/ Insights
Spencer Bogart from Blockchain Capital wrote an excellent piece earlier this week titled “The Long Game in Crypto: Why Decentralization Matters” as a response to our EOS report.
Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are not yet mature. Like computers from the 80s and 90s, although they technically work, they’re fragile in practice. As such, most of their users are technical, and tend to focus on technical challenges rather than go-to-market challenges.
EOS is a blockchain and smart contract platform with a focus on speed, scalability, and user experience. EOS uses delegated proof of stake (DPoS) and a “token ownership as bandwidth” model to achieve high throughput and zero transaction fees.
There are a few commonly cited arguments on why it makes sense to build social media platforms on top of blockchains, and how these benefits will enable upstart social media protocols to displace incumbents.
There are three fundamental hypotheses that attempt to answer the question, “What path will the super mega winner(s) in crypto take?” In this post, I’ll detail each of these hypotheses. Note that all three hypotheses achieve the same result: massive stores of value. The primary difference between these hypotheses is the path by which these state-free monies get there.
Multicoin Capital recently announced an impressive list of new investors, of which we are excited to be a part. Crypto is a unique asset class that requires an investor to combine the skills of a venture capitalist and a hedge fund. Like a VC, you have to evaluate team, technology, market size, competitive dynamics, and go-to-market.
/Delegated Proof of Stake: Features and Tradeoffs
Distributed ledgers don’t easily scale. That fact has become readily apparent in the last few years as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others have faced serious challenges as they attempt to increase the speed and throughput of their platforms.
Each of the major smart contract platforms is making a unique set of trade-offs. These trade-offs are not simply the presence or absence of specific features, but rather represent fundamentally different views of what trustless computation means.
/Podcast: Kyle and Tushar on Epicenter
Kyle and I recently joined Meher Roy and Brian Crain on the Epicenter podcast. It’s one of our favorite crypto podcasts. Here’s the link.
There are three types of cryptoassets: stores of value, security tokens, and utility tokens. General-purpose stores of value should be valued using the equation of exchange because these currencies are independent monetary bases. Examples include Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Zcash, Dash, Monero, and Decred.