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Dec 8

The True Crypto 101: Two-Sided Marketplaces

This article is intended as an explainer of cryptonetworks. To help explain what they are and how they work, we will examine what Uber could look like if it was made β€˜crypto’. Uber, which we all may be familiar with, is a network for buying and selling car rides. The company that grows and maintains this network plays a vital role. For playing this part, this centralised entity is able to extract significant rent from the network. Is that justified? Of course it is; the network would be as po...

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The True Crypto 101: Two-Sided Marketplaces

A Pleb's Guide to MEV

A Pleb's Guide to MEV

Karim

Written by
Karim

Token design advisor, angel investor, and DeFi degen

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Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
pt II: Scaling Crypto with Credit, Identity, and Trust
The previous article in this series - which you should drop everything and go read now if you haven't already - discusses the abstraction of many types of tokens, and the removing of them from the UX altogether. This article will expand on that, and discuss how businesses will be built that perform this abstraction and scale access to crypto-networks via the issuance of credit. Issuance of credit by centralised parties for participation in decentralised economies In web2, products may be...
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Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
pt 1: Abstraction of the Token Layer
Token ecosystems are a radical new method of organising disparate stakeholders and aligning their incentives to the benefit of all involved. Satoshi’s Bitcoin Whitepaper introduced to the world the concept of self-organising two-sided marketplaces; this inspired the creation of many other networks and two-sided marketplaces that utilised the same underlying concepts of crypto-economics in order to scale and function in a distributed yet aligned way. Today, there exist cryptonetworks for money...
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Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
Using Off-chain Identities On-chain
Although the digital frontier of web3 makes grand promises of trustlessness and decentralisation, this could be argued to be more of an elusive dream than a real possibility. Many vectors of centralisation exist, and chief among them is the management of our real-life identities. Currently, we cannot use them in crypto networks in a truly trustless manner. In this article, we will extrapolate upon this claim, as well as highlight some of the potential solutions. Let us imagine the open metave...
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Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
Token Designs of Data Storage Networks
One of the first to introduce the P2P concept in a digital context was Napster: a central service that connected people who had specific music files with others seeking said specific files. However, Napster was held liable for copyright infringement, and was shut down soon after. Inspired by the vision and adequately informed about the censorship liability of centralization, distributed protocols such as Limewire, Gnutella, and Kazaa emerged. However, these distributed networks relied on spec...
pt II: Bonding Curves and SuperPowered Tokens
Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
In the first part of this two part series, we looked at bonding curves: how they work and some of their variations. Now that we are refreshed on what they are and how they work, let us examine how they may be used in conjunction with other gamified mechanisms to maximise the odds of healthy governance, and attract participants with novel economic games. It is suggested here to have this delta in the buying and selling curves – as exists in Augmented Bonding Curves – as well as making availabl...
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Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
pt I: Bonding Curves 101
When it comes to token-based governance, there are many different ways of dispersing tokens and placing them in the hands of the community and relevant stakeholders. These methods can vary across airdrops, liquidity mining, novel auction mechanisms, or a combination of the aforementioned. In this article, a less often mentioned method will be examined, as well as various augmentations that can be made to tighten alignment across stakeholders as much as possible. The DAOs of today face many is...
A Pleb's Guide to MEV
Blog iconKarim
Dec 8
Hello anon, this article will explain MEV in post-merge Ethereum, and what the implications are for you, even if you are not an MEV searcher or network validator. The following topics will be covered:MEV ELI5Merge ELI5How MEV will change in post-merge EthereumWhat this means for you, a plebSome predictionsAlthough some of the concepts explored here as somewhat technical, the article is meant to be accessible if you are already in crypto. Fear not if you aren’t a shadowy super coder.** ** What...