People will not pay for technology, but for stories that carry technology and innovation. The key to Crypto's prosperity is not how novel it is, but the traditional innovation behind it, the overthrow of the centralized order, and the economic art A wave of political rethinking.

In this article, we will revisit the important "stories" in the history of Crypto development in chronological order. This article discusses about 40 articles in total, with a total of about 15,000 words and a recommended reading time of about 50 minutes.

1997: Before it all started

The Sovereign Individual —— James Dale Davidson / William Rees-Mogg

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One-liner: Sovereign individuals will rise.

If "Avalanche" inspired the concept of the Metaverse, "The Sovereign Individual" inspired Bitcoin.

This is a book that sees the future of the world. The book says that the future is disordered. Digital technology will greatly enhance the competitiveness, inequality and instability of the world, make the society more divided, and make the government gradually shrink.

The book sorts out the fundamental logic of human social structure, and points out that with the development of digital technology, the monopoly of violence, knowledge and wealth by traditional organizations will gradually disintegrate, and decentralized and sovereign individuals will rise.

1997 was a year of chaos and disorder, a state of nothingness before the Big Bang of the Crypto universe, but the idea of ​​​​Crypto had already begun to sprout.

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Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - Satoshi Nakamoto (creator of Bitcoin)

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One-liner: Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, which is the origin of Crypto.

For this white paper, I have nothing to generalize. Everyone should review and intensively read the Bitcoin white paper from time to time.

The mysterious man under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto created a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, giving birth to the blockchain in 2008. Bitcoin sparked a "paradigm shift that now underpins a multi-trillion dollar industry" and told the world Demonstrating the relationship between sovereignty, finance, and freedom, sparking thousands of changes and innovations. Although more than 13 years have passed, we can still learn from its streamlined language, easy-to-understand concepts, and brilliant design extract nutrients from.

The white paper of Bitcoin in 2008 can be said to be the bible of Crypto, and Bitcoin seems to have been endowed with religious meaning, and it has been resurrected countless times, and the phoenix nirvana.

2008 is the first year of Crypto, the year of enlightenment, the year of the birth of Bitcoin and Crypto.

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Bitcoin - Fred Wilson (Founder of Union Square Ventures)

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Fred Wilson mentioned his approval of the concept of Bitcoin in this article, thinking that the concept of Bitcoin as a currency based on confidence in the algorithm and network is very good.

He said that in the eyes of him and his colleagues at USV, an alternative currency built on a fair and transparent network is an idea that is about to be realized. He believes that Bitcoin is worth watching, but the real decoupling of the currency from the government will have a significant impact, so Still be cautious, but still a very interesting investment opportunity.

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Regarding the currency price of Bitcoin at that time, he commented that it can be said that Bitcoin failed (returned to zero from $29 to $13), and it can also be said that we have just passed the period of inflated expectations, and the price has returned to the true value of Bitcoin. Interestingly, the current price of Bitcoin is above $30,000.

2011 was the year when visionaries explored Crypto, and Bitcoin began to gradually attract the attention of pioneers, and they believed that the main function of Crypto would be an alternative currency that replaced the central bank.

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Coinbase — Chris Dixon (founder of a16z crypto)

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One-liner: Coinbase will be an important infrastructure for Bitcoin.

In this article, Chris Dixon reveals the contrast between the media's understanding of Bitcoin and the technologist's understanding of Bitcoin. The media mostly thinks Bitcoin is a scam, while in Silicon Valley Bitcoin is considered a major project by geeks technological breakthrough.

At the end of the article, he believes that Bitcoin needs a killer application to spread its spread, so he announced a16z's lead investment in Coinbase. He believes that Coinbase can significantly accelerate the spread of Bitcoin, while allowing the Internet to enter a new stage of invention and opportunity.

Why I‘m interested in Bitcoin—— Chris Dixon

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One-liner: Bitcoin may revolutionize financial infrastructure.

Ten days after the last article was published, Chris Dixon expressed the reason why he became interested in Bitcoin. Some people think that Bitcoin is hot simply because of the support of liberals. Chris Dixon agreed with many early Bitcoin Supporters are libertarian, and many important movements in computing are supported by ideology.

He does not think that the ultimate goal of Bitcoin is to replace the Federal Reserve. He feels that if he wants to use technology to change finance, then it is not only necessary to establish new services on the existing basis, but to completely rebuild a new system and new order .

He initially thought that Bitcoin was a speculative bubble and Internet gold. But he suddenly realized that Bitcoin is rebuilding the entire payment industry. He is very optimistic about the application of micropayments.

