It’s amazing that over the four calls I had this morning, in three of them we chatted about BSC. There are a lot of heat around this topic rn and I’ll share my honest $0.02 (maybe not things that everyone would necessarily agree to):
1. Rn we are going through a phase where ETH is just so expensive to use, L2s are not ready yet, and the UI of some promising L1 alternatives are not great, high hurdle for users...
...BSC was there perfectly picking up this narrative and fitted itself in this vacant phase by tapping into two crowds: 1. Ppl who are less evangelical and just want to do cheap on chain tx; 2. Ppl who never used ETH and had their initial knowledge about defi via Binance
2. Some of these users may not have much sense about security or decentralization at the back of their mind. They just followed the instruction and set up their BSC network on Metamask...
...They enjoy being able to send their BEP20-BTC/ETH from Binance CEX without going through an actual wrapping process, and also being able to avoid the gas costs associated with the process
3. It is bullish for ETH longer term. I think it could be interesting to think that it helps educate a lot more people about the actual experience of DeFi, and allow them try different things out without costing a ton.
4. For projects that are harder to stand out competitively on Ethereum, it makes sense for them to tap into this ecosystem because Binance was working hard to build up the BSC community and offering a lot of support. At this alternative battle field they may have a better chance.
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0/ As we kick off 2021, I’d like to unpack the story of @SushiSwap and @UniswapProtocol and build on the theme of how cultural differences can explain why both ultimately succeeded, despite being direct competitors with virtually identical products.
1/ Recognizing that both could thrive with their own strategies, I draw a comparison between @SushiSwap and @binance, and @UniswapProtocol and @coinbase from various angles, including the form of the product, the frequency of iteration, and the interaction with the public.
2/ Over the past year, I spent a lot of time trying to understand differences in opinion across Eastern and Western cultures. While the view could often be stereotypical, the attempt to understand user behavior and product design via a cultural lens could be more or less valuable
Thought it was fun. I had a lot of thoughts as I listened to it
1/ The discussion about privacy tokens $XMR, and related $ZEC, was interesting. There's def doubt re: if adding a layer 2 to an existing L1 with good governance would work (i.e. privacy is feature not a product). IMHO this may be valid but maybe we could think a bit differently
2/ ...In the Uncommon Core EP.13 where SZ mentioned that we needed sth better than Ethereum alone for institutions to participate in on-chain trading. I very much agree to it. So maybe what we need is a swap with ZK features?
0/ I recently published this episode in Mandarin but seemed like @FTX_Official really got some community members who wanted to learn about our chat. So I thought it'd be interesting to try one of those paid online audio transcribing AI service out
1/ FTX has achieved a ton this year, and they only started their business 1.5 years ago. They started the year of 2020 by closing the equity financing round strongly, and began to expand aggressively in different regions around the world, despite it was a team of only ~50 people
2/ She discussed the core culture of @FTX_Official, and how everyone operated around those principles. She shared how they were able to capture various market opportunities and got to where they were today. We would also learn about FTX's strategies on retails and institutions.
0/ As the mainnet of @perpprotocol is going live in two weeks, we invited Yenwen Feng @tempofeng, the founder of Perpetual Protocol to be on the 5th episode of 51%. This episode is in Mandarin. Available on Apple Podcast, Ximalaya, and @AudiusProject.
1/ In this episode, we first talked about Yenwen's history as a serial entrepreneur. We discussed why he wanted to work on decentralized perpetual swap product, and how he got inspiration of the product design. We specifically dived deep into the vAMM design of perpetual protocol
2/ Through our discussion on their choice of Eth L2 scaling solution, Yenwen expressed his thoughts about the L2 space. We also reviewed Perp's widely applauded public sales via the Balancer LBP, as he compared that choice with some other available options at the time.
0/ Today (Nov 24, 2020) is the day that the Yearn Community Proposal for moving the treasury KP3R-ETH to Alpha Homora went effective. It is a good day to have this conversation with @tascha_panpan at @AlphaFinanceLab as the 4th episode of 51%.
1/ In this episode, we talked about Alpha Finance Lab's vision and why the team started the project. We discussed quite extensively on Alpha Homora, the first product within the product suite of Alpha, especially on how they plan to grow from where they are now.
2/ We also covered their latest Trading Volume Liquidity Mining, on why they designed the program this way.
The conversation also included the cross-community engagement effort, Alpha's involvement with Binance Smart Chain, and the upcoming perpetual swap product.