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One of the things I’ve always been passionate about is building a team from scratch. When I look back on my career the most fun I’ve had is assembling wonderful groups of people together and building something amazing. When the opportunity to join Oneiro and run ndev came, one of the most compelling reasons for me to join was that I’d have the opportunity to do that again. After a year of working on this, I can honestly say, the ndev team is the best team I’ve ever worked with. 

When you build a team from scratch you obviously need to think about a lot of different things and identify the type of culture you are hoping to build. However, I try very hard to not hire a bunch of people that are very similar. You need diversity. Diversity of strengths creates a stronger team. 

There were only two traits that we required from everyone we hired: 

One, they had to be critical thinkers. Critical thinkers tend to be problem solvers. And for this project, we need problem solvers. The ndau protocol is complex and many of the technical challenges we faced required creative problem solving. 

The second thing we required of all hires was they had to have an open mind. What I mean by that is people that have strong opinions about how to do their work, but those opinions are loosely held. They are willing to look at new data and change their minds about things as new data presents itself. That’s an aspect that is shared not only on the ndev team, but everyone involved in the ndau project. This concept of seeking the the right answer (despite preconceived beliefs) is definitely a guiding principle for ndau. 

Something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about is how the CTO role and VPE roles interact and collaborate. Sometimes there’s little difference between the two, sometimes it’s hierarchical, often times its contentious. I’ve often come across people that can play both roles. When I started ndev I knew I had to have a VPE rockstar that could solve a series of difficult technical challenges, all with production quality code, lasting design and FAST. I don’t mean fast as in the code runs fast, I mean a prolific developer cranking out a lot of code, that could also lead a team and put out fires. That’s why my first hire was our VPE, Kent. No one fits that bill better than him. Kent’s one of those rare individuals who’s good at thinking at scale, but also in the weeds. His designs tend to be simple at the detail level but able to solve complex problems at scale. He can architect, design and code with the best. He can contribute at any layer of the stack. He sees solutions before people are finished explaining the problem. 

With a VPE in hand, I turned my attention to figuring out exactly what we needed to build. Essentially, ndev’s job is to take the vision set forth by the ndau collective and the Blockchain Policy Council and make it real. We were given a lot of great guidance in the form of the ndau white paper, guiding principles, and specific deficiencies in other digital currencies that we wanted to address. The job of understanding what the ndau collective and the BPC gave us and turn that into technical specifications for the desired capabilities started to take the shape of the CTO role. We needed someone that had deep tech chops, but also could think system design, but also someone that understood how to design incentives into a system to align the behaviors we wanted. In stepped Ed. Ed used to run the Lotus Spreadsheet engineering team… back when 1-2-3 was king and Excel was trying to catch-up. Ed was the CTO & VPE at One Laptop Per Child. Ed also designed the contests at XPrize. XPrize is a non-profit that “creates incentive competitions to entice the crowd to take action, and bring us closer to a world of Abundance. The solutions to the world’s problems.” Sounds perfect right? I have to admit that I’ve known Ed for about 40 years, and when I first started to realize what we needed for a CTO, Ed was literally the first person I thought of. 

I won’t bore you by going through each team member, but I can tell you it’s an amazing assembly of talent. Besides critical thinkers and open minded individuals, we also looked for people that got shit done. Like most start-up, timing is critical. Oneiro, being a traditional VC-backed start-up, we’re not sitting on millions from an ICO. We’re using an A-round to build an amazing product. But time is money and we had to move quickly. Therefore, we needed people that knew how to ship products. Every person on the team is willing to put aside their ego for the sake of the product. The best ideas win. What I’ve found is that a smart, egoless team, that’s building off a good foundation can solve almost any problem they run into. In past projects I’ve been part of, there was at least one (usually several) technological challenges that hit us along the way that dropped our momentum like a 2×4 to the head. I’ve been blown away by how many times I’ve seen our team encounter these, and as I brace for a multi-week hit to the schedule, hours later someone comes into my office and says, “we figured it out.” Usually figuring it out entails members of the team talking out the problem until a simple solution starts to form. And then they work on that iteratively until the solution is obvious, the code base is left better and simpler than it started. I cannot tell you how rare that is. Often solutions to these problems tend to add complexity to the system, not make it simpler. 