2013 was the year of Crypto’s early infrastructure and cognitive construction. In this year, Coinbase received investment from a16z. As the public’s attention to Bitcoin increased, two opposing voices began to emerge. Some people firmly believed that Crypto was an scam, and visionaries began to understand Bitcoin gradually, and began to think about the future of Crypto.

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Why Bitcoin Matters - Marc Andreessen (founder of a16z)

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One-liner: Bitcoin is disruptive.

A mysterious new technology has emerged that seems to come out of nowhere but is actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers. Political idealists project onto it visions of liberation and revolution; establishment The elite project disdain and contempt on it. On the other hand, techies, nerds are petrified by it. They see the huge potential in it and tinker with it all night and weekend. Eventually, mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its impact became far-reaching; and later, many wondered why its powerful promise was not so evident in the first place.” What technology was Marc Andreessen talking about?

Marc Andreessen,The personal computer in 1975, the internet in 1993, and, he believes, bitcoin in 2014.

2014 is still a year of increasing awareness of Bitcoin. Marc Andreessen, the "creator" of the modern Internet, laid the foundation for the understanding of Bitcoin by later generations, and his understanding of Bitcoin is almost the same as the future he envisioned.

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Ethereum is the Forefront of Digital Currency - Fred Ehrsam (founder of Paradigm and Coinbase)

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One-liner: Ethereum will be a more worthwhile Crypto to invest in.

Fred Ehrsam focused his attention from Bitcoin to Ethereum. The design of Bitcoin is too perfect, any change seems to be superfluous, and the real complete application except wallet and exchange cannot be born on Bitcoin. Ethereum Fang can provide a complete computing environment, thus supporting countless applications on the blockchain. Fred mentioned the DAO organization established on Ethereum, which is the one that was attacked one month after the article was published and caused the fork of Ethereum. .

Bitcoin, as the pioneer of Crypto, led to the birth of Ethereum. Compared with Bitcoin's "smart contracts", Ethereum's smart contracts are easier to use, more convenient to develop, and the community is more prosperous. At the same time, Fred also pointed out that the core of Ethereum Developers are healthier than Bitcoin, the community mentality is more humble, and the direction is more consistent.

In addition to these advantages, Fred also mentioned some potential risks of Ethereum: the amount of funds is not as high as that of Bitcoin, and it has not yet experienced a governance crisis (experienced a month after the article was published), because the functions are more complex, the risk is greater, and the consensus may be Changed to PoS (although it has not been changed after five years), and network expansion is very difficult (this problem has been slowly solved by various Layer2).

Fred did not make a conclusion on whether Ethereum and Bitcoin are competitive or complementary, he believes that Ethereum has great potential, he is not "loyal" to any particular chain, and only wants whatever brings the greatest benefit to the world.

Fred finally concluded that the speed of change in Crypto is accelerating. Crypto's vision is very large, to create a better transaction network for the entire world. Crypto, like the Internet itself, is not a company that sells products, but a series of companies that will one day connect everyone. Personal agreement. And, like the Internet, it will take longer to develop, but the impact will be huge.In addition, he wrote an article a year later in 2017, the main content is:

Fat Protocols - Joel Monegro (Founder, Placeholder VC)

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One-liner: Protocol > Application.

Joel Monegro discussed a point of view in the article Fat Protocols, that is, in the Web2 structure, the value of protocol-based applications is very large, while the value of protocols is small, and this situation will be reversed in the blockchain.

In 2016, with the gradual rise of Ethereum, people had more imaginations about the "network" of the entire blockchain. The construction of the blockchain is no longer limited to infrastructure such as wallets or exchanges, but It is to start thinking about what kind of protocol can be built based on a complete environment. At this time, Tao has become the spirit of encryption, one has become a project creator, the other is a community, and the third is an ecological participant.

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2017: Crypto and Token

This year's trend of thought is particularly intense. In this article, I will only briefly summarize each article. If you have time, you can read it intensively to gain knowledge.

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Value of the Token Model—— Fred Ehrsam

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One-liner: Token value is reflected in governance, monetary policy, and adjustment of incentives.

Fred Ehrsam explores the value of token models in this post.

He believes that the value of tokens is mainly reflected in: governance, monetary policy, and adjustment incentives.

The fundamentals of the token model are valuable and powerful, allowing the community to govern the community itself and the economic system, and unite the community in a powerful way that allows open systems to thrive.

Thoughts on Tokens —— Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO, former a16z GP)

One-liner: Token > Equity.

