leafwind: "Everyone here is a capital plate"

This article is the "Suffix" interview and writing camp group C. The interviewee @leafwind is a LikeCoin blockchain verifier. There is a serialized "Lilikoukou Weekly" in Matt City. After the 12th issue, the subtitle will be given. The period is " Everyone here is a capital disk ". From different perspectives, I hope to let readers know that the Ponzi scheme (funding disk) is actually a concept of the spectrum, and it exists in our daily life. So this interview will go a little deeper into leafwind's various perspectives.

Rich past experience

denkeni: You introduced yourself as a data science engineer in Matt, just a little bit about how you got into this business?
leafwind: My university is information engineering, and my research field is related to machine learning, so I was fortunate enough to start my first formal industry job with data science (although it was not easy in the environment back then, and after a period of struggle Whether you want to enter a "traditional" big factory, like Bamboo Branch or a system factory in Taipei).

denkeni: So how did you come into contact with blockchain-related technologies?
leafwind: I first heard about LikeCoin from Matters, but I have been in contact with it intermittently for a year or two. There is no intensive in-depth research during this period. At most, I bought a little bit of Bitcoin as an attempt. It is not until 2021 that I bought some SOL (Solana) and tried to send meme coins before I really touched the currency circle.

denkeni: So have you considered developing into a crypto-related industry in your future career?
leafwind: It is difficult to say what will happen in the future. I do not exclude it, but under the current comprehensive consideration, there are still more opportunities for data engineering/science.

denkeni: You are currently a LikeCoin node validator, when did you start?
leafwind: I forgot the detailed date. Although it is not a genesis node, it was added quite early.

denkeni: Why do you want to be a LikeCoin validator?

leafwind: At the time, it wasn't really clear, maybe it was enthusiasm. My earliest work was in the advertising industry, and I worked on advertising algorithms for a while, so I know the price behind the attention we pay to companies like Facebook. I have always hoped that there would be a way to allow, for example, a Facebook like to reward others with 1 TWD without a high handling fee, so that there may be hope to get rid of the kidnapping of advertisements. So as soon as I saw what the blockchain was going to do, I felt that this was what appealed to me.

Of course, LikeCoin is not just a reward now, but it was added for this reason at the time.

As for the other reasons, on the one hand, I wrote articles and got some LikeCoins that I wanted to contribute to the community, and on the other hand, I felt that I might be able to learn more about the underlying technologies of the blockchain.

(Note: LikeCoin is a blockchain based on the Cosmos SDK and is a part of the Cosmos ecosystem.)

denkeni: You seem to be very interested in the Cosmos ecosystem, and even started a Cosmos TW discussion group on Telegram for this. What fascinates you the most about the Cosmos ecosystem? Do you agree with the strength of the Cosmos Hub development team ( "Lilikoukou Weekly" #15 )?

leafwind: Free and open design gives engineers a lot of room for imagination. Unlike other tokens, this SDK does not capture any value, which is similar to an open source ecosystem, and also gives autonomy to all projects using this architecture. I am particularly interested in human nature, and want to know what “interesting” social experiments can be made in such an ecosystem. Later, it was proved that the Cosmos ecosystem has produced many political events at the level of historical textbooks (although most of them caused the price of the currency to fall).

denkeni: So have you been exposed to other ecosystems (eg Ethereum, Tezos, etc.)?

leafwind: ETH (Ethereum) has a lot of L2, as well as infrastructure such as cross-chain bridges and swap. The most recent one I have encountered is The Space project, which has spent a lot of MATIC gas on it.

There is a little touch of XTZ (note: Tezos blockchain token). There is a very strong community behind it. I have a highly positive view on this ethos of focusing on collection and creation. Unfortunately, the amount of information is too large, and there is a lot of creative output every day. There is no way to invest the corresponding time to follow. Finally faded out.

In fact, Solana spent the most effort in the past, but the overall ecology is still centralized, and the infrastructure is also very unfriendly to small projects. Many things have to be done from scratch. It really requires funds and a team to invest effort. .

"Everyone here is a money plate"

denkeni: You criticized traditional finance in "Lilikoukou Weekly" #12 with the title "Everyone here is a fund". These ideas are similar to the views of several core members of LikeCoin. Wondering how these ideas came about?

leafwind: The first opportunity was when my salary changed from Taiwan dollars to Japanese dollars after I left Taiwan. In the past, even if you held foreign exchange, it was only used as an "target" for investment, and it did not really coexist with multiple currencies. However, after receiving Japanese currency, you were forced to use fiat currency to live in multiple places, and the idea of Taiwan dollar standard would naturally disappear. The way you think about prices will also change drastically.