Lessons Learned from ndev

As we got close to announcing ndau, one of the things I thought would be fun would be to ask the team the biggest lessons learned from the project so far. Realize that for many on the team, this was their first exposure to blockchain. Here’s what I got: 

• Don’t sit in your ivory tower trying to figure everything out ahead of time. Be Agile.
• Much that we’ve done looks simple but has major complexity in the design process. We’ve learned a lot of ways to not make a lightbulb.
• Learn from what has worked in the past, especially in other disciplines.
• Identify hidden problems that have not been solved for so long that they are currently being ignored or accepted as “just the way things must be.”
• Blockchains are immutable. That makes traditional “build and iterate” tricky. We’ve been able to abstract out some of the variables that the BPC may want to change. But blockchain development requires more upfront and complete thinking than web app dev.
• Read, but don’t try to read everything. Stay up to speed with what’s happening but don’t get paralyzed. There’s just an awful lot of amazing things happening in the    space.
• Know what problem you are trying to solve. Don’t try to solve the other ones.
• Know who your customers are and build for them. Meaning, we’re very early in digital currency. We don’t need to build for the mainstream right now.
• Momentum is more important than being right. Move, even in the wrong direction, and then course correct. 
• Be open to feedback

Chris Quirk, CEO, ndev

With the recent rise in popularity surrounding applications on the Ethereum network, a somewhat questionable blockchain project has recently been released, it’s called FOMO3D. FOMO3D, deriving its name from the acronym FOMO (fear of missing out), is a self-described “lottery where the house advantage always goes to the players.” The premise of the lottery game revolves around the purchase of ‘keys’ with ETH, some ETH entering into the pot, some being distributed as dividends, and a portion of ETH reserved for future game pot’s and to support the ecosystem. When a key is purchased, additional time is added to the countdown clock that, once it reaches zero, signals the conclusion of the game. The last person to purchase a key becomes the recipient of 48% of the pot’s ETH. Thus, theoretically, games could last as long as people continue to buy keys. As key purchasers’ likely goal of participating in the game is to win the pot outright, early round key buyers are incentivized to participate to garner dividends from subsequent buyers. However, key holders aren’t the only ones collecting interest from FOMO3D transactions. A parallel cryptocurrency exchange, PoWH3D, also receives dividends from key purchases. FOMO3D participants who hold P3D tokens are thus more likely to fair well as they will collect dividends from both their key purchase, and their P3D tokens.

Additionally, upon the purchase of a key, participants choose one of four “teams” with differing ETH distributions into the pot, F3D Players, and P3D Holders. Your team choice determines both the initial allocation of the ETH used to purchase the key, as well as the remaining 50% of the pot left after the game – ETH not going to the community bank fund or game winner. Team Snek boasts the most dividends, team Whale places the most ETH in the pot, team Bull displays a more balanced distribution, and team Bear maximizes the ETH to the current round.

While every detail regarding the game is explained on FOMO3D Wiki, I can’t help but feel that this crypto-gambling ecosystem seems more like a money-making ploy than a legitimate way for participants to earn ETH. Two days after release, it is already the number one decentralized app on DappRadar. In addition to self-identifying as a player-oriented lottery, FOMO3D also claims they are a psychological social experiment in greed. As the game is completely decentralized, and acting as a clear metaphor for an ICO, FOMO3D’s results could provide some interesting information of greed’s role within an unregulated, decentralized platform.

FOMO3D’s close association with POWH3D makes the lottery appear as more of ploy to fuel the exchange and its token with additional liquidity, rather than provide participants the potential to turn a profit.

While the players do garner dividends from additional key purchases or by holding P3D tokens, the payout is about as small as your chance of winning the pot.

Self-motivation will drive participants’ decision making and, as shown through other unregulated and decentralized digital ecosystems, some stability issues may arise. I believe the key to a successful and stable crypto community will come with the implementation of non-intrusive governance and incentive alignment between ecosystem operators and participants. Will FOMO3D’s experiment yield positive results and leave its participants satisfied? 