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Balaji Srinivasan first raised a point at the beginning of the article: Tokens are not equity, but are similar to paid API keys. Compared with traditional financing methods, tokens represent higher liquidity, larger audiences, and also for Financing of some new types of projects opens up space.

• Then he explained why tokens will become more and more successful starting from 2017:

• Four years of infrastructure construction has laid a solid foundation

• Tokens are more versatile and flexible than blockchain native currencies

• Token buyers are actually buying private keys (more private and secure than traditional methods)

• Tokens are similar to paid APIs (representing access to a certain service)

• Tokens are a funding model for all new technologies (open source organisations, small projects, DAOs), not just for start-ups

• Compared with traditional finance, tokens cannot be diluted

• All Americans Can Buy Tokens

• Anyone who surfs the web can buy tokens

• Token liquidity is particularly good

• Tokens will decentralize financing

• The token model is a better business model than free, allowing early users to reap the benefits

• Token buyers are actually investors, just like bloggers on the Internet are actually journalists in the new era

• Tokens keep technology ahead of business

• Tokens are directly regulated by holders themselves

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Crypto Tokens: A Breakthrough in Open Network Design —— Chris Dixon

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One-liner: Tokens will be a necessary design for the public network.

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Analyzing Token Sale Models—— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: A good token model is important.

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Cryptocurrency’s Netscape Moment —— Elad Gil (Solo Capitalist)

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One-liner: 2017 was Crypto's Netscape moment.

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Permissionless —— Alok Vasudev

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One-liner: Permissionless is very important.

This article by Alok Vasudev is very short. His main point is that the Permissionless of Blockchain and Crypto makes him feel that it is the most exciting feature of them.

Blockchain is a completely open source and open database, a production tool that is free from censorship and monopoly. This article actually implies the transformation from Web2 technology to Web3 paradigm.

The Slow Death of the Firm - Nick Tomaino (founder of 1confirmation)

One-liner: DAO > Firm.

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Nick Tomaino expounded a point of view in this article, that is, some projects led by Bitcoin have actually introduced the concept of open source decentralized organizations (such as DAO and open source development organizations). In addition to subverting the financial system, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin will also disrupt the corporate form.

Economists generally agree that corporations exist for two main reasons: to minimize transaction costs and to pool capital and people. Corporations have been the preferred form of human collaboration for decades, but Bitcoin thrives without corporations , there is no company behind it, no central organization support, but through codes (organizational rules) and incentives (tokens), participants including miners, developers, and users are brought together to create value together.

Bitcoin is the first example of an organizational structure with the advantages of a corporation (minimizing transaction costs, pooled and shared capital, and job security for contributors), combined with decentralized ownership, uncontrolled data, and The advantages of checks and balances of decision-making power. Bitcoin provides people with opportunities to make money on a global scale, and establishes a clear incentive mechanism, creating a new decentralized product (a digital currency that cannot be censored) that companies cannot achieve.
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Big Banks And Blockchain —— Elad Gil

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One-liner: Big banks don't understand blockchain.

Elad Gil exposed many real problems in this short article. Since Crypto entered the industry's field of vision in 2013, this is how big banks treat blockchain (as far as I know, until 2021, there are still many Chinese banks and Financial companies are still like this):

1. Form a blockchain team.

2. Let the blockchain team make a private chain, and it is always in the demo stage.

3. Let the CEO be able to boast about the blockchain team, saying "We have something like that blockchain, and there is a team dedicated to it".

Elad also ridiculed these big institutions at the end. He said that the board meetings of these global banks always end with martinis, and that the martinis in New York are much better than those in San Francisco, and the ones in Boston are especially good. He also said that these board members They all wear suits and monocles, a bit like playing Monopoly (in fact, he just wanted to talk about the monopoly of these institutions). Finally, he said seriously that blockchain and smart contracts will change the financial system other than Crypto, but it will take a long time time.

The Meaning of Decentralization —— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: Decentralization means fault tolerance, anti-attack, and anti-collusion.

Vitalik discussed the meaning of decentralization. When talking about the meaning of decentralization of software, we can consider it in terms of architecture, management, and logic. Architecture refers to the physical distribution of servers, and politics refers to how many People control these servers, logically refers to whether the excuses and data structures are reasonable.

Essentially, the important conditions for decentralization are fault tolerance, anti-attack, and anti-collusion.

Regarding fault tolerance, the blockchain system actually needs to be decentralized in many ways to achieve it. We need multiple client implementations, democratized technical discussion forums, developers and researchers with unrelated interests as much as possible, and mining The algorithm must reduce the risk of centralization, and get rid of the risk of hardware centralization (using PoS).

