1/ Some personal news: after 2.5 amazing years, yesterday was my last day at @compoundfinance ❤️
It's been a genuine honor helping @rleshner, @justHGH, & the Compound Labs team build the future of finance 🤖
I'm taking October off, then starting a new challenge (stay tuned) 🧵
2/ I joined Compound in May 2019 in the depths of crypto winter. BTC was around $6k & ETH was around $200.
The Compound v2 protocol was one month old. TVL was about $10m. Only a handful of DeFi projects existed & they weren't even called DeFi yet.
What an incredible journey 🤯
3/ I worked on some big projects over the years, like decentralizing the Compound protocol & launching Compound Treasury.
It's been fascinating to see the community take charge of decentralized governance, & it's been fulfilling to create a novel financial product on DeFi rails.
4/ I also worked with colleagues who are among the best & most talented people in the world, who always made the work joyful & will hopefully be friends for life 🍻
Not to mention all the other amazing folks in the industry who I got to meet & collaborate with over the years 🙏
5/ But as in all things, the time has come to move on 😢
With Compound Labs in a strong position to lead the DeFi sector, I decided the time was right to head out for a new adventure.
I gave notice four weeks ago & spent the month of September wrapping up & transitioning out.
6/ I'll have news to share with everyone soon, but first I need a break.
I've been working crypto hours for too long, so I'm taking all of October off 🛌💤
Then I'll be back to take on a new challenge, & let me say I am extremely fired up for it 🔥
Talk to you soon! 👋
[end]
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1/ I'm very excited to be working with @graadient & the Grwth Lbs team as a strategic advisor as they build out & decentralize @groprotocol 🎉
Gro is a next-gen yield protocol that fills a huge gap in DeFi market structure: autonomous risk management 👇 thedefiant.io/gro-protocol-l…
2/ Gro uses risk tranching to create two stablecoin pools, PWRD & Vault, with different risk & reward profiles.
By design, PWRD offers lower yield while Vault offers higher yield at a cost: Vault bears the risk of loss for the whole protocol. In other words, Vault protects PWRD.
3/ Gro addresses one of the most common critiques I hear about DeFi: the lack of crypto-native, professional-grade risk management tools & products.
This is one of the aspects of DeFi that excites me most: its unique ability to mitigate risks in a programmatic & transparent way.
1/ A quick explainer on what happened with the infrastructure bill last night:
We were on track to pass the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment to fix the worst issues with the bill, & then Senators @RobPortman & @MarkWarner came from nowhere to blow it up.
Now the vote's tomorrow 👇
2/ As a refresher, the current infra bill draft has a provision expanding the Tax Code definition of "broker" to include:
"any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person."
3/ This definition is wildly overbroad. It captures nearly everyone in crypto, forcing them all to surveil users in order to comply with tax reporting obligations.
We spent all week asking Congress to remove it, change it, or add exceptions for miners, developers, & many others.
1/ 🚨 Here's the deal with the US infrastructure bill:
A new provision has been added that expands the Tax Code's definition of "broker" to capture nearly everyone in crypto, including non-custodial actors like miners, forcing them all to KYC users.
This is not a drill 👇
2/ The bill expands the definition of a "broker" to include "any person who (for consideration) is responsible for and regularly provides any service effectuating transfers of digital assets."
Earlier drafts said "even if non-custodial" & explicitly included DEX & P2P markets.
3/ This definition is so broad, it could apply to nearly every economic actor in the US crypto industry, if read literally.
That includes PoW miners & PoS validators, since "providing a service to effectuate transfers of digital assets for consideration" seems to fit both.
1/ I'm thrilled to announce that I'm joining the @variantfund team as a strategic advisor!
@jessewldn & @spencernoon are two of the most insightful, hardworking, & effective investors in crypto. I'm beyond excited to help them & their founders build out the Ownership Economy. 🔥
2/ I've been a huge fan of Jesse's work for a long time, especially since he wrote the definitive playbook on "progressive decentralization" in January 2020.
This piece has become a cornerstone of protocol development strategy across the entire industry: a16z.com/2020/01/09/pro…
3/ When he started Variant, I was deeply impressed with his Ownership Economy thesis—the idea that the *users* of a network should be the *owners* of that network, instead of being productized & exploited by rent-seeking companies (the typical Web2 model). variant.fund/the-ownership-…