Thread by @calchulus

0/n After almost 3 years, it is with great pride, respect, and love to announce that February was my last month @binance. It's been a whirlwind of a ride, so what better way to share the memories, nostalgia, and future alpha I learned all in one tweet thread

1/n I want to thank my @BinanceResearch team for being the best group of friends & researchers I could've ever dreamed of working alongside. To my boss, who found my resume on a recyclebin pile when HR had rejected me b/c i was a fresh grad, and took a bet on me, <3 <3 <3

2/n I got an opportunity to build at Binance Research all because I applied to 6 different roles, but was the only person that put a github.com/calchulus link at the top of my resume: lesson learned - find your strengths and showcase them

3/n Being able to help design the listing framework was an incredible experience, & something that set up Binance as more than a "shitcoin exchange" - the more we could boost expected value of users by quality controlling what could be listed, the more sticky our users became.

4/n From there, the next thing we could do to grow the exchange ecosystem was to help steward good projects and incubate them from day one - this is what we had the pleasure of doing for Binance Launchpad

5/n We found teams like @CelerNetwork @0xPolygon @ElrondNetwork @harmonyprotocol by going to hackathons and meeting the builders without even revealing who we were. I remember surprising @no89thkey & @sandeepnailwal at ETHSF and ETHSG respectively when they finally found out haha

6/n To date, our launchpad certainly has some of the most eyepopping numbers across any exchange ever, with both @ElrondNetwork & @0xPolygon coming close to 1000x returns. Takeaway: Bet with conviction

7/n With many of our launchpad projects having been Proof-of-Stake based projects, we happened upon a ton of projects going to mainnet in 2019 and realised we could help users earn yield on their holdings, and thus, I went to @cz_binance and pushed to create Binance Staking

8/n Binance Staking was a soft staking yield product that actually was the real precursor to the yield farming we see today, as institutional market makers and retail users alike could earn yield while even placing limit sell orders on assets like @Algorand @tezos @cosmosibc

9/n because we calculated users holdings of the underlying in their account, you could earn yield while providing liquidity, which helped attract a lot of institutional sized books to come and earn 10% on their "50-50" LPing on ALGO/USDT with 20% ALGO yields.

10/n We built Binance Staking with just a handful of passionate builders who part-time pieced together node infrastructure across 30 chains and amassing us a large lead on user deposits across many chains. S/O to all the great builders who helped make it happen

11/n 2020 was a new window of opportunity as Defi became mainstream. I was actually already a defi fan from when @compoundfinance first launched, and tried to get @LeslieisHODLing to go move his USDC/USDT books into Compound when TVL was < $10M.

12/n From the diligence that we did at @BinanceResearch , I was blessed with the opportunity of already knowing two defi summer founding fathers: @AndreCronjeTech & @newmichwill.

13/n By the time Andre built the y pool for @CurveFinance, we got the BUSD pool supported, ahead of our friends @synthetix_io @kaiynne, who arguably kicked everything off with the first incentivised Uniswap SETH/WETH pool.

14/n Over the course of 2020, I became more and more infatuated with the idea of building in the open and created permissionless protocols that would see network effects as they grew, because they no longer had the same restrictions as centralised exchanges

15/n AMMs were a massive innovation because they flip the liquidity market on its head - retail guys can stay passive in LP pools and make money on fees, and institutional guys can focus on being short-term delta neutral arbitrage traders making automated trades.

16/n In traditional exchanges, retail guys "poisson point arrive" to the exchange and institutional guys need to be extremely capitalised to sit on orderbooks with limit orders. this is the inherent advantage @Uniswap @SushiSwap @CurveFinance get to enjoy out of the box

17/n As we dug deeper into the defi world, we saw more and more "impossible" things, such as @AaveAave giving higher lending yields for some stablecoins than its borrowing rate, because of the fees accrued by flashloans.

18/n no traditional bank can buy high and sell low with its interest rates, but @AaveAave can. That's why aave grew to so much TVL without even deploying any Yield Farming tactics whatsoever!

19/n Ultimately, this is the problem space that I'm interested in - how can we create strictly pareto optimal improvements on building better products for users. And for me, I found myself using defi more and more than I used any cefi products.

20/n I would openly encourage my friends to deposit funds into @CurveFinance and @iearnfinance rather than try to speculate on the trading market, and also encourage friends to interview at defi protocols and leave tradfi/trad tech (ALPHA leak: Quit your non-crypto job ASAP).

21/n As I move on, I want to go back to the same passion that caused me to be late to my first call with @cz_binance - I was too busy explaining what bitcoin was to my roommate that I was 20 minutes late to my interview

22/n the Defi space is such an open space where the most inquisitive people will bark up all the right doors, and I want to be a part of this - if you are new or just getting started in crypto, I believe in growing the amount we can learn together

23/n it's the same mission we had when we started @BinanceResearch reports and @BinanceAcademy glossaries - if we learn together, we earn together.

And I think defi can take this one step further - everyone's money legos are incentivised to find more use cases from each other

24/n Today, I think of chains as countries, each waiting to be further developed. I've has the pleasure of building alongside so many professional lego block builders, but now its time for the world to see the first wave of professional lego architects to build with money legos.

25/n I can't wait for the next era of defi building, and I can't wait to share more details with you guys on what we can bring to this multichain world, to set out to build defi for the grandmas of the world, something my parents and @AlamedaResearch could use equally

26/n but we won't be able to build this alone - if you have any questions, want to learn more on defi, my dm's are open (@ me if somehow they're not), and that Rome was not built in a day - even defi can't be flash loan built in a day either.

27/n It's up to us to utilise the technologies that we've had the privilege of seeing a glimpse of its potential impact, and it's up to us to build the core legos of the future of finance.

28/n I want to thank again all the wonderous colleagues that I had during my time at Binance, and all the countless poker games, basketball games, hotpot, and memories.

29/n I also will remember all of those who ignored the "unemployed kid from uchicago" because we on @BinanceResearch never revealed our "CIA" card - it speaks volumes how you treat the janitors or the behind the scenes folks, when you dont know who they are.

30/n In defi in particular (& crypto in general), pedigree and experience mean so much less than generally being a problem solver that wants to help others. And I urge all of you to continue trying things, breaking things, and asking dumb questions, because no questiosn are dumb.

31/n I can't wait to see all of the really freaking cool legos you guys build to. If you want to send me more legos to play with, DM me, @ me, find me anytime. If I'm the biggest user of legos, I'm confident I will always be happy.

32/n shout out to @gitcoin to popularising the money legos term and making some of cool money lego hoodies (model: @sassal0x)

https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1235428058582011904

33/n I wish I had enough space to thank and give a voice of support to any and all the products and projects that I've been able to see along the way, and I can't wait to see what everyone builds in the future!

34/n At @binance, the motto is to spearhead the "freedom of money" - I think it's a grand mission to have, and more and more, I see the cross-collaboration between the cefi and defi worlds as the best way to be able to achieve this vision, and I can't wait to work on it w/ you!