Table of contents
ToggleVitalik is a DeFi skeptic?
The podcast program "Steady Lads" released last week invited Kain Warwick, founder of the Ethereum DeFi protocol Synthetix, for an interview. During the interview, HFAresearch founder Taiki Maeda revealed that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin actually does not like DeFi (decentralized finance). Taiki Maeda said:
“I was talking to Mark Zeller (Aave founder), and he told me that, yes, Vitalik seems to be a bit anti-DeFi, and the only protocols he supports are Maker and Uniswap.”
This information surprised the community. MilliΞ of Synthetix said that most of the value of Ethereum comes from its use as collateral in DeFi and does not understand why some people are opposed to building DeFi on Ethereum. In addition, MilliΞ further pointed out that Vitalik often posted articles praising USDC in the past. In contrast, he promoted USDC (which actually weakened the role of Ethereum as a store of value and damaged the neutrality of the chain) and demanded the reduction of DeFi (that is, giving Ethereum He was quite disappointed and found it difficult to agree with such remarks. MilliΞ said:
“I can’t read Vitalik’s mind, so I don’t know what he’s really thinking. I just find it hard to believe that his views on DeFi are really that negative, and if so, for those of us who defend Ethereum on social media and For people using this chain, this can be a big blow, especially as attention gradually shifts elsewhere.”
How Vitalik responded
In response, Vitalik clarified under MilliΞ's tweet that he was not denying DeFi itself, but the "unsustainable DeFi" created through liquidity mining and other methods.
“The things I don’t respect are basically things whose appeal comes from some temporary source and is not sustainable. For example, I’m not interested at all in the liquidity mining craze that’s going on in 2021 because it’s clear that this craze Coming from token issuances that are fundamentally temporary.”
However, Vitalik also admitted that he does not think DeFi will be a narrative that will push cryptocurrencies to the next 10x to 100x growth. The reason is that the source of DeFi’s revenue will always come from within the cryptocurrency market. This phenomenon feels like a natural phenomenon. It is impossible to break away from the framework and achieve larger-scale adoption.
“For example, the 8% annual interest rate in U.S. dollars that people get is paid by those who are long ETH with 2x leverage and pay 8% annual interest rate. This still means that the continued existence of the DeFi market depends on the existence of the ETH market, which means that "While DeFi may be great, it fundamentally has a ceiling and cannot be 'the' thing that drives cryptocurrencies to another 10x to 100x growth."
In addition, Vitalik further added that in the current world's technological trends, there are many rapidly growing centralization points and threats. In addition to finance, there are many other important problems to be solved. Even if "finance" is perfectly decentralized, It is not enough to solve all centralized problems. For example, identity systems and credit scores, social media, AI, and other fields all need decentralized solutions.
“I think the intersection between decentralized finance and other decentralized technologies is going to be really important. And ‘other decentralized technologies’ is an area that’s not going to naturally get a $100 million venture capital round, so I think It needs highly explicit support today, although my ideal scenario is that we can find stable feedback loops to facilitate its development.”
Community debate for and against
Regarding Vitalik's point of view, there are many different voices in the market. MilliΞ believes that although he agrees with some of Vitalik's ideas, after all, the value of the Ethereum ecosystem and ETH is still strongly bound to DeFi at this stage, so he cannot agree with Vitalik's contempt for DeFi discussion. MilliΞ questions Vitalik.
“I’d love to hear your thoughts on other potential value drivers for ETH, but as a financial instrument I really struggle to see it being a store of value (SoV) other than as collateral, liquidity, and on-chain collaboration. other uses.
Arthur, the founder of Defiance Capital, retweeted Vitalik's remarks and said that this is what caused DeFi builders to leave Ethereum because they have had difficulty dealing with L2's liquidity fragments and inherently unsafe programming languages. Finally, he added: "This makes me more optimistic about Solana DeFi."
However, many people agree with Vitalik's argument and believe that he is not against DeFi, but rather dislikes those gorgeous Ponzi schemes. In addition, Dovey, the founder of Primitive Ventures, said that he believes that Ethereum is going through the painful process of "separation of church and state", which will ultimately lead to a more decentralized and resilient technology stack, design standards, human resources and intelligence. Resource Network.
“Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion, but when high-level church people and even Vitalik himself are challenged in public, I become more bullish on ETH.”
