The Defiant: Inventory of 2021 Influential Figures in the Encryption Industry
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Original title: "The Defiant’s Defiers of 2021》
Original compilation: Creed, chain catcher
Recently, The Defiant compiled an annual list of people who define DeFi and web3. These KOLs are founders, hackers, and investors who help advance the open economy; politicians and regulators who lay the foundations of the industry or threaten and limit its development; CEOs of DeFi-related industries, and shape the crypto space with their global influence ; and the artists and community builders who are pushing crypto further into mainstream culture.
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Pplpleasr, Master of NFT Art
It's been a big year for Pplpleasr (Emily Yang). She is already well known in this circle as she worked closely with projects in the space during last year's DeFi summer boom. Among them, she made a promotional video for the launch of Uniswap V3, which greatly increased her fame. The video clip was sold as an NFT for more than $500,000. She then donated the proceeds to the Stand With Asians movement. PleasrDAO is a team of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors, and digital artists who used this purchase to form the organization. PleasrDAO has built a strong and pro bono reputation for its philanthropic acquisition of culturally significant works.
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Samczsun, DeFi Hero
“U up?”
These two words from Samczsun are the most dreaded by any DeFi project founder, which means that he has discovered potentially catastrophic errors in the code produced by some teams. But instead of exploiting these bugs for personal gain, he chose to help fix them to keep DeFi users safe. He did get some compensation, but as he said in an interview in March 2020, he did it mostly for the challenge and the fun.
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Nayib Bukele, Crypto President
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Jack Dorsey, Die-hard Bitcoin Believer
BTC extremists have provided a lot of interesting talk on the twitter crypto thread, saying that DeFi will never be able to achieve the work it is doing, and embarrassing them with their radical closed thinking. They reject all innovation (not a cult) outside of Bitcoin. Among them is one believer whose willful ignorance is especially pernicious, and who happens to be at the center of Twitter: Jack Dorsey.
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Cooper Turley, full-time DAO expert
In the DAO space, Cooper Turley seems to be everywhere. He is a strategic planner for Audius, a decentralized music streaming platform, and an advisor to Variant Fund, but not only that. His full-time DAO career started in 2018, where he contributed to groups including MetaCartel and Moloch DAO. This led to the creation of Fire Eyes DAO, where he helps web3 startups grow their communities and launch tokens.
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Chris Dixon, The Ultimate DeFi VC
Dixon is the general partner of a16z, and he has completely "studded" DeFi in 2021. He played a key role in raising the venture capital firm's $2.2 billion cryptocurrency fund, the firm's third fund, and his team backed projects including Celo, OpenSea and Compound, among others. He has steered Andreessen Horowitz Crypto into a "gravity" force in the DeFi and web3 space, with the firm having equity and/or token stakes in nearly every major project in every vertical. Dixon also preached about DeFi related knowledge in many posts. In his latest article, he put"programmable blockchain"secondary title
Do Kwon, Innovator and Ecosystem Builder
Do Kwon is the co-founder of Terraform Labs, which is building the Terra ecosystem, a full-fledged, self-sufficient alternative financial system. At the heart of the network is the UST stablecoin, which, relying on an incentive mechanism and algorithmic system backed by LUNA tokens, has managed to maintain a large peg to the U.S. dollar without actually holding any fiat currency. No other algorithmic stablecoin has been able to do this for so long and successfully, which is a major feat. UST recently crossed the $10 billion market capitalization mark.
In addition to stablecoins, the Terra ecosystem includes money market platform Anchor; the Mirror protocol, which allows users to trade synthetic assets; a decentralized exchange, Astroport; and other projects that make up this DeFi galaxy, as well as users calling themselves LUNAtics. Terraform Labs has grown enough to attract the attention of the SEC, which is now reviewing the Mirror protocol. However, Kwon seemed unaffected by it, after which Terraform cited "failure to play by its own rules"prosecutesecondary title
Daniele Sestagalli, serial entrepreneur
An early believer in bitcoin, Sesta (as he likes to be called) has maintained a habit of must-read tweets after co-founding three high-profile projects. Wonderland, a vault-backed stablecoin game forked from OlympusDAO; Abracadabra, a DeFi debt venture; and Popsicle Finance, a yield optimization platform. Popsicle Finance was hacked in August and lost $25 million. But Sesta has since repaid the victims and distributed a 20% reward to those who held all of its ICE tokens.
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Banteg, the ultimate hacker
Banteg is the embodiment of the ultimate DeFi hacker. An anonymous developer with a bunny avatar whose skills have made the hacker a core member of Yearn's financial team. Under the leadership of Banteg, Yearn has always been one of the DeFi protocols with the largest TVL, and is constantly innovating, striving to provide users with the best benefits.
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Elon Musk, the king of worthless disseminators
Elon Musk wears many hats, to some he is the Technoking of Tesla, the CEO of Dogecoin, the co-founder of SpaceX, and the richest man in the world. Still, Musk is, first and foremost, the most useless purveyor of encrypted tweets.
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Cathie Wood, Queen of TradFi
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Brian Armstrong, King of CeFi
It’s hard to have the best of both worlds in crypto, but Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is working hard to become the centralized cryptocurrency company at the heart of decentralized finance. Along with Circle, Coinbase pioneered USDC, the space’s most popular stablecoin; it launched its own non-custodial wallet and is working to offer DeFi-sourced rates through its interface. Coinbase once clashed with the US SEC when it wanted to launch a lending product. On Twitter, Armstrong blames SEC"Be rude"and suppression of innovation.
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Mark Zuckerberg, Web2 Worst
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Alexis Ohanian, Best of Web2
The web2 social network led by Reddit co-founder Ohanian is taking the most significant steps to integrate and support web3, and it is partnering with the Ethereum Foundation to provide development resources for extension tools. It is also launching its community credits on the Ethereum testnet. Reddit is also working with Layer 2 Arbitrum to explore whether it can roll out its Community Points within it.
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Gary Gensler, the DeFi villain
The chairman of the US SEC is a rare role because he is a regulator who truly understands the complexity of the blockchain. That doesn't mean he's going easy on crypto, as he says he's using a series of moves to stop the industry from"outside the border"operate.
The crypto community fought back when he vowed to “protect” investors from the dangers of airdrops, 10x gains, and fat gains, while leaving enough room for imperfect financial instruments like futures-based ETFs.
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Hester Peirce, Enlightened Overseer
US SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce also known as"Crypto Mom", she has been one of the most vocal advocates for a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies that would provide investors with the necessary protections without stifling innovation in this thriving industry.
One of her greatest contributions is her proposed token safe harbor initiative. The plan would give blockchain startups a three-year grace period without fear of prosecution, giving projects enough time to meet the agency's requirements. That is to ensure that its network must be fully decentralized so that the corresponding token will not be considered a security.
This year, she will continue to push for friendlier crypto regulation. Earlier this month, Peirce said it was disappointing that Gary Gensler’s regulatory agenda still failed to include clarification on digital assets.
