will answer your second question.

Animats 3y ago
> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and settled through central banks. It's much like FedWire, but faster, cheaper, and for smaller amounts. You buy houses with FedWire; you buy dinner with FedNow. It's an inter-bank system, like Visa; you have to have an account with a bank to use it. Chase and Wells Fargo are on board, but Bank of America is not. This will bring the US up to date with the other countries that have national payment systems. Anybody in the US involved in moving money around needs to get up to speed on FedNow. Fast. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow
- 26fingies 3y ago
  one of the really nice things about SEPA is the 0-fee instant transfer (ime 45-60 seconds). Will FedNow be able to do the same thing?
  - nailer 3y ago
    Crypto is 1-2 seconds for about 0.0025 USD worldwide right now.
    - growt 3y ago
      Really? What crypto exactly and how?
    - oblio 3y ago
      Which crypto? Where can I pay with it? What if I don't want to have a hardware wallet everywhere with me? Can I cancel transactions and get my money back? Does it use more energy per year than Argentina?
      - nailer 3y ago
        Good questions. Solana is the largest of the cheap/fast networks - I’ve worked in Solana for a year - but Aptos and Sui also have solid tech. You use Safari on your iPhone and unlock your wallet with FaceID. Right now physical stores that take USDC are generally luxury goods marketplaces, physical art galleries, and PC hardware marketplaces. No you can’t cancel transactions after you’ve made them, however there are escrow services that provide similar facilities for a small fee. No it’s proof of stake so the environment is fine.
        ix-ix 3y ago
        Oops, during your transfer the value of the currency is now 80% of what it was!
        nailer 3y ago
        https://www.coinbase.com/converter/usdc/usd https://www.coinbase.com/converter/usdc/usd
        oblio 3y ago
        This sounds promising, I'll get back to you in 10 years.
        nailer 3y ago
        A completely reasonable reply. There’s a lot of good tech around, it’s definitely better than HN’s 2017-era crypto knowledge, but it’s not evenly distributed at all. I agree the proof will be in a decade. Personally I jumped into Linux when it was a joke and everyone used Solaris, Python when it was a joke and everyone used Perl, and virtualisation when nobody would ever use it outside testing. I know I’m early in crypto. I hope it will work out but there’s no guarantees on anything.
  - Animats 3y ago
    The Fed will charge banks a fee of $0.045 per transaction.[1] Transactions take a few seconds. They must finish within 20 seconds or they time out, and they're expected to take much less time. Here's a technical overview.[2] The bank to Fed to bank API uses IBM MQ and ISO 20022. These are a bit dated but widely used in the financial sector. Down at the bottom, it's XML. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/fednow-2023 https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/fednow-2023 [2] https://explore.fednow.org/resources/technical-overview-guide-4.24.pdf https://explore.fednow.org/resources/technical-overview-guid...
    - mdaniel 3y ago
      Thank you for posting the actual technical pdf, that was interesting reading > Certificate-Based Authentication Heh, so I can look forward to the biennial banking outage as they forget to renew their certs :-D But in seriousness, I have some experience with x509 auth from the early days of kubernetes using it and unless the system has some robust CRL mechanisms I look forward to knowing how such a scheme will deauthorize users Interestingly, they also seem to be doing belt-and-suspenders since the messages themselves are signed with the private key of the institution, which appears to be registered out of band from the system itself
    - rsynnott 3y ago
      Dated?! By banking tech standards, ISO 20022 is futuristic magic, a mere decade old. A lot of banks (particularly in the US) would still be using ISO 15022 or even older standards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- nailer 3y ago
  > The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo So exactly like crypto except US specific.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Yeah, except for the fact that regular people will actually be able to use it to buy potatoes using a real currency, not a "currency" that's more volatile than tulip bulbs were in the 1600s.
    - nailer 3y ago
      i’m not sure if you’ve use crypto before, but people buy things in USDC all the time.
      - oblio 3y ago
        I'm new at this, I need a bag of potatoes. Where can I buy them with USDC?
        nailer 3y ago
        Where can I buy them with Fednow?
        oblio 3y ago
        Right now, probably nowhere, it's just being introduced. Afterwards, if it's anything like SEPA, aside from my joke "bag of potatoes" comment, everywhere. In Europe you can make SEPA or SEPA backed transfers almost everywhere.
        nailer 3y ago
        I live in Europe and have never seen a single potato retailer advertise SEPA. Electronic payments are all Visa and Mastercard.
- elwebmaster 3y ago
  Sounds like ACH
  - oblio 3y ago
    Just for the regular Joe.
  - Animats 3y ago
    It is like ACH, but it settles in seconds, rather than in hours. The current "same day" ACH schedule is that payments that make into the day's batch must be received at the Fed by 4:45 p.m. ET, a target file distribution time of 5:30 p.m. ET, and a settlement time of 6:00 p.m. ET. It's all batch files. Anything that re-bills periodically will remain on ACH. ACH handles requests to debit someone else's account with ACH, and they can undo that later. That runs on a 3-day cycle. FedNow has to be initiated from the money sender end.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. 1000%. The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes. Of course, backend enterprise tech is pretty "boring", and the transition will take many years/decades given that our existing financial system currently depends on these old settlement systems that are based on manual, file based-processes from the first half of the last century. This is not the kind of technology transition likely to attract celebrity endorsements or bubblicious "crypto towns" like Miami and Austin.
- troupo 3y ago
  > The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes. And what is the actual utility beyond just the (usually unnecessary) upgrade?
david_shi 3y ago
You can see the revenue generated by Ethereum here: https://defillama.com/fees/ethereum https://defillama.com/fees/ethereum The reason why protocols are able to generate cash flow is precisely because there is demand for blockspace by customers.

