Or, as someone who's been around DeFi long enough, simply not technically advanced enough (or have resources that are technically advanced enough).
Being an early adopter / hobbyist can be fun, and, unless you waste away all your airdrops on leverage via quasi-gambling, fairly lucrative. (May have felt a pang or two on SBF being called a fool for falling for over leverage. I still don't think leverage should be kept away from the non-accredited. I think if it was as available as lottery, then maybe we'd have an equivalent quip to "the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math" for leverage. Right now we just have Charlie Munger's opinion on it with regards to women and other ways lose money. Not really enough "common knowledge" to convince the multitude, or at least the same ones who know better than to play the lotto.)
The big danger with DeFi, besides also scams and hacks, is dead projects with lack of documentation. Heck, this can happen even when a project is still alive and running. Could be, like, one dev who barely has time to look at his Discord server, much less answer questions. Documentation? Yeah right.
When everything was a uniswap v2 clone, or masterchef contract, it really didn't matter. LP breaker tools were readily available. But once it got more complicated, the more important it was that there would be emergency withdrawal functions--and documentation on how to use them--that you could do through etherscan or another blockchain explorer even if the frontend died (and maybe IPFS/permaweb frontends).
Documentation matters because you might figure out by name the right function, but then the blockchain explorer asks for Parameter A and B and given zero info on what these are or how to provide them. /Maybe/ nowadays you can copy and paste all the contrart's code in AI (and all the other contracts it references) and get an answer, but I doubt it.
That is if it's open source! People think open source is just some hippy bulls--t. It's not. With closed source, it's like a lifetime guarantee from a company. That is not dependent on just /your/ lifetime. It's dependent on the company's lifetime too.
If it's closed source, and the developers disappear, and your assets are stuck in some contract... Exactly what are you going to do?
And if you think "the world's computer" and the rest of the EVM compatible chains don't need /other/ computers the vast majority of the time, you are sadly mistaken. Off chain computation is almost always involved. So when the developers' AWS instances go dark (if you think they are using DePIN, ha!), what do you think you can do?
Like how exactly are these people supposed to get a notification that someone has bid on their fractional NFT? Hmm? Do you think Ethereum does that?
It doesn't.
Do you think it's easy to develop some boutique solution for that to be done on someone else's code by anyone but an experienced Web 3 programmer?
It's not.
AI definitely is not there. You can't go up to ChatGPT and say "hey, here's my Ethereum address, can you watch this for me? Let me know if there's something I need to. Like someone's going to low-ball and steal my fractional NFT. Thanks! Ta ta for now!"
Anyway, it sucks. You have to ask yourself if the potential airdrops are worth it. And probably not in many cases. Use boring sh-- like Aave and stay away from the bleeding edge.
As for Justin Sun and WBTC... This article has said it best of any I've read:
"seemingly inattentive owners."
Or, as someone who's been around DeFi long enough, simply not technically advanced enough (or have resources that are technically advanced enough).
Being an early adopter / hobbyist can be fun, and, unless you waste away all your airdrops on leverage via quasi-gambling, fairly lucrative. (May have felt a pang or two on SBF being called a fool for falling for over leverage. I still don't think leverage should be kept away from the non-accredited. I think if it was as available as lottery, then maybe we'd have an equivalent quip to "the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math" for leverage. Right now we just have Charlie Munger's opinion on it with regards to women and other ways lose money. Not really enough "common knowledge" to convince the multitude, or at least the same ones who know better than to play the lotto.)
The big danger with DeFi, besides also scams and hacks, is dead projects with lack of documentation. Heck, this can happen even when a project is still alive and running. Could be, like, one dev who barely has time to look at his Discord server, much less answer questions. Documentation? Yeah right.
When everything was a uniswap v2 clone, or masterchef contract, it really didn't matter. LP breaker tools were readily available. But once it got more complicated, the more important it was that there would be emergency withdrawal functions--and documentation on how to use them--that you could do through etherscan or another blockchain explorer even if the frontend died (and maybe IPFS/permaweb frontends).
Documentation matters because you might figure out by name the right function, but then the blockchain explorer asks for Parameter A and B and given zero info on what these are or how to provide them. /Maybe/ nowadays you can copy and paste all the contrart's code in AI (and all the other contracts it references) and get an answer, but I doubt it.
That is if it's open source! People think open source is just some hippy bulls--t. It's not. With closed source, it's like a lifetime guarantee from a company. That is not dependent on just /your/ lifetime. It's dependent on the company's lifetime too.
If it's closed source, and the developers disappear, and your assets are stuck in some contract... Exactly what are you going to do?
And if you think "the world's computer" and the rest of the EVM compatible chains don't need /other/ computers the vast majority of the time, you are sadly mistaken. Off chain computation is almost always involved. So when the developers' AWS instances go dark (if you think they are using DePIN, ha!), what do you think you can do?
Like how exactly are these people supposed to get a notification that someone has bid on their fractional NFT? Hmm? Do you think Ethereum does that?
It doesn't.
Do you think it's easy to develop some boutique solution for that to be done on someone else's code by anyone but an experienced Web 3 programmer?
It's not.
AI definitely is not there. You can't go up to ChatGPT and say "hey, here's my Ethereum address, can you watch this for me? Let me know if there's something I need to. Like someone's going to low-ball and steal my fractional NFT. Thanks! Ta ta for now!"
Anyway, it sucks. You have to ask yourself if the potential airdrops are worth it. And probably not in many cases. Use boring sh-- like Aave and stay away from the bleeding edge.
As for Justin Sun and WBTC... This article has said it best of any I've read:
https://protos.com/how-involved-is-justin-sun-with-bit-global/
If that doesn't bother you, I don't know what will.