Transparency report Q1-24
Six months since the last one.
The 2025 meta was brutal: farm a hype project, dump, move on. Cynical, zero-sum, and everything that makes DeFi forgettable. It's not interesting or viable, which is the first reason why I've stayed entirely out of DeFi assets for now.
The second reason is I got hit hard by the collateral damage from the Stream fraud, both professionally and personally. This happened right as I'd rotated my entire DeFi portfolio into stablecoins.
I still farm, but selectively. And I'm probably not alone. The next wave of DeFi seems to be coalescing around risk minimisation and new yield sources. Tranching illustrates the first, with @infiniFi , @capapp and Tenka standing out. Beyond that, tokenization and its integration into DeFi feels like the real long-term unlock.
One project already stands apart on that front: @AskVenice and $DIEM. My only large position.
$DIEM is an elegant way to tokenize compute. It grants $1 of daily AI credits, perpetually. I use LLMs heavily, so buying perpetual compute rights at a discount made sense as an investment thesis. It also opens up something interesting for DeFi.
I teamed up with @cheaptokensAI and built a compute delegation contract: $sDIEM. Holders earn yield paid in compute credits.
If you're spending money on AI, https://t.co/NN9Lz9VgO3 is the cheapest place to buy credits. Audits are done, we've been running it on our own $DIEM stack for weeks, and public launch is imminent. DM me if you want to test it out.
Deposit UI is coming shortly after.
DeFi isn't dead. It just needs things worth building. This is me trying.
The "efficiency" of propAMMs come from an external price feed
It assumes price is discovered elsewhere and imported. Oracles stop being relevant when you're the largest market
AMMs are far more ambitious, as they assume they are the venue where price discovery takes place
You know, Mistral going public right now would really be great timing.
But as is tradition, we'll squeeze out every drop of value in private markets, and once no one wants to fund it privately, they will dump it on retail.
European public markets are so fucked
I see so many people using Fable for useless projects.
Do they not realise we just crossed the chasm? These models are now more expensive than employing a full time expert.
I think rest / being reasonable is something I struggle doing well.
I'm usually exercising 5-6 times a week, but there's a good half of the sessions where I feel spent and can't do well (mostly in climbing and running, swimming is fine).
Is whoop really better than other watches for sleep data btw ?
PSA: I now consider *all* of DeFi unsafe.
Coding agents are superhuman at finding vulnerabilities, and smart contract security is too asymmetric: defenders need to fix every bug while attackers need just one exploit to steal funds.
@TrustlessState@A_Leutenegger@laurashin This is the difference between liability and responsibility. He may not be at fault legally speaking, but they certainly are in butchering the 80% of funds left and refusing to communicate during this whole endeavour.
Fix things then move on, not the other way around
@fiege_max Really don't feel eth bros are salty with HL. Feels like both chains have very different target and use cases.
Sol bros on the other hand...
@MerlinEgalite@packyM@foundersfund Please don't become an effective altruist ☠️
But I've trying to write out why rewriting finance is a worthwhile endeavor. Five years in, I still don't have a satisfying draft
Made this 5s Seedance 2.0 video with a CheapTokens key.
Venice usage quote: $0.90
My effective cost through CheapTokens: ~$0.43
The real unlock: same-day discounted credits are only useful if agents can spend them fast and conveniently.
So we shipped a public agent skill + guide:
• paste in a CheapTokens key
• skill detects expiry + balance
• discovers live Venice models
• routes text/image/video/audio
• adds attribution so you know what ran where
No daily provider reconfig. Useful when you buy near midnight UTC and have minutes/hours left.
Skill pack:
https://t.co/k0lVUhCEgi
Guide:
https://t.co/h9LT0mTYM7
Same Venice API. Cheaper same-day credits. Agent-native.