To use a more exaggerated analogy, it is like after leaving the earth, you will start to calculate the impact of gravity and atmospheric pressure on life. Of course it will be hard for us to live off the earth in our lifetime, but in the next few decades, the world monetary economy will soon affect every country, breaking the thinking mode of most people based on their own legal currency (except for countries that use the US dollar) ).

The second opportunity was that the Japanese currency kept depreciating just after I arrived in Japan. Even the fiat currency of the world's third largest economy can drop by double-digit percentage points in a short period of time, and it can be determined that the fiat currency is not absolute. I believe that people in many countries such as Turkey, Africa, Russia, and Europe also have a deep understanding of this point. Although many fiat currencies are still stable at present, I think it is only temporary. As for when they will change significantly, it is difficult to predict.

The third opportunity is after exposure to cryptocurrencies. Observing a lack of regulatory environment, not needing to whitewash financial reports, and not being accountable to investors, these are all drawbacks. But also because of this, for investment Muggles like me, cryptocurrencies have removed a lot of the "sugar coating" of traditional finance. People like me who have no financial background and no investment experience can easily understand These "ugly" methods, and after understanding these "rules of the game" and then going back to look at traditional finance, you will find that they have achieved the same goal in different ways, and the way of cutting leeks is not different.

Later, my own conclusion is: any target that can be used for investment must have more or less Pontic properties, the key points are:

1. Is this Ponzi big enough and how long can it live? (The dollar is the largest in the world)
2. Was it in the early days of this Ponzi when we joined? (Are you going to receive a retirement annuity, or will you continue to pay for 30 years?)
3. Can this Ponzi continue to attract more leeks to join? (Whether the country forces you to join, or the system will deceive many people to join)

denkeni: Even though U.S. dollar quantitative easing is the largest volume of funds, its price volatility is still far lower than that of cryptocurrencies, and in contemporary mainstream monetary economics, it is still affirmed as one of the effective means to adjust the national economy. Japan's Abe Economics also employs quantitative easing. How do you evaluate such monetary policy?

leafwind: Same as above, the U.S. dollar is the largest capital disk, coupled with the world's largest fist guarantee, so the means that can be used on him may not be applicable to other fiat currencies. The most obvious point is that when the dollar prints a lot of money, it is the fiat currencies of other countries that depreciate. I am afraid that there can only be one in the world with the ability to print money and put it on the back of others.

Therefore, I think that if we want to evaluate quantitative easing, we may have to look at it separately from the capital market.

Quantitative easing is strongly linked to the state of the economy in that country itself. Taking the situation of Japan as an example, it is necessary to consider whether the easing will inevitably bring about depreciation (because it is not the United States), whether it is worthwhile to balance the advantages and disadvantages of imports with the advantages and disadvantages of exports, and whether it will synergize with rising prices to make people's livelihood more difficult and domestic labor force. , taxation and other aspects are also very complex interactions.

On the whole, I think Japan's quantitative easing is a solution. Although it is forced to stick to this path, it may not be successful, and it is difficult to think of a more powerful way to replace it. As for other countries, I don't know and can't comment.

LikeCoin Value, Price and Investment

denkeni: One of the original intentions (or reasons) of the nationalization of monetary policy and quantitative easing is to regulate and promote the development of the country's economy, and the currency behind it represents the country's economy and national strength. Looking back at the currency circle, it should be possible to use a similar analysis method:

Whether a cryptocurrency has value depends on whether a valuable product is created behind it. At present, the main products of LikeCoin chain are the upcoming Writing NFT, as well as ISCN and the related system of "turning praise into reward". How do you view the future of these products?

leafwind: First of all, I don’t think value equals price. If we want to discuss price, then I don’t think we need to study the value of products too seriously in a few years. “Fundamentals” may not be meaningful in traditional stock markets.

What's more, in the currency circle, value and price are often negatively correlated. If you want to start a business here, you usually can't do anything that contributes too much. You have to be so imaginative that others don't understand what you're doing, so that you can blow the bubble. big.

