beware of tokenizing everything
Chasing the goal of tokenizing every “real-world” asset relegates blockchains as secondary ledgers of truth rather than fulfilling their greater potential as the foundation for the future of internet finance. The attempt to tokenize everything is futile because we are in the business of developing net-new financial products that take advantage of being onchain rather than replicating existing assets. Furthermore, we should tokenize assets that supply some inherent value in being onchain - ass...
let's build something people can use
Thanks to the Placeholder investment team and Tim Robinson for the discussions here, our conversations inspired some of these takeaways. Programmable and verifiable on-chain actions should make applications easier, more intuitive, and safer to use for consumers since they remove any ambiguity that is associated with human middlemen. However, we consistently see the opposite result, as is evident by how infrastructure-heavy the industry is. The reason web3 is harder, less intuitive, and percei...
flexible programmable sequencing
Much of this piece is inspired by and, in part, a reflection of "SoK: Cross-Domain MEV" by Conor McMenamin. There is an obvious rise of shared sequencers, settlement layers, and superbuilders. This shift has brought the concept of cross-chain extractable value to the forefront, challenging us to quantify and mitigate its impact across multiple domains. I wanted to utilize this piece to document and discuss some key learning from Conor’s piece, “SoK: Cross-Domain MEV”. One of the most pressing...
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beware of tokenizing everything
Chasing the goal of tokenizing every “real-world” asset relegates blockchains as secondary ledgers of truth rather than fulfilling their greater potential as the foundation for the future of internet finance. The attempt to tokenize everything is futile because we are in the business of developing net-new financial products that take advantage of being onchain rather than replicating existing assets. Furthermore, we should tokenize assets that supply some inherent value in being onchain - ass...
let's build something people can use
Thanks to the Placeholder investment team and Tim Robinson for the discussions here, our conversations inspired some of these takeaways. Programmable and verifiable on-chain actions should make applications easier, more intuitive, and safer to use for consumers since they remove any ambiguity that is associated with human middlemen. However, we consistently see the opposite result, as is evident by how infrastructure-heavy the industry is. The reason web3 is harder, less intuitive, and percei...
flexible programmable sequencing
Much of this piece is inspired by and, in part, a reflection of "SoK: Cross-Domain MEV" by Conor McMenamin. There is an obvious rise of shared sequencers, settlement layers, and superbuilders. This shift has brought the concept of cross-chain extractable value to the forefront, challenging us to quantify and mitigate its impact across multiple domains. I wanted to utilize this piece to document and discuss some key learning from Conor’s piece, “SoK: Cross-Domain MEV”. One of the most pressing...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Memetic frenzies seem to dominate the early adoption of any technology in this sector. And given a blockchain’s openness, each of these frenzies are usually attributed with a financial token that showcases their relative social value. It manifested early with memecoins tokenizing real-world events, internet memes, and other cultural trends. Now, early versions of AI agents represent an extension of memecoins as they have live capabilities and are also financialized for community involvement.
Most of these early agentic platforms closely represent memecoins with live extensions such as creative content creation, real-time streaming, or even financial alpha. These are naive first steps that showcase increasingly blurred lines between agents and humans for basic tasks. What makes them unique, however, is that we’ve paired freebased AI agents with creative inputs/outputs, and financial independence through self-hosted wallets and associated tokenization. Now, not only can individuals speculate on stagnant memes, but can have financial skin-in-the-game for dynamic agents that not only represent memetic culture, but also produce content and engage with their community.
But when do we move on from early memetic experiments and onto more practical use cases?
The transition from early memetic experiments to practical use cases in the realm of AI agents is already underway, with significant advancements emerging in integrated agentic ecosystems on platforms like Base and Solana. These ecosystems are paving the way for sophisticated agent-to-agent interactions, marking a shift towards more tangible applications. Two key developments stand out: hyper-personalized agents and secure autonomous on-chain trading with robust risk management protocols. A prime example of this evolution is Coinbase's initiative to create fully-autonomous DeFi management agents within their wallet ecosystem. This innovative approach allows users to delegate their funds to personalized agents capable of making informed investment decisions based on user-defined parameters such as preferred assets and risk tolerance. Such practical applications demonstrate that we are moving beyond the initial experimental phase, and into a fully on-chain agentic environment.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are solely those of the original author and mentioned contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Placeholder Management LLC or its team.
Memetic frenzies seem to dominate the early adoption of any technology in this sector. And given a blockchain’s openness, each of these frenzies are usually attributed with a financial token that showcases their relative social value. It manifested early with memecoins tokenizing real-world events, internet memes, and other cultural trends. Now, early versions of AI agents represent an extension of memecoins as they have live capabilities and are also financialized for community involvement.
Most of these early agentic platforms closely represent memecoins with live extensions such as creative content creation, real-time streaming, or even financial alpha. These are naive first steps that showcase increasingly blurred lines between agents and humans for basic tasks. What makes them unique, however, is that we’ve paired freebased AI agents with creative inputs/outputs, and financial independence through self-hosted wallets and associated tokenization. Now, not only can individuals speculate on stagnant memes, but can have financial skin-in-the-game for dynamic agents that not only represent memetic culture, but also produce content and engage with their community.
But when do we move on from early memetic experiments and onto more practical use cases?
The transition from early memetic experiments to practical use cases in the realm of AI agents is already underway, with significant advancements emerging in integrated agentic ecosystems on platforms like Base and Solana. These ecosystems are paving the way for sophisticated agent-to-agent interactions, marking a shift towards more tangible applications. Two key developments stand out: hyper-personalized agents and secure autonomous on-chain trading with robust risk management protocols. A prime example of this evolution is Coinbase's initiative to create fully-autonomous DeFi management agents within their wallet ecosystem. This innovative approach allows users to delegate their funds to personalized agents capable of making informed investment decisions based on user-defined parameters such as preferred assets and risk tolerance. Such practical applications demonstrate that we are moving beyond the initial experimental phase, and into a fully on-chain agentic environment.
The views and opinions expressed on this article are solely those of the original author and mentioned contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of Placeholder Management LLC or its team.
curiousgurnoor
curiousgurnoor
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