For attack resistance, a very intuitive example is that if you point a gun at a person and ask him to pay, then he may die without money; but in the case of decentralization, you have to point a gun at ten people , the threat cost is ten times higher. The higher the degree of decentralization, the higher the ratio of attack cost to defense cost. Therefore, PoS has higher attack resistance than PoW, because hardware is easy to be detected and attacked, and tokens are more easy to hide.

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A beginner’s guide to Ethereum—— Linda Xie

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One-liner: An introduction to Ethereum.

2017 is the year of ERC-20, the currency prices of Ethereum and Bitcoin soared, the ecology began to prosper, more and more DApps started their own ICO, and more and more DAO organizations began to establish. We once again Entering a chaotic and disorderly atmosphere, various problems emerge one after another. Some people who believe in blockchain and Crypto begin to rethink the advantages and original starting point of Crypto.

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Why decentralization matters —— Chris Dixon

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One-liner: Decentralization is important.

Web1,In this article, Chris Dixon, although the title is about the importance of decentralization, is actually mainly talking about the concept of Web3 in 2018.

Web2,1980 - 2000, the service was built on open protocols established by the Internet community.

“Web3”,From the beginning of the 21st century to the present, for-profit Internet companies have built software and services that far exceed open protocols. With the explosion of mobile applications, users have completely migrated from open services to these more complex and centralized services. These centralization The service technology is very good, but it stifles innovation, reduces the fun and vitality of the Internet, and creates more tense social situations through data theft and algorithmic bias.

Through a perfect set of incentive measures, let technical creativity and incentive design intersect, and may re-subvert and replace the existing Web2 pattern in the next few decades. The Crypto network combines the advantages of Web1 and Web2, providing a way for community governance Centralized network and stronger service than centralized service. Crypto network uses blockchain consensus to update and maintain state, uses Crypto to incentivize participants, developers and application users. Crypto network uses open source code and community governance The way to maintain the decentralization of growth. When participants want to exit, they can sell all tokens directly, or exit through a fork protocol. The Crypto network enables network participants to unite and jointly achieve network growth and Token Appreciation. However, the performance problem of the Crypto network is still a bottleneck (of course, L2 22 can already solve this problem).

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And What Has the Blockchain Ever Done for Us? —— Balaji Srinivasan

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One-liner: Blockchain has been subversive.

Balaji Srinivasan pointed out that although the blockchain had solved countless problems and created a billion-dollar market at that time, some very smart people still claimed that the blockchain was not good, or absolutely useless, and believed that the blockchain The chain is a bubble, which will be short-lived.

Balaji argues that highly valuable technologies often experience relentless negativity on their way to the top. High growth is accompanied by high volatility and higher expectations, leading to hype cycles and periods of apparent overvaluation until eventually the technology becomes global Everywhere. Then, the new critique is no longer about fads or lack of utility, but about the inevitable monopoly until the next disruption looms on the horizon and the cycle starts all over again.

Balaji concludes that only because blockchain has done so much innovation, he wishes it could do more.

Stablecoins: designing a price-stable cryptocurrency—— Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly Capital GP)

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One-liner: There is no ideal stablecoin.

Haseeb Qureshi said that useful money should be a currency that is a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. Cryptocurrencies are pretty bad at being a store of value or a unit of account. So we need stablecoins that are pegged to stable assets like the US dollar.

Stable coins cannot remain stable all the time, but they can remain stable within a certain range of market behavior. The key question for each mechanism is how much volatility can it support? Bubbles and air coins will always collapse. After all, we are all dead in the long run, so if Even if a stablecoin only lasts for 20 years, it can be said to be stable. The stablecoin mainly depends on four aspects: How much volatility can it withstand? How much trouble is it to maintain the system? Is it easy to analyze the fluctuation range? ? The latter two points are very important to determine whether it will lead to a death spiral. An ideal stablecoin should be able to withstand huge market fluctuations, maintenance costs should not be extremely high, stability parameters should be easy to analyze, and transparent to traders and arbitrageurs.

• How to design a stablecoin? The classification of stablecoins includes three categories: fiat-collateralized coins, Token-collateralized coins and non-collateralized coins.

• Fiat-collateralized currency: 100% stable, the simplest, the chain will not be attacked, but centralized, liquidation is troublesome, highly regulated, and regular audits are required to maintain transparency.