After eliminating the possible misunderstanding of the price, let's look at the value of the product you said. I think that "turning praise into appreciation" still lacks a good entrance. The threshold for ordinary people is still too high. It must wait until ordinary people can open the web page, like them at will, and send money out before it can be popularized; while ISCN lacks ordinary people. The reason for using it; so Writing NFT may be an entry point. Although I have never used such a thing, I can imagine that it is quite related to creation. The buyer may be the reader or fan, not the hype, so this thing Maybe I will use it for a long time, but I don't expect it to become popular or even popular in the short term.

denkeni: Thank you for specifically pointing out the difference between "value" and "price", the previous one is indeed for "value". Let me ask you what you think about the "price" of LikeCoin, which has dropped by more than 90% in this bear market, and the trading volume has also shrunk significantly.

leafwind: In fact, the vast majority of the entire Cosmos ecosystem has fallen by more than 80%. There are also small coins in other ecosystems that have fallen more. With the scale of LikeCoin, I think this decline is not particularly bad, just follow the market.

This does not mean that I think there is no problem with the currency price of LikeCoin, but its problem is not this bear market crash, but that it has almost no hype in itself. Therefore, from a longer-term perspective, the price of the currency has never "taken off" - when others rise sharply, it rises slightly, when others fall sharply, it falls more - as a capital market (I regard the capital market as a medium A gender term, because I believe that any investment target is a fund), the lack of ability to attract money is a very real problem. I think the concept and attributes of LikeCoin itself are incompatible with the current speculative atmosphere in the currency circle. It may be more suitable for traditional entrepreneurship, or it is more suitable to wait until the blockchain is popularized before attracting more pragmatic investors to join.

denkeni: LikeCoin also has an inflation system, which can also be artificially controlled through motion (unlike the Bitcoin supply curve mechanism). LikeCoin's economic adjustment system will be particularly beneficial to validator income during times of great inflation. Is this similar to quantitative easing, which is beneficial to traditional banks?

leafwind: Unlike quantitative easing, quantitative easing banknotes almost only go to banks, but PoS inflation is directly enjoyed by all pledgers (similar to bank depositors).

Although the validator can get more from the commission than the average person, it is generally 5%~10%, which is a different concept from the traditional finance going to the bank.

Through the observation of bulls and bears, I found that if inflation continues, it will inevitably lead to stock sales; if it turns to deflation, it will also cause unprofitability and fund withdrawal. Therefore, the crux is that the blockchain cannot last for dozens of times like traditional finance. Years of attracting gold, although inflation can attract funds in the early stage, but it is difficult to sustain. This is not a problem of inflation. Without inflation, the entire PoS ecosystem cannot even be established in the first place.

Of course, you can say that that is the fundamental problem of PoS, whether to give up PoS and go back to PoW, which is beyond the scope of my discussion.

denkeni: Combining the above-mentioned perspectives and your capital statement, is it possible to interpret cryptocurrency: on the one hand, it is easy to understand the "ugly method" because of its openness and transparency, and on the other hand, it is no different from traditional financial methods? So how does this reflect on your asset allocation?

leafwind: There are still many eye-catching ideas and technologies in cryptocurrency, but from the perspective of capital, the operation of the token economy is often printed in the same mold as traditional finance.

I'll look at it from a risk and reward perspective, and of course also take into account personal interests. For example, U.S. stocks and Taiwan stocks, I prefer to buy large-capacity stocks/ETFs, which are low-risk and stable-reward blocks; as for the cryptocurrency market, bull markets are high-reward, bear markets are low-reward, but the risk has always been high ; and Japanese stocks are the worst investment decisions I have ever made, generally low returns but high risks, even more detached from the fundamentals than the currency circle.

The higher the risk block, the less I will configure, just like the barbell strategy. But there are some exceptions. The previous Solana and the current Cosmos have more configurations. I believe they will have a place in the future.

I don’t know anything about technical analysis and quantitative trading. I also learned the knowledge of general economics and traditional finance from the currency circle, so most of them rely on the fundamentals of product technology, which is usually the least important investment in investment. One of the items, so I can only say that I have a little personal belief.

denkeni: I myself are completely the opposite. After I have been investing in traditional finance for a while and figured out the investment portfolio that I am more interested in, I came to see things in the currency circle with these points of view. Therefore, I also agree that almost every investment in the currency circle has high risks. Even though cryptocurrencies and traditional fiat currencies have similar “capital disk” attributes, the price fluctuations and risks of the former are significantly higher.

