A Story Of Conventional Finance Masquerading As One thing Else
The next excerpt was taken from the Nov 22 OpEd I had written for ChainSafe’s e-newsletter “Centralization Strikes Once more”. In the event you discover this content material participating, we’d love your assist on our Substack! ❤️
I won’t waste my reader’s valuable psychological capability on the well-documented FTX collapse. All the things in regards to the debacle invokes inside me a way of vile contempt for unchecked centralization. Worse, FTX was the wolf in sheep’s garments — a company taking part in at decentralization theatre — an act we’ve sadly needed to see play out in semi-automatic bursts. First, with Luna/UST, after which adopted by the incapacitating photographs of Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, Bancor, FTX, BlockFi… you get the image. (And I prolong my condolences in case you had been in any respect caught within the crossfire.)
But, as one computer virus collapsed after one other, I noticed a group prop itself up in defence, aided by probably the most highly effective pressure for public good ever created — the blockchain. Extra crucially, the 2 aforementioned mixed to allow a sobering self-examination: why precisely are we constructing this tech? Who’re the unhealthy actors? What had been the warning indicators? And the way can we do higher? That is, in reality, the bull case for FTX. Permit me to elucidate.
The FTX collapse noticed unprecedented participation from the web3 group in citizen journalism. Whereas conventional media shops wrote softball puff items in service to their overlord SBF, the Twitter and Substack sleuths got here out to play ball. Scores of citizen journalists unearthed, noticed, tracked, and shared an unrelenting quantity of information, with around-the-clock protection that will put any TradMedia to disgrace. No stone was left unturned, as conspiratorial-level connections had been found between FTX and the institution — together with SBF’s dad and mom and regulators just like the SEC’s Gary Gensler and US Senator Elizabeth Warren. FTX made approach for one of the best of us to shine throughout crypto’s Lehman Brothers second.
After all, none of it could have been potential with out the virtues of the all the time on-line public ledger of on-chain file. This, of us, is “privateness for the weak, transparency for the highly effective” manifested: a tiny preview of what it might imply if we bridged our most essential establishments on-chain — the place actions like monetary transactions are transmitted and recorded in a clear and verifiable approach. Is that this not a public good price preserving? It allowed our citizen journalists to trace the actions of funds between exchanges, comply with the FTX hack, and push the needle on improvements like necessary proof-of-reserves and proof-of-liabilities.
And as instructed earlier, these forces allow an important degree of self-scrutinization. It empowers us as a group to ask the essential questions, preserve our establishments sincere, and demand the continued evolution of our house. Within the well-trodden analogue of web3 as an natural, emergent organic ecosystem, the forest hearth performs an important function in stimulating new progress. It clears away the diseased, the stagnant, the hole in an unforgiving hellfire. Simply because the earlier forest hearth cleared away ICO-era zombie initiatives which made approach for newer species like Gitcoin to thrive, this hearth will even clear away parasites of the FTX-variant and supply valuable fertilizer for newer types of coordination tech.
That is the silver lining. The whole thing of the response has been nothing in need of an unimaginable factor to witness, and is one thing that we must always anticipate for future on-chain catastrophes. We’re speedrunning black-swan occasions and naturally deciding on for the strongest organisms to outlive. The ’08 monetary collapse managed to forge a brand new path in humanity’s tech tree. In comparable style, we too will come out of this for the higher as a united group beneath the banner of decentralization.