• Oken mortgage currency: more decentralized, cheap liquidation, very transparent, can be leveraged, but it will be automatically liquidated when it plummets, the price is not the most stable, highly correlated with Token, low capital efficiency, the most complicated

Non-mortgage currency: No collateral is required, most of them are decentralized and have nothing to do with other assets, but they need to continue to grow, easily affected by the macro, difficult to analyze stability, and have a certain degree of complexity.

In 2018, a long bear market came, and the classic views and stories of this year suddenly disappeared. The pessimists think they are too wise, see through the bubble, and the persisters are still digging deep in the Crypto field, building infrastructure, and continuing to improve Cognition, to continue to prepare for the subsequent outbreak, they are still exploring the advantages and essence of Crypto.

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Yes, You May Need a Blockchain —— Balaji Srinivasan

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One-liner: Blockchain is a better database for the Web.

Balaji explained the importance of the blockchain from the perspective of the database. Some developers say that the blockchain is just a bad database. Why not use the high-performance and mature PostgreSQL? Skeptics think that the blockchain is slow and slow. Dumb and expensive databases.

At the same time, the data of the public chain is open and open, anyone can read all the data in the public chain to create a block browser, and anyone can use their own wallet to write to the public chain. Any user with an Internet connection can Read. Anyone with some BTC can write transactions. Anyone with enough computing power can mine Bitcoin blocks. This is what a public chain means: every user is root.

The future of decentralized finance—— Linda Xie

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One-liner: DeFi is the future of finance.

• Linda Xie talks about the future of DeFi. DeFi aims to recreate many existing financial systems (e.g. lending, lending, derivatives), but in a way that is often automated, and removes the middleman. Some of the directions DeFi is going to be covered in the article as well as Some possible possibilities.

• Collateralization: One of the main complaints about DeFi is that it needs to be over-collateralized to get a loan. Who would want to lock up so much capital? 500 million USD has been [locked](https://defipulse.com/) (if you click on the link today, you can see that it is 75 billion), which shows that it needs to be used. The main purpose of everyone is to leverage. Linda It is believed that it was still in the early days of DeFi, and there was no related DID and reputation system. Once there is a better identity and reputation system, the collateral requirements will drop (Lens Protocol?).

• Composability: One of the most unique aspects of DeFi is composability, where pieces of Lego can be plugged into each other and create entirely new content.

• Assets: Linda likes to introduce tokenized versions of assets such as Bitcoin into DeFi. She imagines that traditional investors will represent different assets in tokenized form, and then carry out DeFi operations.

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The Pseudonymous Economy—— Balaji Srinivasan

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One-liner: The pseudonym economy matters.

In this talk Balaji talks about the pseudonym economy (not the anonymous economy). A pseudonym is like your identity in Discord and Reddit.

He explores the importance of a pseudonym to a person in the real world. The bank account stores assets, your real identity stores credit and reputation, and while the bank account can only be changed by you, the reputation of identity is everyone but you to decide.

In 2019, it is still the cold winter of Crypto. Most people will think that Crypto has no room for development, and the value should be like this. The long-term indifference makes most practitioners lose confidence, but some people still maintain it in the valley of despair. Independent thinking, in the darkness before dawn, is still insisting on outputting opinions, exploring different fields and imagining the future.

2020: Crypto is ready to take off

Credible Neutrality As A Guiding Principle —— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: Credible neutrality is very important.

Vitalik Buterin discusses the importance of trusted neutrality. People feel uneasy about government arrangements, distribution of project tokens, and censorship and ideology. This is actually a sense of insecurity caused by the lack of trusted neutrality . We need a new mechanism (algorithm plus incentives) to ensure trusted neutrality.

Neutrality can actually be simply understood as fairness, but neutrality and fairness are never complete. Credible neutrality must of course be credible, that is, the design of the mechanism can convince most ordinary people, and it is also transparent and durable.

A credible neutral construction needs to meet the following properties:

1. Don't write specific people or specific outcomes into mechanisms (inputs should be more of participants' inputs rather than hard-coded rules)

2. Open source and publicly verifiable (zero-knowledge proofs get this and privacy very well)

3. Keep it simple (this is the most complicated)

4. Do not change frequently

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A Beginner’s Guide to Decentralized Finance (DeFi)—— Sid Coelho-Prabhu

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One-liner: An introduction to DeFi.

The Ownership Economy - Jesse Walden (Founder of Variant Fund)

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One-liner: The Ownership Economy is the Web's Next Big Narrative.

Jesse Walden talked about the ownership economy in this article. The investment logic of Variant Fund is also focused on the ownership economy. He believes that the ownership economy is the next frontier of Crypto and consumer software.