In addition, the proportion of foreign assets, foreign currencies or cryptocurrencies of most people is usually not high, which makes the price of domestic fiat currency fluctuate and needs to be considered together with the purchasing power of domestic goods (in Taiwan, it is the "Consumer Price Index"). More accurate assessment of personal assets. Therefore, I usually encourage people who have only invested in the currency circle to learn about traditional financial commodities or investment theories as soon as possible, so that they can have a broader perspective and will not be limited to the currency circle.

Hype and Underrated Projects

denkeni: Similar to your opinion that "any target that can be used for investment must have more or less Pontic properties", here I would like to make another point of my own: "Any successful mass product must have more or less (in the past). ) hype attribute”. For example, the form of digital assets such as NFT, obviously only started to make waves after the traditional art auction platform was sold at a high price.

For example, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once looked at it this way ( source ):

People say sometimes, “You work in the fastest-moving industry in the world.” I don't feel that way. I think I work in one of the slowest. It seems to take forever to get anything done…The reason for that is, it seems to take a very unique combination of technology, talent, business and marketing and luck to make significant change in our industry. It hasn't happened that often.

From this traditional point of view, it is the innovative value or market competitiveness of the product itself, as well as marketing business promotion, and even hype, which have a certain degree of interdependence.

leafwind: Yes, marketing hype is always a spectrum. It does not only exist in the concept of investment. The so-called "technology adoption curve" refers to a similar concept, which must pass through the hype stage before it becomes popular.

denkeni: So, I would like to ask you to share which projects you feel are underestimated in strength or value? And which Web3 people do you agree with with their strength or vision, and recommend everyone to follow?

leafwind: The reason why the value is underestimated is because human nature has always been difficult to hype on it, which may lead to underestimation forever, so I do not recommend others to invest in the following list, but I will be willing to use their products, because they are also in the bear market. Continue to contribute to the ecology:

Solana:

1. Marinade $MNDE: is the infrastructure of $MSOL.
2. Mango $MNGO: It is the infrastructure of Solana DAO. Although the Solana project is generally dictatorial and far behind Ethereum and the Cosmos ecosystem in governance, if there is a possibility of open governance, it is currently Mango's greatest contribution.
3. I do not recommend most of the DeFi categories including DEX. Most of them are turned into platforms for staking IDO, or the power of listing is extremely centralized; but jup.ag (transaction aggregator) and francium.io ( leveraged strategy platform) is a good platform to use.
4. png.fi (liquidity service) is also a platform that does not issue coins, but helps many ecological projects.

Cosmos:

1. God's main brand ATOM: He is currently the biggest experiment in the currency circle on "whether openness can capture value".
2. LikeCoin and Desmos are only focused on infrastructure in specific fields, and they are sandwiched between them. They are destined to have no good hype for the underlying chain or upper-level applications, but the development team will continue to work in the bear market. It can be seen if they survive, and because the currency price is extremely cheap, it is not a loss to try out the experience of Web3 publishing and social functions.
3. Omniflix, the NFT market, focuses on building communities, and the development progress is also stable. Unlike most NFT markets, which aim to make money from the fastest launch, Omniflix has been tested for a reasonable time before going online, and no coins have been issued yet.

The above are all projects that I think have done far more than the team gets paid from leeks and made a positive contribution to the ecology. Usually, they have not issued coins or they have been broken, and the focus may not return to these projects.

Most of the Web3 celebrities I don't understand, it's not that I think they are bad, it's just that I simply can't understand the way they think.

The dilemma of decentralization and specialization

denkeni: Since you have been involved in many blockchains, I would like to discuss a conceptual topic at the end: about decentralization (or technology popularization).

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam has analyzed the blockchain ecosystem and divided it into three types of members: Developers, Miners/Validators, and Users.

However, Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin has stated ( source ):

For a blockchain to be decentralized, it's crucially important for regular users to be able to run a node, and to have a culture where running nodes is a common activity.

This claim is intended to reduce the gap between "miners/validators" and "users", but it does not seem to be the mainstream trend.

For example, in the Cosmos ecosystem, there is a "Slashing/Jailed" penalty mechanism ( official document ) for validators. When I first learned about this term, I was shocked by this term -- being a validator actually suffers from "jailed/jailed". imprisonment” and the risk of being fined (laughs). My understanding of this penalty mechanism is to improve the availability of validators (that is, to continue to operate as much as possible without being disconnected), but this ultimately depends on the technical capabilities of validators.

