📈 Top 3 Stories from the past week
ConstitutionDAO raises $47M but loses auction | 🔼 41
ConsenSys raises $200 million to continue growth | 🔼 33
Aave ARC announcement | 🔼 26
🌶 Spicy takes below 👇
A bunch of people got together on the internet and raised >$40M to buy a copy of the Constitution. They weren’t successful but got the DAO narrative circulated in the WSJ and NYT for the low price of burning a bunch of ETH on gas. I contributed because I love the narrative, it’ll get Washington’s attention, proves the US can still be a leader in crypto, and flexes the fundraising and capital power of the crypto sector. 💪
I’d expect this trend to repeat itself many times over the coming years as DAOs go mainstream. Crypto exchanges already buy stadium naming rights so why not have DAOs doing the same? We’re truly at the beginning of a 10 year journey of crypto permeating every aspect of our lives. I’m here for it. Plus the ConstitutionDAO story, auction, Twitter/Discord discussions, and drama was the most fun I’ve ever had on the Internet. (📜,📜)
💗 #BrookeDAO
https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/124615/consensys-raise
ConsenSys made up greater than 50% of the Ethereum/crypto ecosystem when I joined the company back in early 2017. Joe emphasized maximum creativity, expression, and experimentation from the early days of the venture studio and that led to the insane growth of the Ethereum space powered by Infura, MetaMask, Truffle, developer academies, and outreach to the most powerful governments and companies around the world. Other early ConsenSys ventures forecasted the killer crypto apps of 2021 around NFTs, DAOs, and DeFi….but were too early to market back in 2016/2017. We’ve gone from 40k worldwide users to 40M, and it feels great. 🤗
Fast forward to today and every non-Ethereum ecosystem copies the ConsenSys model of having a go-to-market company paired with a crypto foundation…Smart Contract/Chainlink, Dapper/Flow, Alameda/Solana 😉, etc etc. Approximately 2 years ago, ConsenSys morphed into the Google/Microsoft of Ethereum/Web3 and has seen massive revenue and treasury growth united around its new mission and focus. The crypto media/tabloids love to take shots at Joe but his patience, conviction, and skin-in-the-game are unmatched in the crypto ecosystem. I’m clearly biased but I expect some pretty phenomenal growth for ConsenSys Software over the coming years… 🚀
https://aave.mirror.xyz/JcA9DzQHK6o8YYMmxtH43Vqq5HoHvjrTrFnd_UprKWQ
Right now, my favorite short/medium term trend in crypto is the convergence of DeFi with fintech/TradFi. Crypto OG stalwarts will say that we need to burn the old system down and embrace our anonymous Mad Max financial future. But that will cause lots of pain for the small folks, and I always generally favor evolution over revolution for the human species.
Well Aave has been the leader in crypto lending and borrowing in DeFi for a few years now, and the protocol announced Aave Arc this week to allow TradFi institutions to have their own Aave market with the compliance features needed for them to operate, largely powered by Fireblocks. I welcome this innovation, and think we’ll continue to see more of it and other similar experiments like Compound Treasury. If DeFi is going to capture more of the TAM of TradFi Credit markets, and not just be satisfied with degen yield farming games, we need these types of moves.
Stani and crowd do the best job of encouraging innovation and avoiding innovators dilemma of any of the top DeFi protocols. You MUST go cross-chain, otherwise you’ll be forked and others will capture those users and capital. You MUST experiment with tiered risk features like described in Aave V3. You MUST innovate to get more institutional capital into DeFi. So I’m excited for this experiment and believe that it’ll be an inflection point in this DeFi<>TradFi convergence trend. 👻