Most platforms today are not owned by users. As the role of individuals in value creation becomes more prevalent, the next evolutionary direction of the Internet will be towards software that is not only created, operated and funded by users, but also Owned by the user.

Ownership is a powerful incentive for users to contribute to the product in a deeper way, helping to ensure that the product better aligns with users over time, allowing the platform to grow and keep creativity even more, building network effects.

From IP, HTTP, HTML, to RSS, the innovation of BitTorrent (innovation in data distribution) protocol is full of disruption. Consumers want it, so disruptive protocols appear. Crypto is also a disruptive protocol innovation, which makes We can distribute value and ownership the same way BitTorrent distributes data packets.

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Bitcoin for the Open-Minded Skeptic —— Matt Huang

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One-liner: Bitcoin is not perfect.

Matt Huang expounded some public doubts about Bitcoin. For a thing, one must persist in dialectical thinking, rather than digging into a dead end, unable to see the other side of things. Although Bitcoin has been developed for more than ten years, investors have made a lot of money The bowl is full, but it's still controversial.

Why do we need Bitcoin in this era? Because we need a new financial system. The concept of money is the greatest invention of the human mind (the other being writing). The main function of money is to store value, which gives purchasing power across time and Geographical location. Gold has long been considered a store of value. The dominance of paper money and the U.S. dollar rests largely on trust in governments.

As a decentralized asset, Bitcoin combines the scarcity of gold, the nature of currency, and digital transferability, and has great value storage potential. It is scarce, portable, interchangeable, divisible, durable, and widely accepted (this It hasn’t been highlighted yet). Besides, Bitcoin is digital, programmable, and censorship-resistant.

Bitcoin as a financial bubble also makes sense. A bubble asset is an asset whose intrinsic value is overvalued, so all currency assets are bubble assets, and gold is also a bubble asset. Currency can be imagined as a bubble that never bursts, legal currency, The value of gold or bitcoin is dependent on collective belief.
There have been four bubbles in Bitcoin's 11-year history:
- 2011: 1 → 31 → $2
- 2013: 13 → 266 → $65
- 2013 - 2015: 65 → 1242 → $200

- 2017 - 2018: 1000 → 19500 → 3500 USD

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Creators, Communities, and Crypto—— Fred Ehrsam

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 Fred Ehrsam, Blake Robbins,One-liner: The title sums it up well.
Jesse Walden discusses Crypto with creators and communities.

Some of their great points are:
- People are guessing ideas instead of delivering real products.
- Fan social activities and economic incentives are an important part of the next generation Internet.
- Bitcoin is financial in nature, but first and foremost a social community.
- Financializing the creator economy is well worth exploring.
- Fame is a self-reinforcing phenomenon, especially in the algorithmic world.
- Creators are likely to start with distribution, not crowdfunding.
- Communities will form like digital nations or nations.

What explains the rise of AMMs?—— Haseeb Qureshi

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One-liner: AMM is a good temporary stepping stone.

In essence, Uniswap is a silly market-making robot with x * y = k. But it is already the largest DEX in the world.

The principle of Uniswap is that as long as it slightly deviates from the actual exchange rate, arbitrageurs will bring the exchange rate back to normal. Another stupid thing about Uniswap is the impermanent loss. The pool makes money through handling fees, but loses money through impermanent loss, which is demand Works for you but spreads work against you.

With a simple 300 lines of code, Uniswap has become popular in DeFi. It uses a permissionless method to provide services to anyone, and does not require any oracles. After Uniswap, there are also a bunch of distinctive descendants, each with its own merits.

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Ethereum is a Dark Forest —— Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos

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One-liner: Ethereum's MEV is a formidable predator.

Ethereum is a scary dark forest with apex predators of all kinds. These predators employ arbitrage bots to make a profit, hence the term MEV was born.

Someone accidentally sent Uniswap liquidity to the contract address. Since these apex predators are eyeing the transactions in the mempool, it is not easy to take the liquidity out of the contract. The author and some contracts The engineer made an obfuscation plan, wrote a smart contract, but the rescue failed.

Many things happened in 2020, the global epidemic broke out, the central banks of various countries frantically released water to save the economy, and a lot of hot money slowly flowed into the Crypto field. At the end of this year, the bulls came. Countless fresh blood, not only Funds, as well as passionate young people have flowed into the Crypto circle. The infrastructure of blockchain NFT and DeFi is complete, fasten your seat belts, and take off to the moon.