Or will key-holders walk away feeling as though their fear of missing out got the best of them? I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out. I can’t say that I’d ever consider participating in Fomo3D; However, with a current pot of 21,538.72 ETH, it’ll certainly be fascinating to follow along. 

Matthew Glynn, Sales Associate Intern, Oneiro

The exponential rate at which digital currencies have appreciated since their inception is enough to make any rational investor skeptical. Wall Street institutions and retail investors alike lie in anticipation of the bust that invariably follows any rapid economic boom. Yet, we have all been waiting and watching for some time now – unable to hold our breath any longer for the other shoe to drop.

To be sure, a correction is inevitable. Yet, understanding when this correction will occur and to what degree it will jeopardize the fledgling cryptocurrency industry is only possible once we can identify the catalyst of such a correction. It is common for many contemporary economic sophists to claim that the fiat nature of digital currency is enough to undermine the space entirely. But, anyone who purchases a digital currency knows it is just that – a currency. Just as the US dollar can remain a safe-haven after departing from the gold standard partially in 1933 and completely by 1971, so too can new digital currencies offer a very real store of value without holding underlying assets in reserve. Moreover, one could argue that because many of these digital currencies are not inflationary by nature, their inability to be diluted by a central bank defines them as a store of value far more dependable than any other traditional currency that exists today.

There is, however, one structural problem that cannot be solved with a similar rationalization, and that is extreme volatility. The free market will always find it difficult to trust digital currencies if they remain susceptible to the wild price swings that have plagued the space for as long as it has existed. Instability is the greatest threat to prevailing digital currencies, and it is not a minor one. The turn of the new year brought with it a massive selloff of Bitcoin. Plummeting from record highs of nearly $20,000 per coin down to its current value of just under $7,000, the pioneer cryptocurrency has faced strong international regulatory headwinds which will only appear more reasonable in the public eye as volatility persists. While this drop is undeniably significant, it is not the correction or ‘bust’ that so many “hodlers” believe they have lived to see the other side of. Rather, the widespread adoption of bitcoin futures contracts across a plethora of major traditional exchanges is what spurred a rally in prices; as one would expect, prices fell back to pre-derivative levels within a few short months. This was not a systemic correction, this was a speculative correction.

Although this incredible dip in market price is not the bust that everyone believes it is, the devastating losses faced by investors is telling of what the true catalyst of a systemic correction must be. Until now, digital currency advocates have shrugged off criticisms aimed toward the immense volatility of the space, claiming that the more adopters the space has, the less volatile it will be in the future. Yet, bitcoin is hardly a nascent digital currency. With a market capitalization of over $300 billion at its zenith, investors cannot help but wonder when relative stability will be achieved if ever. To be clear, this is not a new observation. The very impetus behind the creation of many new coins is to solve problems that are manifest throughout the economic framework of existing ones. With each ecosystemic and structural improvement, value flees from imperfect coins toward a higher quality medium of wealth storage and utility.

With this, it becomes clear that digital currency skeptics have been right for the wrong reasons: It will not be the absence of public confidence which undermines the value of existing digital currencies, but rather, a surge of confidence in a new type of digital currency. It is inevitable that a uniquely designed coin will emerge that can systemically mitigate price volatility without sacrificing security, liquidity, or possible appreciation. The emergence of this new digital currency has the potential to invoke a flight to quality, the likes of which might only be comparable to the world’s post-World War II adoption of the US Dollar as a global reserve currency. The correction in the existing crypto space as a result of this new entrant is not only unavoidable, but necessary to support the undeterred growth of a worldwide digital economy.

Kyle R. Chapman, Partner, COSIMO Ventures

One of my favorite readings each week comes from diar.co.  Not sure about their readership levels, but the content is superb.  The brought to light a concern I have had with Bitcoin for a while; mining of Bitcoin is reliant on hardware which makes it a industry model similar to any industry in which scale is the primary factor in success.  Think US railroads in the 1800’s, automobiles from 1920 – 2010, steel manufacturing, etc.  I have been lightly aware of the growing influence of just a few mining firms, but the article below shows the levels of consolidation happening in the Bitcoin Mining industry.  It would not be a far fetched thought to believe the lowest cost producers have been working to drop the price of Bitcoin to being marginally incentivizing to those miners in an effort to force out smaller players and further consolidate power.  I suspect that Satoshi’s original concept did not end up with a oligopoly running the Bitcoin network, bet we are heading there.  Bitcoin is a great invention of peer-to-peer, near frictionless transactions between unknown third parties, but the world needs better.  