I recently tried to set up a LikeCoin verification node on the testnet, and found that the installation process still relies heavily on the Linux shell command interface, and the threshold for ordinary users is quite high. There is catding that has launched hosting services , but I don't know how many people use it today. "Validator specialization" seems to be an irresistible trend, which should be similar to the specialization of DevOps/SRE (meaning the specialization of server architecture and stable maintenance).

In PoW blockchains, we have seen large mining pools become centralized miners. In PoS blockchains, is it likely to see technology groups become large validators? For another example, in the book Radical Markets, it is mentioned that the rise of index funds and institutional investors may have led to an environment of labor exploitation. Can you share your views on such a trend of "specialization" and the phenomena caused by it?

(Reference books: Radical Markets, E. Glen Weyl, Eric A. Posner, Eight Banners Culture; see also excerpt .)

leafwind: Vitalik's idea is also the original idea of decentralization, that is, everyone can run their own bitcoin node. I hope the world can develop in this direction, but this ideal may never be realized, because it violates human nature and likes to follow The characteristics of authority and following the trend, in simple terms, what human beings pursue is centralization.

The design concept of Cosmos is to use the application chain instead of one chain to carry all the calculation amount. Therefore, the innate limit can only allow more than 100 nodes. If these 100 nodes are very "two lights", then it is impossible to add a thousand more nodes. A node to maintain stability, so it will inevitably tend to a certain degree of elite and specialization.

As for entrusting catding escrow services, as far as I know, there are at least three or five, but I'm not sure how many are left. I personally don't think it's a bad thing. Although this is the same as the specialization of the industrial revolution, it is ultimately a process of alienation.

But even PoW will have the problem of node concentration, but one is technology-intensive and the other is capital-intensive, and technology-intensive and capital-intensive also have a certain correlation.

The current Cosmos or other major PoS blockchains do have a very large proportion of professional verification institutions/companies, and the big ones will generally be Evergrande. As mentioned above, they cannot escape the limitation of technology/capital-intensity.

On the largest PoS blockchain (ETH), I believe it will still be almost capital dominated. But another difference of Cosmos is complete autonomy, although it can interoperate with each other, but the power of each other does not interfere with each other. In the case of LikeCoin, there are very few institutional nodes, and Desmos is also very decentralized. Each (small) application chain may not always be mastered by institutions, just like an independent small village.

In addition, there is still a slight difference between technology and capital. Capital can be used to purchase technology, but technology-intensive lowers the threshold for engineers (or similar teams) who have no capital but have technology to join, so we can use lower Cost and more efficient way to compete with institutions; in addition, since joining this network does not require permission, there will be some influential people who have no capital to join (such as Ming En in LikeCoin), although this is A few, but undeniably do exist, and therefore not entirely capital-led.

It's a world without limits, if I say it. As for whether this "unrestricted" will evolve into a more central or more decentralized than traditional finance, I don't have a conclusion yet. It may depend on who you are thinking about. If you are a capable beneficiary, you may feel more decentralized. , more unrestricted; but if it is the group with the least capital and the least technology, it may feel more deprived and maybe even more deprived.

denkeni: This reminds me of Silicon Valley Venture Capital Peter Thiel's metaphor "Crypto is decentralizing. AI is centralizing." and even used ideology to compare it to "Crypto is libertarian. AI is communist." ( Source ) Of course, these two are not absolute polarities. However, it seems to be the case in the general trend. It is relatively easy to operate a project of decentralization in the blockchain world.

In contrast, your point of view that "humans seek centralization" is interesting, because we do also see that humans generally tend to conform more easily (the degree of course varies with different national cultures). But just as you continue to express your opinions and promote people's thinking through the "Lilikoukou Weekly", this is also one of the original intentions of my " Slow Pace. Bear Market. Read, think, and even participate in decentralized projects. We're all doing our best to push the world in that direction, aren't we?

leafwind: I understand, but after getting into the blockchain, you will find that technology is still neutral, and it is human nature that really determines its use. Just like nuclear energy can generate electricity or can be used as a weapon, blockchain is also used as a digital RMB (whether it is really a blockchain technology may be controversial, but it is undeniable that most blockchains are still very central, and even some more central than traditional finance)

Of course I am optimistic about technology, but I am also pessimistic about human nature, which may be where my thinking is different.

(Special thanks to @reading pen farming for assisting in editing)