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Surviving Crypto Cycles—— Fred Ehrsam

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One-liner: How to survive the bull-bear transition.

After each cycle, the whole market will be stronger. In a bear market, you need to be prepared and seize the opportunity.

The Value Chain of the Open Metaverse - Packy McCormick (Founder of Not Boring)

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One-liner: The value of an open metaverse is endless.

Packy McCormick talks from Web3 to the value chain of the Open Metaverse.

Web3 is the next form of the Internet, using Crypto to reach consensus and standards, establishing a decentralized interoperable network through community governance, and also endowing users with self-sovereign identities.

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MEV and Me—— Charlie Noyes

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One-liner: Principles and implications of MEV.

Charlie Noyes discussed the concept of MEV in detail. MEV is the meaning of Miner Extractable Value, which is to measure the profit that miners can earn by sorting transactions in the block, such as copying the transactions of arbitrageurs to make their own profits, which may cause other robots to also initiate bidding.

MEV is harmful to Ethereum and ordinary users. The figure below shows the realized MEV benefits, and the real MEV behavior is actually higher.

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NFTs make the internet ownable —— Jesse Walden

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One-liner: NFT is an unreplicable file system on the blockchain.

According to Jesse Walden, an easy way to think of NFTs is as unreplicable files on the blockchain.

NFT makes it possible to own digital media assets, just like owning digital currency assets such as Bitcoin. NFT will allow creators, audiences, and developers to earn more in the digital ownership market.

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NFTs and A Thousand True Fans —— Chris Dixon

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A beginner’s guide to DAOs—— Linda Xie

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The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy —— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: risk and potential of acceptance.
Vitalik Buterin discussed the relationship between blockchain and legitimacy, and how to use legitimacy.

The expenditure model of the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks is a serious misallocation of resources. The benefits to the miners far exceed the cost of R&D. Although the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecology can raise billions of dollars, the use of funds is very strange and incomprehensible.

We can use the concept of recognition to support the funding of public facilities and public goods. For example, NFT is a good example, which is a great boon for artists or organizations.

The Great Online Game —— Packy McCormick

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One-liner: Crypto is a really fun game.

Packy McCormick discusses gaming on the blockchain in this article. Crypto is a great game, one played by billions of people online. Social media is a clear reflection of this game.

Successful video game design requires frequent feedback loops, variable outcomes, a sense of control, connection to and metagame (most importantly). The Internet is an infinite game, play yourself on Twitter, YouTube, Discord, work, Accumulate status. For example, Musk is a very good player.

For this game, don't take it too seriously, don't wait until the perfect time to jump in, but learn slowly and accumulate slowly.

India & Crypto series —— Balaji Srinivasan

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In this three-part series, Balaji Srinivasan focuses on India's relationship with Crypto, and India's huge future Crypto potential.

Own the Internet — by Packy McCormick

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One-liner: A full solution to the value of Ethereum.
Not Boring provides an in-depth analysis of the value of Ethereum.

The products of Ethereum and Excel are actually very similar, and can support an ecology of several trillion dollars. At the inflection point of ETH2.0, Packy believes that Web3 will continue to grow, the upgrade of Ethereum will proceed smoothly, and Ethereum will still be the main force of Web3. L1.

Why web3 matters —— Chris Dixon

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One-liner: Definition of Web3
Chris Dixon fully defines Web3. Web3 is an Internet that can be owned by developers and users in the form of tokens.
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Composability is Innovation—— Linda Xie

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One-liner: The title sums it up well.
Linda Xie discusses the biggest innovation: composability.
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The Strongest Crypto Gaming Thesis—— gubsheep

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One-liner: Crypto-native games.
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Endgame —— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: The Endgame of Ethereum Scaling.

Vitalik interprets the endgame of Ethereum scaling.

For blockchains like BSC and Solana, more Rollups are needed. For TPS and better user experience, these blockchains have to reduce the degree of decentralization in block generation, so when we have more When there are multiple Rollup solutions, we can decentralize from the perspective of verification (running light nodes, etc.) to verify whether the centralized nodes in the block generation stage are trustworthy.

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Trading the metagame —— Cobie

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One-liner: Crypto investment logic.

Cobie made a point similar to Packy's, that investing in bull market Crypto is similar to playing video games.

The games invested by Crypto mainly include the following two interesting meta-games: Ethereum and Ethereum Killer Game and NFT Project Game. These are actually the two major investment trends in 2021. The biggest winner is to understand these two meta-games The game and the people behind it.

