If you’ve been watching the rsETH situation unfold over the last week, you’ve probably seen the headlines. A $292M bridge exploit, $13B of TVL fleeing Aave, stablecoin pools pinned at 100% utilization for days, and a slow-motion governance scramble that’s still going on as I write this. It’s tempting to file it as “another DeFi… Continue reading What the Aave crisis actually showed us
Why TradFi Failed Blockchain
If you’re like me, having been involved in the blockchain and Ethereum space since around 2018, with a tilt towards TradFi and enterprise use cases, you’ve likely come across numerous private chain initiatives. And with few exceptions, they all missed the point. These initiatives often started life as some R&D effort, looking at new tech… Continue reading Why TradFi Failed Blockchain
The Rise of the RST Stack (Rust, Solidity, TypeScript)
I’m old enough to remember when the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) was the go-to choice for building websites. Things have changed since then. While PHP is still going strong (think WordPress and similar), many developers now prefer Node.js or other such JavaScript engines when building from scratch, thanks to their flexibility and… Continue reading The Rise of the RST Stack (Rust, Solidity, TypeScript)
Risk free rate going technical
In finance we sometimes talk about a “risk free rate”. It’s a mythical investment with no risk, paying with 100% certainty according to some defined schedule. As any real investment with actual risks should compensate for those, real investments then must pay an appropriate risk premium above the risk free rate. Often, investors will use… Continue reading Risk free rate going technical
Bridging is an anti-pattern
As soon as we started having multiple blockchains, be that numerous L1s or L2s, public or private, and any mix of these, the question of how they interact with each other was asked. There are numerous types of interactions between blockchains, but a typical example is that of “the bridge”. In short, a bridge allows… Continue reading Bridging is an anti-pattern