I’ve been in DeFi for a year now. Yay.
Lesson #1: DeFi is not a great space for the Middleman.
Whales with millions and Moonshotters with pennies, these are the winners.
As Middlemen — with our $10-30k — we get left in the dust.
We may make a few thousand with one move, but we usually lose a few thousand more on another. Or maybe our principal does nothing and we try to poke it with a stick or just sit on our hands as long as we can (2 days max).
Most of the time, we are the volunteer helpers that provide exit liquidity for the rich whales or we are the generous donors that provide 100x for the poor moonshotters.
Lesson #2: Nothing is safe. And it’s kinda my fault.
In the last 10 months, I’ve had the pleasure of losing my money to 5½ exploits: 2 on BSC, 2 on Polygon, 1 on Avax, and a ½ on Solana (TBD: Invictus DAO). I’ve also lost quite a bit on unexploited protocols with “incredible APYs” and “revolutionary tokenomics.”
Freedom! I can move my money wherever I please! This is the power and the danger of choice in DeFi. I have the ability to make informed decisions about where I wish to put my funds, but I am also the victim of my own nature, namely its annoying inclinations toward greed, competition, impatience, and outright addiction.
In the end, unless I’m willing to invest in the “secure” boring protocols like AAVEs or Anchors of the world, I have to understand that most of the current iteration of DeFi spaces are PvP (or DvD, degen vs degen).
Essentially, we are all looking to make profit from other people’s profits.
A protocol uses “incentivizing emissions” to attract liquidity? We need to sell higher than the other noobs coming in. A protocol uses “complex seigniorage systems” to blast out ridiculous APRs? We need others to bring in their money so that we can take profits from them. Etc, etc.
I could write a whole post about the easy comp between DeFi and gaming culture. We all love the rush of competition against the anon noobs out there, especially when we’re winning. The problem is, as the Middlemen, we’re winning less and less now because we’re stuck investing in the in-betweens.
Lesson #3: The previous two lessons were my prelude to NomDAO, my most favoritest new project ever.
The man behind the NomDAO is my friend “271077”, a Danish doctor with a great sense of humor and a mind for code. We initially bonded as huge Cyndi Lauper fanatics in a furries-only BSC protocol and our relationship has been hopping on ever since.
In late fall 2021, the good doctor revealed that in his admiration of the Rust programming language, he had decided to try building a new type of protocol and community on Solana. More specifically, he wanted to create a DeFi system that doesn’t just print money out of thin air or rely on ponzi-driven influencer shilling or heavy-flippered whales to increase the value of its token.
Since then, he and his dev friend Anshul have been busy.
Here’s what the NomDAO project has accomplished:
- Wrote an actual whitepaper — not a 30-second tokenomic chart with colorful graphics.
- Stealth launched (originally as BUNNY) with low liquidity and few holders. This way whales couldn’t really buy and create artificial pumps.
- Expanded dev team and participated in Solana hackathon.
- Got Anatoly’s attention on Twitter (I’m told he’s a big deal on Solana)
- Grape Integration in Discord community (holders rewarding holders)
- Found a theme song which my wife loves to hate.
- Built 30% of the Hopdex.io (featuring a social twitter feature and passionate NFT project partnerships)
- Rebranded from Bunny to NomDAO in order to match the theme song.
And here is what’s coming:
- The other 70% of Hopdex.io
- Multisig Wallet through Cashmere.
- The NomDAO metaverse (not sure what this is yet…see image below).
- Revenue streams distributed to NOM holders: Hopdex fees, P2P lend/borrow, royalties, NFT minting, merchandising, fiat ramps.
Ambitious and relaxed! I haven’t even checked the price of NOM recently because I’m so passionate about agnosticism now! (and contradictions!)
So yeah, long story short, I met a guy, he started a project called Solbunny and then this Bunny thing birthed out a Nom thing and it’s all really cool. And now I’ve learned as a losing DeFi Middleman that the best investment anyone could ever make…is in themselves. Woooow 👏.
Come join us in NomDAO discord. It’s fun.
PS. Full Disclaimer: I have demanded 1,000 NOM for the writing of this article, which I have been promised will equal $1,000 someday.
And this is that NomDAO metaverse thingy here below:
