Since the financial meltdown of FTX, it has become clear that the industry must focus on its primary core development, decentralized finance. DeFi is under attack, because of all these crypto-boys (most of these scammers are men) who think blockchain is a milking factory, and that the crypto industry is only about making shit tons of money and dumping on small investors, and getting rekt. Let’s defend DeFi.
If you haven’t been Rekt by any CeFi company or shithead scammers, kudos to you. There’s still a month to go before 2023. Major media companies have been so indulgent with people like SBF, Mashinsky or Su Zhu this situation can’t be real. Who’s going to trust anymore an industry where malicious founders get flooded with money and literally drain retail investments. When Bernie scammed his investors with his ponzi scheme, he received a 3 digit jail sentence. But now we have fuckers chilling in their mansions, at the beach, or on the run still trying to rebuild massive scams.
On the other hand, fortunately we have good folks who are working their asses off to deliver an international, inclusive and free-to-use financial system. I agree that nothing is perfect but so far DeFi has proven to be more resistant and transparent than all of these crypto-companies with the only goal of milking retailers till death.
DeFi is under attack
I started my DeFi journey at the very beginning of the summer in 2020. I was one of the first users of SushiSwap (Sushi), and luckily I’ve avoided being rekt by Nomi Chef, and immersed myself in a perpetual quest of trying new protocols, and obviously making tons of moola. At that time internet magic money was literally pouring into wallets throught yield farming, but it was quite boring. I was looking at several protocols and one of my favorites at that time was probably PoolTogether.
PoolTogether self describes its dApp as a no loss lottery. Basically you deposit stablecoins into a pool, with other users, and like a lottery, one lucky degen wins the jackpot. But contrary to a regular lottery the coins you deposit still belong to you, and the winner only gets the yield generated by the pool. Easy. Genius.
Wondering why am I digressing? Because DeFi is also raided from the inside. I’m not talking about regular scams, rugpulls or exit scams. But by evil greedy peeps. And everyone should be concerned. I’ve spoken with Brendan Asselstine co-founder of PoolTogether about the actual challenges the protocol is currently facing. PoolTogether is in a legal battle with a user of the protocol, he said: “Because the litigation is on-going, we are not able to comment on it in detail. The judge is currently evaluating the arguments. It could be months before we know how it will proceed. Fortunately, it hasn’t stopped the PoolTogether community from moving forward”. When asked if someone at PoolTogether made a mistake or if the product wasn’t fulfilling its conditions Brendan stated that “What we’re experiencing is old-world thinking being applied to new technology. It’s going to take time for people to better understand blockchain technology and decentralized finance, in particular”.
Fortunately PoolTogether can rely on its strong community and beyond thanks to the DeFi ecosystem. When asked how the community is helping, Brendan declared: “the community is everything! The broader community is great at finding new opportunities, and promoting the protocol. Our contributors are making sure the prizes are tuned optimally and that prize liquidity is available on all chains.”
A group of chads decided to not let anyone take down DeFi and rolled up their sleeves in order to raise funds for the PoolTogether trial. And Pooly came to life. Pooly is the figurehead of the defense of DeFi, speaking of, when asked about the future of Pooly, Brendan said that “Pooly already has a future! A Pooly community has grown independently of PoolTogether; it’s composed of some key PoolTogether contributors as well as new members who are mission-aligned. Pooly is the protector of DeFi”!
When it comes to defending PoolTogether and DeFi, you can be sure to rely on good souls. Leighton conceptualized and assembled the original Pooly campaign while dvdsmfer created the art for it. I came across dvdsmfer who designed the Pfers and Friends of Pooly, which are derivative NFT collections to raise awareness and money to Defend DeFi and Open Web3.
Friends of Pooly is a community focused on defending DeFi and an Open Web3.
“I created the original Pooly NFT design to help Leighton and PoolTogether defend themselves against what I saw as a frivolous lawsuit”, said dvdsmfer. “After the Pooly mint finished, I noticed that FoP were starting to form to continue defending the broader community from similar attacks. I wanted to help so I started creating art to raise awareness for them too”.
Dvdsmfer never stopped contributing to the Pooly community (including the Friends of Pooly) and recently released a pfp called Pfers (in reference to mfers) that donates a large portion of its proceeds to the Friends of Pooly DAO.
“The Open Web3 vision is to provide the missing standards for applications on the decentralized web, especially those that make you a producer rather than just a consumer of data. To us, this is more than just an open source idea; We are putting forth an entire paradigm shift in how software and online services could interact with each other in the future.”
In the same way that the internet is an open platform for innovation, decentralized finance promises to be an open platform for free expression and innovation. By combining the power of community we are offering a compelling vision for what this technology can bring to the average person’s life. All that’s required is mass adoption. So if you feel passionate about this space, and want to see it flourish, let us know; because we’re looking for people like you.
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