Canto: Democratizing On-Chain Yield
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :) None of this is financial advice. As an active participant in DeFi markets, I’ve been closely following Canto since its launch last summer. The concept of enshrining core DeFi primitives (which have historically been monopolistic and rent-extracting) as Free Public Infrastructure (FPI) was and still is revolutionary. But Canto’s long term visi...
Canto: Democratizing On-Chain Yield
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :) None of this is financial advice. As an active participant in DeFi markets, I’ve been closely following Canto since its launch last summer. The concept of enshrining core DeFi primitives (which have historically been monopolistic and rent-extracting) as Free Public Infrastructure (FPI) was and still is revolutionary. But Canto’s long term visi...
Hedging NFT Cannibalization: A Case Study
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :)The Cannibalization ProblemMany Web3 brands build on the success of their flagship NFT collection by launching follow-up projects. It’s a proven way to monetize an existing fanbase and grow an ecosystem. Follow-ups (also known as derivatives) usually take one of two forms:Variation of the flagship. For example, Yuga Labs built Mutant Ape Yacht ...
Hedging NFT Cannibalization: A Case Study
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :)The Cannibalization ProblemMany Web3 brands build on the success of their flagship NFT collection by launching follow-up projects. It’s a proven way to monetize an existing fanbase and grow an ecosystem. Follow-ups (also known as derivatives) usually take one of two forms:Variation of the flagship. For example, Yuga Labs built Mutant Ape Yacht ...
HFT Quant Discovers Bonkler
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :) I follow on-chain markets closely, having traded everything from alt L1s to protocol tokens to memecoins. But until recently, I didn’t find NFTs particularly worthwhile. From a risk-reward perspective, they felt like an inferior alternative to memecoins: similarly reflexive and lacking any intrinsic value but way more annoying to trade and hed...
HFT Quant Discovers Bonkler
In a past life, I was a quantitative trader at a global HFT firm. Now, I’m just having fun on the internet and documenting things I find interesting :) I follow on-chain markets closely, having traded everything from alt L1s to protocol tokens to memecoins. But until recently, I didn’t find NFTs particularly worthwhile. From a risk-reward perspective, they felt like an inferior alternative to memecoins: similarly reflexive and lacking any intrinsic value but way more annoying to trade and hed...
