@balajis and @lexfridman did an 8 hour podcast. That's right. 8 hours. Yes, it was long but the information density per minute was vertiginous. We took notes so you don't have to. Here's what we found most interesting.

(x/17) 1) The duo cover a range of topics from math, science, technology, history, finance, economics, politics, government, to academia, etc.

For our purposes, let's focus on decentralization, which is a central tenet to Balaji's thesis. No pun intended.

It's easy to write tendentious articles excoriating today's social media empires. Anyone with half a brain can enumerate the inherent shortcomings of the ad-driven business model. What's not easy is designing and building an alternative system with better incentives.
(x/17) 1) @StaniKulechov the founder of @AaveAave, one of the largest DeFi protocols with $4b TVL, is attempting to just this with @LensProtocol. Without belaboring the point, let's briefly touch on what's wrong with traditional social media companies.

Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets are humanity's oldest remnants of written communication. These tablets contain ledger entries. So, borrowing and lending are as old as the written word. What about interest rates on loans? Are these Lindy too? Maybe.
(x/17) 1) @LiquityProtocol asserts that lending and borrowing can be conducted without levying interest.

They say crypto doesn't have real world non financial use-cases. The team building @helium proves otherwise. Here's how helium ($HNT) used cryptoeconomics to bootstrap decentralized physical infrastructure that dwarfs the largest telecom providers today.
(x/15) 1) Helium is a decentralized wireless network, built on @ethereum, that serves IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

The network is present in 65,000+ cities & 160+ countries. It's powered by over 1 million hotspots globally.

Crypto naysayers often ask the simple rhetorical question. If crypto is sound money, why do people still measure their crypto assets in fiat terms? “I have $10,000 worth of BTC.” or “The sum of all my crypto holdings is $100,000.” Ha! Gotcha!

(x/7) 1) Counterintuitively, counting crypto assets in fiat terms does not lend credence to fiat’s persistence as a unit of account in the future. Historically, long after currencies collapsed, people still used them as a unit of account.

Structured Products for Blockspace. Ugh. Is this another form of unnecessary over-financialization in crypto? Or do these products create real value for real people? Let's find out.

(x/13) 1 ) "In the blockspace market, miners are the producers, mining pools are the auctioneers, and users are the bidders." @Leorzhang, @gakonst, and @paradigm cover an exceptional overview of blockspace here. research.paradigm.xyz/ethereum-block…

You've heard of Proof of Work (Pow) and Proof of Stake (PoS). Have you heard of Proof of Liquidity (PoL)!? WTF is it and why does it matter? Read below to find out.
(x/7) 1) Proof of Liquidity is a novel consensus mechanism that builds on PoS.

In PoS, staked tokens are taken out of circulation and locked up. This decreases liquidity for that token & increases costs related to buying the token - slippage, impermanent loss, etc.

Decentralized finance has the potential to completely overhaul the aging banking and credit system. Lending & borrowing is a crucial component of it.

(x/17) 1) The 4 pillars of the emerging on-chain financial system are:

- Lending & Borrowing (@AaveAave)
- Liquidity (@Uniswap)
- Stable-coin Issuance (@MakerDAO)
- Wealth Management (@loch_chain)

But what does lending & borrowing encompass specifically?

@peterthiel funded @BitDAO_Official has amassed the second largest DAO treasury in the world- second only to @Uniswap. We studied its meteoric rise in depth. Here's what we found. 1) What is it?

BitDAO is a decentralized collective of investors and builders who govern the DAO using $BIT tokens.

Its goal is to fund projects in the Web 3.0 space to support the growth of open finance and develop decentralized, tokenized economies.

Here's how the world's greatest artist's would've interpreted blockchain technology. Thanks to @OpenAI's DALL.E and @sama for helping to create this magic.

Pollock, Picasso, Da Vinci, Dali, Michelangelo, Raphael on blockchain below. Jackson Pollock

@wintermute_t was hacked for $160m today. Contrary to popular belief, we think this hack could turn out to be a net positive for wintermute. WHAT?!?

A 🧵 (x/15) 1) What is @wintermute_t?

Wintermute is an algorithmic market-maker and liquidity provider. They deploy liquidity to a host of de-fi and ce-fi exchanges.

Their biggest clients are exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

@eugenewei's seminal article "Status as a service" dissects how social networks work. Here are the core ideas from the article.

A 🧵 (x/23) 1) There are 2 principles to abide by:

- People are status-seeking monkeys
- People seek out the most efficient path to maximizing social capital

These 2 rules are the crux to understanding different types of social media platforms/networks.

@DAR_crypto recently wrote a brilliant article about the rise of protocol owned stablecoins. Here are the key takeaways.

Read on to find out about the new trend that is taking over de-fi!

A 🧵 (x/16) 1) A stablecoin is an asset whose value is pegged to an other asset. Stablecoins can be pegged in different ways.

-Holding fiat currencies 1:1 as collateral (e.g. USDT,USDC)

-Over-collateralizing using crypto assets like ETH (e.g. DAI)

-Algorithmically pegging (e.g. UST)

@compoundfinance, the poster child for DeFi lending on-chain, could see massive change. Here are some governance proposals that could rock its foundations to the core.

A 🧵 (x/16) 1) How does Compound work?

Compound is a decentralized money market. It allows lenders to deposit supported assets into the protocol to earn variable interest. It also allows borrowers to deposit supported assets as collateral and take out loans.

@MakerDAO, the largest de-fi protocol by TVL (Total Value Locked) today, has recently seen significant governance proposals. These proposals could have huge ramifications related to privacy, regulation, and decentralization.

A🧵(x/16) 1) How does Maker work?

Maker allows users to deposit ETH and other supported assets in over-collateralized positions to mint DAI, a stable coin pegged 1:1 with USD.

This borrowed DAI needs to be paid back with interest for users to receive their collateral back.

@MessariCrypto hosted a space yesterday discussing @Uniswap foundation's grant proposal and @feiprotocol's unwind. This incident could have enormous repercussions for the future of DAO governance and hierarchy.

We summarized it into a 🧵 to save you some time! (x/12) 1) @Uniswap approved a proposal to allocate 4% of their treasury ($2b) = $74m to create the uniswap foundation.

Uniswap foundation will provide grants to builders, researchers, organizers, academics, analysts, and more to grow the Protocol and plan for its future.