The meta game of 2020 is DeFi Summer, which turned into BTC at the end of the year, and then turned into DeFi revival, Shit Coin, Alt L1, and retro NFT. When players don't identify the correct meta game, they lose. A meta The game starts with long-term investment, becomes popular, and finally ends with imitators emerging one after another.

It is also very important to understand the principles behind the meta-game. For example, in LOL, Nocturne was very strong for a period of time, then you can keep using this hero until he is no longer strong. It is very important to understand the difference between Avax and Sol’s DeFi, Sol and Sol There is no big difference in Avax, but the ecology of Avax is more community-oriented, so that holders can really reap the benefits.

To learn from winners is very important to win the game. At the same time, to observe the community. And some skills outside the field of Crypto: new online assets have a high probability of rising, chain analysis, whale wallet observation...

• Cobie also recommends a few tips for winning the game:

• Identify meta games early, increase holdings over time.

• After a temporary failure, take a break and shift your mind to something new.

• Traders can use meta games to exit or rebalance long-term positions.

• The meta game can help decide which assets are suitable for trading with derivatives.

• When the meta-game is the consensus of all participants, it is already too late.

The Mirrortable —— Balaji Srinivasan

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One-liner: Crypto-based venture capital.

The concept of Mirrortable is mainly the Cap Table of Crypto.

Angel investment involves many Web2 tools (Docusign, etc.), and there are more mature and stronger tools in Web3. The current various PDFs, emails, and forms are very outdated and confusing, and the maintenance cost is very high for individuals. Web3 The ideal investment process can open up the links of various investments and integrate both on-chain and off-chain components.

2021 is a year of excitement, the currency price has gone up and down many times, and everyone has lost their sensitivity after Edging so many times. But this is the year when Crypto has widely entered the vision of ordinary people. Bitcoin can be seen everywhere on the street Vending machines, large exchanges’ sponsorship of sports teams, and countless bans and regulations have also been dropped on Crypto’s head. The narrative of “Web3” has given Crypto justice, and everyone feels that they are really justice against the “Web2” oligarchy Messenger (but I have to admit that most people are just for quick money), countless grand narratives have convinced cryptocurrency investors, and various ecology (not just Bitcoin and Ethereum) have their own believers.

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This year has not passed yet, it happened yesterday, so it is recommended to read these articles directly to follow the latest development of Crypto.

2021 NFT Year in Review —— 1confirmation

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I won't go into details in this article. But this review of NFT in 2021 has 32 pages, which is enough to prove how hot NFT is in 2021.

Soulbound —— Vitalik Buterin

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One-liner: Soul-bound NFT.

As an old player of World of Warcraft, Vitalik discusses the content related to decentralized identity authentication through the concept of soul binding.

Vitalik discusses POAP, CityDAO, and Adidas' early access to NFTs. He says a common criticism of Crypto today is that everything is money-oriented, limiting the appeal and sustainability of the culture surrounding the item. In Crypto circles Implementing a solution designed around non-transferability would solve this problem. However, making money is a big factor in attracting people into the Cryptosphere, so non-transferability (meaning no hype) has to do with attractiveness and now ubiquitous design There are some contradictions.

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Hyperstructures - Jacob Horne (founder of Zora)

One-liner: The title sums it up well.

Jacob Horne proposed a new concept, Hyperstructure, which will be the new mental model of Crypto.

The blockchain creates a Hyperstructure architecture, and the protocols on the blockchain are the Hyperstructure. They cannot be shut down, are free to use (gas is not counted), have value accumulation, are motivated, do not require permission, benefit from multiple parties, and are credible and neutral.

Jacob compares Hyperstructure to the infrastructure of society, and believes that it will be the beautiful foundation created by the Internet age for the benefit of future generations. We are entering a new field, and we should embrace this unknown change.

Sufficient Decentralization for Social Networks —— Varun Srinivasan

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One-liner: The Next Generation Social Network.

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Summarize

Summarize

From 1997 to 2022, Crypto has a more and more diverse community, and each point of view begins to spread from point to point, and the fields involved start from the field of Bitcoin and expand to humanities, economy, politics... .. Crypto is spiraling up in a cycle of collapse, fusion, and rebirth.

Through the observation of the winners of the Crypto game, we found that there are actually countless wealth codes in these long-term Foresights. After two or three years after their articles and tweets were published, we suddenly realized: "It turns out that .” The wonderful idea we came up with was proposed and discussed a lot 3 or 4 years ago.

But it doesn’t really matter, all we have to do is to learn and think. The more you learn, the more you earn; the more you know, the more you grow. There is no precedence.