Tokens Coordinate Resources. That’s It.
We’ve spent a decade arguing about categories. DeFi. DePIN. DAOs. RWAs. Infrastructure. Every few months someone draws new boxes and insists—again—that this time we’ve mapped the terrain. None of it matters. There’s one fact that explains everything worth paying attention to in crypto: Tokens coordinate scarce resources under adversarial conditions. That’s the whole game. Everything else is just different substrates running the same pattern. Look at what actually succeeds: Infrastructure toke...
Tokens Coordinate Resources. That’s It.
We’ve spent a decade arguing about categories. DeFi. DePIN. DAOs. RWAs. Infrastructure. Every few months someone draws new boxes and insists—again—that this time we’ve mapped the terrain. None of it matters. There’s one fact that explains everything worth paying attention to in crypto: Tokens coordinate scarce resources under adversarial conditions. That’s the whole game. Everything else is just different substrates running the same pattern. Look at what actually succeeds: Infrastructure toke...
Hard DAOs
Ever since I first heard the term, the "DAO" or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, has captured my imagination in a way few other technological ideas have in my career. When BlueYard hosted our first mini-conference, Decentralized & Encrypted, in Berlin in 2016 the conversation between the participants orbited around the original DAO (called simply "The DAO", which was subsequently and notoriously hacked) and the directions this new economic lifeform might take. There was of course talk o...
Hard DAOs
Ever since I first heard the term, the "DAO" or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, has captured my imagination in a way few other technological ideas have in my career. When BlueYard hosted our first mini-conference, Decentralized & Encrypted, in Berlin in 2016 the conversation between the participants orbited around the original DAO (called simply "The DAO", which was subsequently and notoriously hacked) and the directions this new economic lifeform might take. There was of course talk o...
Web2 -> Web3 Vampire Attack
What is a Vampire Attack? A strategy where a new platform drains resources — such as liquidity and users — from an established one by offering better incentives to switch.The SushiSwap ExampleSushiSwap famously enticed Uniswap's liquidity providers to migrate their funds by offering additional rewards in SUSHI tokens, effectively executing a vampire attack.Incentives, Rewards, and EffectsIncentives: New platforms offer irresistible benefits to encourage a switch.Rewards: Immediate and ta...
Web2 -> Web3 Vampire Attack
What is a Vampire Attack? A strategy where a new platform drains resources — such as liquidity and users — from an established one by offering better incentives to switch.The SushiSwap ExampleSushiSwap famously enticed Uniswap's liquidity providers to migrate their funds by offering additional rewards in SUSHI tokens, effectively executing a vampire attack.Incentives, Rewards, and EffectsIncentives: New platforms offer irresistible benefits to encourage a switch.Rewards: Immediate and ta...
Commoditization of L2s and Cloud Computing
Nany startups play the arbitrage game with cloud computing & storage credits from the major players. With the abstractions available today (Docker, Kubernetes, etc) deployment on different providers can be identical. The same is and will be the case for Ethereum L2s. New apps can be tourists in every ecosystem, benefit from grants and promotion from those ecosystems' developer relations functions and then move on when they see fit. For a certain class of application (e.g. a dex), this is...
Commoditization of L2s and Cloud Computing
Nany startups play the arbitrage game with cloud computing & storage credits from the major players. With the abstractions available today (Docker, Kubernetes, etc) deployment on different providers can be identical. The same is and will be the case for Ethereum L2s. New apps can be tourists in every ecosystem, benefit from grants and promotion from those ecosystems' developer relations functions and then move on when they see fit. For a certain class of application (e.g. a dex), this is...
The Curse of a Name: How to Kill a Good Idea
What do the following have in common?Agile Software DevelopmentSix SigmaBehavior Driven DevelopmentSoftware CraftsmanshipDevOpsEach of these represents a good idea that a group of well-meaning people tried (and succeeded) to spread into the world. Each is generally poorly defined and poorly understood. Each term has now lost its meaning. Each term, with new watered-down, wrong-headed interpretations is being used constantly to create a false sense of security and justification for bad practic...
The Curse of a Name: How to Kill a Good Idea
What do the following have in common?Agile Software DevelopmentSix SigmaBehavior Driven DevelopmentSoftware CraftsmanshipDevOpsEach of these represents a good idea that a group of well-meaning people tried (and succeeded) to spread into the world. Each is generally poorly defined and poorly understood. Each term has now lost its meaning. Each term, with new watered-down, wrong-headed interpretations is being used constantly to create a false sense of security and justification for bad practic...
