Conversations #10: Opting out

Or why am I still passionate about crypto

Over the past 9 months, I’ve witnessed an average of 2 projects going under every day. Half of the contributors I talk to are either burnt out and inactive, or grinding in a direction they believe less and less in. In such a harsh environment how do you power through? 

As of now, the only three positive-thinking type of builders I see are either well-funded, already successful or absolutely laser focused on your mission (aka, the mad ones). At Paladin we’ve had the blessing of having enough clients to know we’re doing something right, these people are our north star.

Nevertheless, Quest isn’t a definite version of what we set out to create. From personal observations, this seems to be the case with most start-up, as there often is a significant gap between expectations/dreams and their collision with real-world markets. And yet I remain motivated, I’ve thought a lot about this topic and will try to sum it up in this article. 

I got into crypto because I saw something in the technology, that I hadn’t seen anywhere else: the ability to build fully autonomous and functional systems. I don’t just mean an IT protocol, but a currency, a community, even a nation. The allure of being able to build tech backed social systems is only exceed by the ability to exit them through forks (copying the code). This feature will be a major improvement on current social systems where the exit cost is extremely high (emigration or revolution) and will very likely push the politician to strive towards excellence, something clearly lacking in our current society. 

I started to build in crypto purely because I believe that opting out is a human right that needs pioneering, and I want to be a part of this movement. The problem with this statement, is that establishing social systems that will support opting are decade-long if not century-long endeavors. This means that you have to create a join profitable and sustainable companies that will enable such ideas. 

Luckily for us, Paladin has been a functional protocol since we started working on it three years ago, and it is bringing in enough revenue with a sustainable enough business model for us to keep pushing forward the ideals of the Opt-Out. Furthermore, this downturn has helped me realize how strong the current development team was, both in its capacity of developing and and executing a game plan, with them, we can weather any storm. 

Besides the financial and ideological arguments, its pretty obvious we need innovation in order to stimulate our intellectual thirst. Crypto happens to be a pretty fascinating place, closer to the hive-mind than most other industries thanks to its borderless and open source mindset. However, it's clear that in downturns, much less new and interesting experiments are launched. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t mean there aren’t new things in the works, it just means that large projects are holding off on experiments, focusing on their core business and timing releases much more thoroughly while smaller project are desperately trying to find a hold in order to survive. Case in point, I’ve only seen two truly exciting products in 2023 as of now: crvUSD’s soft liquidations (+ Instadapp’s Fluid) and Aladdin’s FX protocol / ETH pegged flatcoin. These two experiments are enough for me, as soft liquidations represent a major improvement in lending and fETH is one of the first real improvements on flatcoins. A lot of other ideas will likely blow my mind in the coming few months. 

The constant flow of creativity combined with our team’s capacity to ship high quality products is the cement that helps me stay motivated everyday. I hope you are also able to find such glue keeping you in crypto.