sgpc ◨ ◨ TAP🚰

So... Lazarus stole $1,500,000,000 from Bybit by hacking the Safe{Wallet} web experience, which was hosted on *cloud,* rather than served by smart contracts (just as I predicted). Our industry was crashed UNNECESSARILY. We must demand FAKE "onchain" ends TODAY.

Today, a restaurant waiter in America advised me how he chose tokens to buy, which is a stepping stone to broader issues in crypto, and my personal thinking. These were his 3 main criteria 😱🤔: 1) Trading volume 2) Tokens being "new" 3) "AI tokens" promoted on X Breaking his method down 1) He buys based on volume because he sees this as market validation and signal. He does not know that vaporware coins and memecoins, and also most major projects these days, simply create trading volume by contractually engaging with large numbers of market makers at once, and granting them options on their tokens just above the market price, incentivizing them to drive the price higher so they can exercise their options, basically by happily buying the token back and forth in a form of decentralized wash trading that attracts these kinds of folks (naturally, DFINITY does not engage in this "financial magic") 2) He buys based on recency, because he sees that new coins pump, reflecting how retail participants just get sucked into the latest financially engineered pump and dump cycle, which of course is causing industry liquidity to leak out to vaporware and memecoin operations and usually be lost to the industry forever (I asked about ICP, and he said he wouldn't buy that token because it is an "old coin," seemingly having no awareness this might reflect years of advancing technology and adoption...) 3) He buys "AI alts" based the advice of KOLs, primarily here on X, who promote vaporware tokens that have zero real technology behind them, but are sold using snakeoil narratives that sound reasonable to untrained ears, while being clearly ludicrous to anyone that actually understands how AI and decentralized networking technology works. He does not realize the KOLs promoting the AI vaporware are nearly all incentivized with bags of the tokens (again, this not a DFINITY practice, we spend our funds on R&D) So how did crypto get into this mess? Paid/vested interests press: The press oftentimes promotes the investments of its owners, and other times, just promotes whoever pays them. This is not the usual paid advertising model, since the consumers of this press cannot tell that the reportage itself, rather than banners, is often a subtle advertisement for vested interests. DFINITY does not pay, and since the Internet Computer project was initially funded by an ICO in 2017, rather than by industry titans who are eager to unlock and farm retail for their savings, and furthermore the Internet Computer might disrupt the status quo from which they profit, our interests don't align – and thus we very rarely get covered in parts of the crypto press, despite extensive PR efforts. Paid/vested interests research: It's reasonable for industry research to ask for money to investigate projects, but crypto industry research operations often differentiate themselves by a) actively lying to the reader about projects that are paymasters by promoting fake facts and narratives even when their own writers know they are lies and junk, and b) often acting in the competitive interests of their owners, by refusing to report on projects that might harm their interests, refusing to write balanced reports on them even for payment, and even excluding such projects from industry-wide analyses on crypto to make them look fringe to Average Joe's who can't possibly understand the wormhole of deception they have fallen into. For example, certain major firms will not create research on the Internet Computer and exclude it when creating broad reports on the crypto industry, despite the fact the network has benefited from by crypto's largest R&D operation since the end of 2017, and sports incredibly sophisticated, innovative and impactful technology created using contrbutions by world-famous researchers and engineers, and the network's onchain activity is growing very rapidly (it now often processes >1M Ethereum-equivalent transactions a second, because it allows things like social networks and AI to run truly onchain). Perversely, the disruptive potential of the technology is the primary reason why it is excluded. This pattern is the exact reverse of the way industry research would operate in a healthy industry. Mercenary KOLs: Of course, KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders/influencers) across all walks take secret payments to promote products, but in crypto, it's been taken to a whole new level, because they are incentivized with tokens whose price they then want to increase, and they promote complex snakeoil narratives that the Average Joe cannot really evaluate and see through. Once enough KOLs have been paid and incentivized to say the same thing, it creates a powerful manufactured "social proof" effect for the Average Joe, who actually believes he's acting according to the wisdom of the crowds. Because the Average Joe sees that the price often rises for the latest token wheezes being promoted, he inadvertently learns to follow the KOLs, then in the vast majority of cases, later losing money Flywheels: Investors and holders of Layer 1 tokens learned they could invest into startups building on their networks, and still make money even though the startups were likely to fail – because the noise they created would attract other developers eager for funding and generally drive liquidity into the Layer 1's tokens they owned so they could sell them. For similar reasons, those behind several blockchains learned they could profitably pay "customers" to "choose to build" on their networks (often paying enough to secure big corporates and govt. depts as "customers"), because again this was found to drive liquidity into their Layer 1 tokens. Of course, the crypto press and industry research firms often feed this by uncritically reporting announcements as achievements and signal. Eventually, although possibly over