dmihal

You should check out the Zero Knowledge podcast (https://zeroknowledge.fm/)

It's a crypto/blockchain podcast, but very technical, it's focused around the advanced technology that makes up the ecosystem (zero-knowledge cryptography, multi-party computation, consensus algorithms, miner-extractable value, new blockchain programming languages, etc).

Very technical, almost nothing about investing. The downside, some episodes may be a bit hard to jump into due to the technical nature.

One project I'm following is Aztec Protocol. It's an Ethereum L2 (so faster & cheaper transactions, similar to Lightning) but it supports any Ethereum asset (ETH, USDC, WBTC) and is fully private.

Fees are a function of supply & demand.

High fees means there's tons of demand to use the chain.

Yes, it sucks for small users who are priced-out, but scaling solutions such as rollups should be launching within the next few weeks.

What serious borrower needs to pay 10% to access credit?

People who can make more than 10% trading?

Lending protocols aren't doing anything different than what banks do: allocating inactive capital to those who can make use of that capital and are willing to pay for it.

Interest rates are high because of A: market volatility, professional traders can easily make more than 10%, and B: information asymmetry, large capital pools haven't allocated to these pools.

The transaction flows aren't dependent on new holders, it's dependent on users.

If you somehow banned any new users from using Ethereum, existing users would continue to use Ethereum for the applications built on top of it.

Flash loans themselves are not an application, it's a primitive that other applications can build on top of.

There's many applications like DeFiSaver that use flash loans to allow users to migrate debt between lending protocols without needing additional capital.

People hate Robinhood after they blocked users from trading. Decentralized exchanges like Uniswap are impossible to shut down.

The same reason that Bitcoin hasn't been displaced by newer projects.

Both have massive network effects. Marginal technology improvements aren't enough to convince developers to build on a platform that has no users, no application & no infrastructure.

it might make sense to borrow 900 in ETH with 1000 ETH collateral. Then you make your vote on the DAO with a power of 1900

No, you would vote on the DAO with a power of 900, because your original 1000 ETH collateral is being held by the lending protocol

Exactly, Ethereum is a better Store of Value than Bitcoin, not only because it is scarce, but because it provides utility, which creates demand.

People need ETH for:

* Paying transaction fees to use the network. For example, Visa is now settling payments with card issuers using USDC on Ethereum, so Visa needs to pay these fees with ETH.

* Collateral in financial applications: Over 11 million ETH (over $24 billion) have been locked as collateral in various financial protocols

* Staking & validating: In the same way that Bitcoin miners must purchase mining hardware to earn money, Eth2 validators must purchase ETH to earn staking rewards

The most innovation is happening in financial products. There's no way for a developer or entrepreneur to experiment building in traditional finance without the support from large financial institutions. But in DeFi, there are financial applications built by teams in India, Africa, SE Asia, etc.

If you want an example of one innovation, look at flash loans. Flash loans provide the ability to atomicly borrow infinite money for the duration of a transaction, with no collateral or credit. This money can be used for arbitraging or just to provide working capital for a complex operation. If the loan isn't repaid by the end of the transaction, the whole transaction is cancelled.

Better explanation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCJUhnXQ76s

Which investment opportunities don't favor early adopters?

And Proof of Work means those with access to cheap electricity rule over the network, which is why most mining happens in western China.

FinTech is a new frontend for finance

Crypto & DeFi is a new backend for finance

The protocol is still in the early stages of development.

The social contract is that the protocol & monetary policy will ossify after the transition to PoS & sharding is complete.

Do you consider earning interest to be speculation?

I can put stablecoins (crypto dollars) in a lending protocol like Aave and earn ~10% APY. Compare that to my savings account, which pays out 0.25% APY.

Or how about the stablecoins themselves? MakerDAO creates the Dai stablecoin, backed by crypto-native assets like ETH & BTC.

I have a number of friends in Argentina who are surviving hyper-inflation by keeping their wealth in stablecoins.

Bitcoin isn't valuable because of its technical properties, just like gold isn't valuable because of its physical properties.

Both are valuable because of their universally recognized scarcity and value. If you want to put your wealth in a SoV cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is the clear schelling point.

Ether will remain competitive with BTC, it may even flip it in market cap, but I doubt Bitcoin will ever go away.

What's the current status of eWASM?

Seems like there's discussion of scrapping the whole phase 2 "execution environments" and just allowing heterogenous execution on rollups.

Short answer: no, there's only one Ethereum and one ETH asset

Long answer: The beacon chain _will_ run in parallel until the two chains are merged. Until that time, ETH in the Beacon Chain isn't transferable, so effectively not a separate asset.

However, exchanges are offering Eth2 staking derivatives which they're branding as "ETH2". But it should be remembered that this is a derivative, not a separate M0 asset.

yEarn is offering ~17% APR on stablecoins, but of course the risk profile is vastly different.

If this thread is any indication, most investors don't understand nuances of cryptocurrencies, just Bitcoin and "not-bitcoin".

As projects like Ethereum continue to develop, I imagine it will diverge from Bitcoin more.

It should also be noted that Bitcoin has been highly correlated to the SP500 this year, despite being a completely different asset class.

Imagine somehow a single party gets 66% of all ETH, enough for them to execute the equivalent of a "51% attack".

The community will notice and can decide to do a hard fork of the network where they "delete" the attackers coins.

So the network would have experience a hickup, but the hacker has lost billions of dollars worth of ETH and can't attack anymore.

This is different from Proof of Work & Bitcoin. If an attacker gets 51% of the "mining power" (physical hardware), there's nothing the community can do to "delete" their hardware.

Yes you've endured some volatility in price

Not if you use stablecoins like Dai :)

I get paid in stablecoins on Ethereum.

Then, I deposit them in lending protocols like Aave to earn ~6% interest.

Would you say that I'm using them for their original intended purpose?

Now route your Ethereum node through the Tor network

Forget about the developing world.

I'm an American living in Europe. My money is in the US banking system and in crypto.

There's no easy way for me to "Venmo" money to my friends here, I'd have to use an international bank transfer which would take over a week and cost high fees.

But with my friends in crypto: I can just transfer them Dai. It takes about 15 seconds and costs less than a dollar (and will get cheaper with things like Eth2)

Well I have plenty of friends in Argentina, and Ethereum is helping them live through hyperinflation.

Their currency is plunging, their banking system is corrupt, so these are their options:

1. Trade Pesos for USD on black market exchanges. Hide cash in safes & under mattresses 2. Purchase Dai or other stablecoins. Keep money in multi-signature vaults, earning interest through lending protocols.

Plus, cryptocurrencies allow many of them to work for foreign companies and get paid directly in stablecoins.

Because blockchain keeps promising things and never delivering anything of actual value

My friends in Argentina would disagree

Blockchains (Ethereum specifically), cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance have allowed them to exit their broken financial system and survive hyperinflation.

They all get paid in stablecoins across borders, self-secure their funds using smart wallets like Argent or Gnosis, and earn good interest rates using lending protocols.

I think many of us forget how broken the financial system are outside of western developed countries.

This has been said for a few years now. The originally deadline for this was January 2020. Suffice to say, it didn't happen. I'll believe it when I see it.

Definitely not the first time a tech product has been delayed!

The beacon chain (first phase of the PoS transition) is on it's final testnet right now and operating well. The community is hoping for a mainnet launch in November.

Many of these transactions are not using ETH the currency, just Ethereum the network. Ethereum has many tokens such as stablecoins (USD pegged tokens), governance tokens (capital assets), synthetic assets, even wrapped versions of Bitcoin.

Ethereum is still a "world computer", but it's a world computer for high-value transactions, which are generally financial.