Ethereum Returns to the Pre-Defi Price

Defi givth, Defi takth away. Just as the beginning of yield farming unleashed much bullishness in eth, so too now it has unleashed a bit of coolness with defi probably still hot, but not burning hot.

The days of crazy growth with assets under management doubling by the week are probably over, at least for now.

The network just can’t handle it and without new liquidity, the game of chairs of tokens on top of tokens all the way down presumably at some point has to pause to leave someone without a chair.

At fees of $20 per transaction or $500 for dapp devs to call some function, you can still play with big sums but big sums don’t usually take risky bets. That’s the fish, or the sushis.

So, is this it? For now, probably, at least where as it was is concerned. Many people have seen now just what are these things and as you’d expect the hype was far ahead of the ground.

You get free sushis yes, but if you don’t make some mistake. You can automate defi sure, but if you can avoid becoming a target:

“Pretty safe.” Millions of dai have gone into that and ‘bots’ have taken them for cheap with some Curve vote to end in a week before a fix.

A week in this space is decades as we all know, with code of course having many benefits but also hiccups especially if it is brand new.

So gas putting some breaks here can only be good for eth because with current amounts it’s about manageable, but really arguably it isn’t time for hype and fomo and all that as many of these new projects are unproven.

They need some time to be strengthened and be refined and be made safer as well as to be audited by the only auditors that matter, all them smart Nakamotos across the world.

Making this 2016 with the first ICOs that were kind of prudent and constrained and ‘ours,’ as in by very knowledgable and ‘refined’ people.

So too generally it looks like currently all these dapps are by people that kind of know what they doing, but in a very new space and in a very ruthless space where one mistake can cost billions.

Meaning you’d think they’d all be of the view that is probably best to kind of cool down a bit as ethereum has stolen Silicon Valley’s mantra of move fast and break things, but fast here means turtle speed instead of bitcoin’s snail speed, and break things is meant in the same tongue in cheek as “I Test in Prod.”

This space can’t move too fast. Not just shouldn’t, but can’t because of the capacity limitations which may well turn out to be for the better.

That doesn’t mean it can’t move at all or that eth is done now or that defi is a was. To the contrary, defi has just began. What may be in the past is the daily new hypecoin which may well have some proper ground but gas has put a ceiling to actionable hype.

That’s of course what we thought in 2016. The DAO had grown too fast. Security is paramount. You have to cap raises to $20 million. You need to provide disclosure. We should set up some rating/audit eth NGO. And then 2017 came and said f you bro, we gone do what we wants.

In the immortal battle between good in the medium-long term and good in the short term, it is futile to consider should for man can’t be controlled except by what we’ll very metaphorically say the ‘pen’ to want to mean that inherent objective conclusion of ‘good.’

So as this space moves, gradually you’d think standards would become laxer not out of choice but because what feels good in the present can make one forget its potential cost for the desire for it to continue to feel good for as long as possible.

And so what we’re trying to say is the defi party has not ended, but a certain welcoming music where everybody was somewhat all cheery being greeted with their presents, has now given way to the bit where people sit down and talk about sushi and to keep decorum or pretenses of ‘no no no no drink, I’m good boy,’ are still generally within their senses but in a nice friendly environment.

Otherwise said, it’s 7PM not 3AM. Maybe even earlier. Maybe even 5PM. Time here being decades, it should be months before the craziness of 3AM when most refined barristers or the best of coders have dropped any and all pretenses for forever young.

To think one can read the inevitability of matters is of course foolish, yet to think that we are not subject to certain matters is also foolish.

The aim must be to please the present while also maintaining it in check to continue that pleasure for as long as possible. Pleasure being emotions, the in-check part being objectivity as we call it, or less informingly, rational thinking of cause and effect.

As such, defi will probably continue to please, but less ecstatically so compared to the summer months, and then at some point presumably the pleasure will be too much to care about much else with nature taking over until it rebalances to more ground level.

Without a low there can’t be a hi, and vice versa. If we look at the flat line in social media innovation for example, it is that flat line itself which is now enraging and people are trying to kick it from below and above so that it moves or maybe even throw it in the bin completely because without a high there is no low and there is no middle, there is instead conceptual nothing.

Therefore, in this unintended philosophical treaties, our suggestion is not to eradicate emotions, but to balance them so that they don’t come prematurely and instead are objectively enjoyed for longer, including in that 3AM, because without those swings there is nothing and if we manage to keep those swings at the very least just below the very extreme, then why on earth shouldn’t we party.