long horizons, investments fail, and fake customers leave, and the Average Joe loses as the hubbub dies down Ponzinomics: The insiders of certain projects are desperate to keep their token prices up, so they can exit with maximum profit. A great obstacle can be enormous investor unlocks (i.e. where large investors who have previously purchased large token batches, which they were required not to sell for some period, are about to be freed to sell...). To prevent those unlocks hitting the market and depressing the price, they will raise more money by selling more tokens off-market to other big funds at a steep discount to the current market price (often 60-80%), then use those funds to purchase unlocking tranches, so insiders can keep on selling to Average Joe at a high price and their project keeps its prestigious position on CoinMarketCap. Of course, this is another form of flywheel that will usually eventually fail, and the Average Joe has no idea what is happening. Corruption and cowardice: It's no secret that when the Internet Computer network launched into production May 2021, crooked industry players manipulated the ICP price using exchanges and market makers they controlled (essentially to attack early ICP holders), and launched other attacks too, primarily to disrupt the looming competitive threat the network presented to their investments. Naturally, there was no support from the crypto press, which is hardly surprising because corrupt industry titans attacking the project included SBF who was making tens of millions in secret payments to senior crypto editors at the time (and his incredible corrupt largesse to a certain political party, and celebrity, and hidden strings, also appeared to enable him to influence a star reporter at a certain mainstream media publication, who inadvertently collaborated in his attacks). Meanwhile, a class action was created by crooked law firm holding tokens from a "competitor" worth around two hundred million dollars at their peak, which had already launched many tens of lawsuits against various crypto projects. A crooked partner from that law firm was recorded on video by CryptoLeaks.info describing how this was part of a competitive strategy they pursued on behalf of the crooked project, also explaining how they were going to create another class action against Solana (which they they did months later). After the videos came to light, the founder of the project denied involvement, and since industry titans were invested into this project, the press trumpeted his claim as true. Meanwhile, of course, the crooked lawyer HAD consulted with the crooked founder on whether they should create the baseless class action against DFINITY, and federal judges with access to depositions (where people risk jail if they lie, as opposed to US legal filings, where litigation privilege lets you say anything) later kicked the crooked lawyers off all their cases, including the class action, indicating the dubious nature of the founder's claims to innocence. In any other industry, in any other field, the crypto founder and his project, which funded these crooked lawyers, would have been eaten alive. Not in crypto. ... I could go on. The problem is that the industry structure I've described above has been causing huge amounts of liquidity to leak out to people whose primary focus is on extracting value by pumping token prices rather than by building real long-term value, for example by performing R&D to increase the real world utility of these networks. The leaking liquidity simply disappears into blackholes. In fact, I think it's fair to say that now a huge proportion of crypto projects can best be described as token marketing operations built around snakeoil narratives and the kind of subtle marketing infrastructure and corruption I've described above, rather than as technology ventures. The problem is that whereas real technology ventures try to create real value that floats all boats, pure token ventures just extract value PvP style. This cannot possibly be a route to the crypto industry succeeding long-term. At DFINITY, we will remain laser focused on just contributing technology to the Internet Computer ecosystem, as per our non-profit mission. We'll weather this storm. I believe that things like the "self-writing internet" paradigm soon to arrive on the network have the ability to help the network transcend crypto. DFINITY continues to believe in traditional blockchain applications, and continues to contribute technology that benefits fields such as DeFi 2.0, but also believes in blockchains playing the role of straightforward next-generation tech stacks, which can host things like social networks and enterprise apps onchain. Today, it remains the case that only the Internet Computer network can host real apps and services onchain, or create open internet services directly controlled by a community without intermediaries with full automation, or run unstoppable AI models that are immune to traditional cyberattacks... However, I believe the fastest escape velocity from fake crypto can be achieved through provision of game-changing *mass-market* technology that offers compelling "hold-in-your-hand" grand utility to *billions* of people, which does not depend on speculation and narratives, and where the user may not even realize they are using blockchain and crypto technology. For me this is the self-writing internet, and we continue advancing towards releasing Caffeine.ai as fast as we can, not only to kick start this incredible new paradigm on the Internet Computer, and unleash a new kind of blockchain utility on a massive scale, but to create a shining beacon of light for the crypto industry that helps guide it forwards. Tech still matters, and I believe it will win out, and I want to thank everyone in the ICP community staying the course with us 💪💪💪

For years, hasn't been a @dfinity focus to pay — KOLs to shill, paid press to "report," industry "research" to laud, astroturf armies, financial wizards, "customers" to "choose us," Potemkin startups.. Money went to R&D & now we're *years* ahead. Touchdown will come 🏈 #ICP