DeFi that doesn’t suck
DeFi failed to improve life. We can do better in the next cycle
The world economy is short on food, fuel, and shelter. DeFi has done nothing to solve this problem. It has spewed ponzi token rewards. It has sucked money and top engineering talent from the real economy.
We sucked talent and money out of the real economy without giving back.
The unwinding of the hype has been brutal. $2T in theoretical crypto value has been vaporized. By one account,?99% of coins are down at least 90%?from all time highs. Even the best DeFi protocol tokens have been declining for a full year. The market is shrinking. DefiLama shows TVL declining from $151B in May of 2021 to $73B now.
That’s the end of this cycle. We need to do better in the next cycle, or get out of crypto into more productive jobs.
Good news
There is also good news. DeFi works! Protocols for trading and collateralized lending performed reliably under stress. In a “normal” CeFi market, an overall decline of 70% wrapped up with -10% capitulation days would produce cascading defaults. In fact, some CeFi lenders were crushed, causing uncertainty and spreading credit losses. This didn’t happen in DeFi. Transparency and automation prevented a lot of problems.
We are seeing rapid growth in dollar stablecoins, and in protocols that lend “uncollateralized” dollars off chain. These trends are driven by investors getting out of volatile crypto into dollars to go “risk off”. However, we can also interpret them as the first wave of growth in a huge market for dollar banking services that are supported by DeFi.
In another piece of good news, it appears that protocols can survive with an open source business model. We have endured a parade of “Uniswap or Aave for blockchain X.” In theory, protocol revenue should be competed away by clones and competitors. This would not be all bad, as it would deliver cheap and reliable utilities. However, the rise of clones would punish innovation. Instead, it seems that the benefits of being a first mover (and in many cases, a creator and best mover) are enduring.
Aave is a best mover. It has big market share, fee revenue in the tens of millions, high reliability, and great new features. But the Aave token price is down 90% from its all time highs, with a consistent pattern of decline over a full year. That is because DeFi is a shrinking market.
Shrinking market
Traditionally, DeFi services are “crypto native”. They provide trading, borrowing, and hedging services for crypto coins. The scope of “metaverse” expands to cover NFTs, and some gaming economics. But, it only applies to Internet activity, and only a subset of Internet activity. This is a small market. If we look at crypto market cap, it’s a shrinking market. That is why people are discounting DeFi protocol coins.
The market for real-world financial services is much bigger.
Theoretical benefits
In theory, DeFi can bring benefits.
Efficiency:?Replacing a financial services institution with some computer scripts saves a lot of human power and materials.
Transparency:?DeFi shows assets, liabilities, and activities on the blockchain. This reduces uncertainty and reduces systemic risk.
Access:?Anyone on the Internet can be a customer.
Scale:?In a decentralized system, anyone can contribute knowledge, work, and capital to scale the system.
Innovation:?Producers can improve, change, and add services. This leads to faster innovation.
DeFi has more technical risk than CeFi. A DeFi service must deliver significant advantages in order to complete.
Improvements
Ideally, a DeFi service would:
DeFi that doesn’t suck will add to the real economy. What will we call it? Maybe “Growth DeFi”? Let me know. We’ll discuss it on?Discord here. You can reach me as?AndySingleton?on Twitter. We’ll be running Twitter Spaces and other types of meetups to figure out how to contribute to a better life.
Recidivist founder, family man, music lover, sailor (not always in the same order)
2 年Very true! "In a “normal” CeFi market, an overall decline of 70% wrapped up with -10% capitulation days would produce cascading defaults. In fact, some CeFi lenders were crushed, causing uncertainty and spreading credit losses. This didn’t happen in DeFi. Transparency and automation prevented a lot of problems." Also true: "[...]it appears that protocols can survive with an open source business model." In CeFi, crypto has imported the worst sins of Wall Street and let animal spirits loose in an entirely unregulated space. DeFi for real-verse is indeed where we should build.