Animats 3y ago

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. That happens in the US this month, but it has nothing to do with crypto. The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo. This is like Pix in Brazil, SEPA in the EU, WePay in China, etc. - a fast payment system run by banks and settled through central banks. It's much like FedWire, but faster, cheaper, and for smaller amounts. You buy houses with FedWire; you buy dinner with FedNow. It's an inter-bank system, like Visa; you have to have an account with a bank to use it. Chase and Wells Fargo are on board, but Bank of America is not. This will bring the US up to date with the other countries that have national payment systems. Anybody in the US involved in moving money around needs to get up to speed on FedNow. Fast. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow

26fingies 3y ago
one of the really nice things about SEPA is the 0-fee instant transfer (ime 45-60 seconds). Will FedNow be able to do the same thing?
- nailer 3y ago
  Crypto is 1-2 seconds for about 0.0025 USD worldwide right now.
  - growt 3y ago
    Really? What crypto exactly and how?
  - oblio 3y ago
    Which crypto? Where can I pay with it? What if I don't want to have a hardware wallet everywhere with me? Can I cancel transactions and get my money back? Does it use more energy per year than Argentina?
    - nailer 3y ago
      Good questions. Solana is the largest of the cheap/fast networks - I’ve worked in Solana for a year - but Aptos and Sui also have solid tech. You use Safari on your iPhone and unlock your wallet with FaceID. Right now physical stores that take USDC are generally luxury goods marketplaces, physical art galleries, and PC hardware marketplaces. No you can’t cancel transactions after you’ve made them, however there are escrow services that provide similar facilities for a small fee. No it’s proof of stake so the environment is fine.
      - ix-ix 3y ago
        Oops, during your transfer the value of the currency is now 80% of what it was!
        nailer 3y ago
        https://www.coinbase.com/converter/usdc/usd https://www.coinbase.com/converter/usdc/usd
      - oblio 3y ago
        This sounds promising, I'll get back to you in 10 years.
        nailer 3y ago
        A completely reasonable reply. There’s a lot of good tech around, it’s definitely better than HN’s 2017-era crypto knowledge, but it’s not evenly distributed at all. I agree the proof will be in a decade. Personally I jumped into Linux when it was a joke and everyone used Solaris, Python when it was a joke and everyone used Perl, and virtualisation when nobody would ever use it outside testing. I know I’m early in crypto. I hope it will work out but there’s no guarantees on anything.
- Animats 3y ago
  The Fed will charge banks a fee of $0.045 per transaction.[1] Transactions take a few seconds. They must finish within 20 seconds or they time out, and they're expected to take much less time. Here's a technical overview.[2] The bank to Fed to bank API uses IBM MQ and ISO 20022. These are a bit dated but widely used in the financial sector. Down at the bottom, it's XML. [1] https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/fednow-2023 https://www.frbservices.org/resources/fees/fednow-2023 [2] https://explore.fednow.org/resources/technical-overview-guide-4.24.pdf https://explore.fednow.org/resources/technical-overview-guid...
  - mdaniel 3y ago
