And crypto projects that are derivatives on real world assets, like fiat currencies (stablecoins) or stocks (synthetic tokens), have equivalent backing. If the project were to dissolve, there would be assets backing that. Not suggesting this is the case here, but I keep seeing this worrisome trend where people are stuck in the Bitcoin and ICO world from 5 years ago and think nothing has changed and they don't really understand the technical details of how DeFi protocols work today.
In the case where tokens are not backed by anything they are often governance tokens, which are kind of like startup equity. Startups without much IP or real estate are commonly valued at millions of dollars. This is no different in that anyone is a VC investing in e.g. future governance rights.
I think it's arguable what real investments are. How "real" is the stock price of Gamestop? Aren't most prices just driven by imaginary narratives? Investors rarely care about dividends.
There are also DeFi projects that are based what you call "real investments" such as stablecoins, synthetic assets for stocks and commodities, etc. When the backing/staking mechanism for these works as intended, they are just as real as any derivatives on these assets in the traditional financial markets.
I think of it like this. Various tokens give you certain types of exposures with different risk profiles. Yields are so high because of the risk.
This really isn't so different from the centralized financial system where we have built complex structures (exotic derivatives, structured products, etc) to give you certain types of exposures. The difference is that DeFi is globally accessible and permissionless.
Even if DeFi never moves beyond these "financial speculation" use cases, if it replaces what's currently centralized in government-regulated financial markets, that's a multi-trillion dollar opportunity.
I'm doubtful we'll see any retail use cases or mass option beyond speculation soon, just like your average retail user does not buy exotic derivatives. That doesn't mean it's not useful.
But I am referring to investing into a DeFi project as a VC (= receiving tokens), not trading in Defi. Why is that not equivalent to investing in Robinhood as a startup?
I agree with you, but looking at what comes out of Silicon Valley these days, there is a fine line between "ponzi scheme" (in the broad sense) and "re-invest everything in growth and hope to get acquired". I'd push back that many traditional startups, most of which end up never being profitable but still exit in one way or another due to hype and investor relationships, are just as close to pump and dump schemes as many crypto projects are. It just isn't as obvious because the time scale is usually a bit longer.
> But a crypto project is not a traditional scalable company
Why is that true? There are DeFi crypto projects that are scalable companies with big revenue streams. Sure, the space is driven by speculation, but you can argue the same about Robinhood.
I had no idea that the creator of d3js is also the co-founder of Observable! Now this move makes a lot more sense. I'm starting to believe this may be another case where the creator (rightly so) wanted to find a way to monetize his popular open source project. It's a shame this happened. I don't blame him, but the broken open source business model.
Yes, I ended up not using d3 and using something else instead. But it's a shame because I thought d3 is a great project and a good fit for my use case. I just didn't want to waste my time and energy dealing with Observable.
I believe the main reason the internet has turned out this way is because of flawed economic incentives. It's a winner take all game ruled mostly by American corporations. The individual blogger, Usenet contributor, IRC moderator, or open source software creator never got a piece of the cake. As the internet became mainstream, the incentives to engage in these kind of activities vanished.
I hate to be the guy to bring up crypto since it never ends well on HN, but I believe that if the internet had had a "payment layer" that rewards early users from the start it would've turned out very differently.
I was in this exact same situation a year ago. Learning d3 had always been on my list of things to do but I never got around to it. When I finally found some time I realized that all their resources and tutorials had moved to this heavy interactive thing called "observable" - I was furious because I spent hours trying to find old tutorials. Maybe Observable is a good product for some use cases, but I don't want to deal with it. I want to have plain HTML with plain JS so that I can actually understand what's going on. No layers upon layers of magic. Eventually I gave up.
We need to stop forcing all this unnecessary complexity upon users.
I agree that (4) is a problem but there is also some signal in brand name. There is such a flood of (mostly low quality) papers that it's impossible to look at their content to judge what's worth reading. If you want to be at the forefront of research you can't wait to see which one stand the test of time.
That's why I fall back on trusting brand name labs. They are "staking" their reputation on a paper. If a paper turns out to be absolute BS their reputation suffers. Even if all talent is equally distributed, this makes it more likely that papers from brand name researchers and institutions are carefully reviewed because they have something to lose. This isn't right, but what is the alternative?
(7) Because most resarch happens in industry labs. Many university academics have left, or at least have dual positions in university and industry.
(2) IMO paperswithcode didn't solve much. It's nice, but just publishing code doesn't fix any of the incentive problems. You still don't know how that code was generated. Most likely by tuning random knobs until something worked.
In the case where tokens are not backed by anything they are often governance tokens, which are kind of like startup equity. Startups without much IP or real estate are commonly valued at millions of dollars. This is no different in that anyone is a VC investing in e.g. future governance rights.