Why DeFi
The first rule of crypto is never share your private keys.
The second rule of crypto is never entrust your tokens to a third party.
The third rule of crypto is never lose your private keys.
If you've managed to follow all of these rules: Congratulations! You haven't lost any of your tokens!!
Roughly two years ago I put together a protocol for STEEM that would enable you to make atomic swaps with a layer 2 chain with out giving up your keys. Until the trade was purchased off the open market(DEX) it would have been held in the escrow transactions. The escrow transactions would have been run by a consensus network of HIVE accounts that would put up tokenized collateral. Meaning there was no exposure; price action of the collateral would have automatically canceled any trade that was now longer properly collateralized; also maintaining liquidity for the current price interface.
Now having a network of accounts doing DEX is cool but it can do so much more. A method was built to have these accounts control a multi-signature wallet... meaning they could control a properly sized HIVE pool. They could share Account Creation Tokens on an open market and price those automatically. They could collectively authorize votes on content as well as allocate the networks token.
Unfortunately for HIVE, UniSwap claims to be the first protocol to allow swaps without sharing private keys or trusting a third party. A protocol that has handled billions in a single day. These swaps cost significant amounts of GAS and in general will not aid the market in mass adoption or micropayments.
In business COST is KING. If you can lower the cost of something by 10 you'll easily outmaneuver your competition. Will ETH2 coming out will HIVE maintain it's tremendous cost advantage?
These protocols were built to help serve and host content. The missing piece of decentralization. If you want to see what is possible here: nothing short of immersive, opt-in, VR/XR & Webapps.
There is tremendous opportunity to dominate the WEB with fast free transactions. We can grow this network, or we can let it drown into novelty and obscurity.