    Thank you for posting the actual technical pdf, that was interesting reading > Certificate-Based Authentication Heh, so I can look forward to the biennial banking outage as they forget to renew their certs :-D But in seriousness, I have some experience with x509 auth from the early days of kubernetes using it and unless the system has some robust CRL mechanisms I look forward to knowing how such a scheme will deauthorize users Interestingly, they also seem to be doing belt-and-suspenders since the messages themselves are signed with the private key of the institution, which appears to be registered out of band from the system itself
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Dated?! By banking tech standards, ISO 20022 is futuristic magic, a mere decade old. A lot of banks (particularly in the US) would still be using ISO 15022 or even older standards.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nailer 3y ago
> The Federal Reserve System is launching FedNow, a 24/7 instant settlement system which obsoletes middlemen such as Zelle, Paypal, and Venmo So exactly like crypto except US specific.
- oblio 3y ago
  Yeah, except for the fact that regular people will actually be able to use it to buy potatoes using a real currency, not a "currency" that's more volatile than tulip bulbs were in the 1600s.
  - nailer 3y ago
    i’m not sure if you’ve use crypto before, but people buy things in USDC all the time.
    - oblio 3y ago
      I'm new at this, I need a bag of potatoes. Where can I buy them with USDC?
      - nailer 3y ago
        Where can I buy them with Fednow?
        oblio 3y ago
        Right now, probably nowhere, it's just being introduced. Afterwards, if it's anything like SEPA, aside from my joke "bag of potatoes" comment, everywhere. In Europe you can make SEPA or SEPA backed transfers almost everywhere.
        nailer 3y ago
        I live in Europe and have never seen a single potato retailer advertise SEPA. Electronic payments are all Visa and Mastercard.
elwebmaster 3y ago
Sounds like ACH
- oblio 3y ago
  Just for the regular Joe.
- Animats 3y ago
  It is like ACH, but it settles in seconds, rather than in hours. The current "same day" ACH schedule is that payments that make into the day's batch must be received at the Fed by 4:45 p.m. ET, a target file distribution time of 5:30 p.m. ET, and a settlement time of 6:00 p.m. ET. It's all batch files. Anything that re-bills periodically will remain on ACH. ACH handles requests to debit someone else's account with ACH, and they can undo that later. That runs on a 3-day cycle. FedNow has to be initiated from the money sender end.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> The true web3 players will be traditional finance companies upgrading their settlement systems. 1000%. The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes. Of course, backend enterprise tech is pretty "boring", and the transition will take many years/decades given that our existing financial system currently depends on these old settlement systems that are based on manual, file based-processes from the first half of the last century. This is not the kind of technology transition likely to attract celebrity endorsements or bubblicious "crypto towns" like Miami and Austin.

troupo 3y ago
> The one place where I think blockchain and crypto can have real utility is from large, legacy financial institutions upgrading their very, very, very antiquated backend settlement technology and processes. And what is the actual utility beyond just the (usually unnecessary) upgrade?

david_shi 3y ago

You can see the revenue generated by Ethereum here: https://defillama.com/fees/ethereum https://defillama.com/fees/ethereum The reason why protocols are able to generate cash flow is precisely because there is demand for blockspace by customers.