Bitmain Consolidates Hashing Power Over Mining Pools

Last week, mining pools operated by Bitmain, a Chinese company that controls majority of ASIC miner production, controlled a combined hashrate of more than 42%. Of the two pools run by the outfit, BTC.com mined more than 26% while Antpool mined approximately 16% of Bitcoin blocks in the last week. Bitmain also operates ConnectBTC, its third mining pool, but it only mined less than 0.2%.

SILENT INVESTOR?…

It’s worth noting that Bitmain led the Series A funding round in ViaBTC, which operates the fifth largest pool with approximately 9% of the hashrate. ViaBTC asserts that the company is 100% independent and that Bitmain is only the lead investor.

Bitmain’s Bitcoin mining pools centralization is now a mere 8% to the critical level of 50%, which is a serious concern because it potentially threatens Bitcoin’s immutability. It could give one entity a certain degree of control over the whole network such as blocking or reversing transactions. Bitmain doesn’t disclose what percentage of hashrate out of its pools it physically operates but it controls the block templates for the entire pool nonetheless. If Bitmain attempted to misuse its hashrate, it can be expected that the individual miners in these pools would quickly switch to different pools. But then again, it is not exactly clear what is the actual percentage of hashrate that users in these pools control.

In 2014, GHASH.io, a now defunct mining pool, briefly exceeded the 50% threshold but voluntarily decreased its hashrate to under 40% and promised that it will not exceed 40% in the future. Antpool, on the other hand, just announced that it will temporarily eliminate fees from 4% to 0%, which would spurn on further adoption.

INCOMING SOLUTION?

Matt Corallo, Bitcoin Core developer, is working to develop an alternative to the currently most used mining protocol Stratum, which would allow individual miners to use their own block templates instead of having to use the block templates chosen by the pool. His mining protocol dubbed BetterHash would help decentralize Bitcoin mining.

As Diar noted in June, the daily estimated profits from Bitcoin mining have decreased by more than 80% in 2018 (Diar, 4 June). According to Bernstein Research, Bitmain controls 70-80% of the Bitcoin mining hardware market, which only furthers the centralization problem. Bitmain has a very significant hardware cost advantage compared to all the other pools as well as priority access to the newest hardware. If Bitcoin mining profitability continues to decrease, it can open the doors for small miners to switch to more profitable coins, which would effectively lead to an increase in Bitmain’s pools hashrates.

Steve Leahy, Managing Director, ntrd

Much is discussed about Digital Identification, and the need to protect one’s Digital ID.  Crypto Exchanges use Digital ID security measures as marketing tools versus their competition.  But maybe they should be worried about losing their own identities.

I have stated a few times that the industry of crypto exchanges is following a similar trajectory to the FX brokerage industry of the last 15 years; its just happening at crypto-speed.  And once again, it’s like I am seeing a remake of a movie to which I saw the original. 

This time the specific nuance is that of front-end aggregation platforms.  There are a growing number of firms that are making front-end trading platforms (UnionExchange, MasterDax, Terminal.Global, etc) that can hook into all of your exchange accounts (Binance, Kraken, Bitfinex, etc) and then show you aggregated liquidity, propose real-time arbitrage opportunities, or expose different volume depths.  The exchange operators so far seem not to care because as they see it, they are still holding and monetizing client assets and getting the trading volume.  They do not care if it is going through an intermediary platform.  At the end of the day it is the trader paying the extra fees to the intermediaries.  But the exchanges do not see the insidious long-term plan of these aggregation platforms.

The dominant platform in the retail FX/CFD world is the MT4 platform from a Cypriot company named, MetaQuotes.  The MT4 platform rose to dominance once it was offered by a few of the largest global brokerage firms starting in 2007.  The MT4 platform is just now giving way to the MT5 platform, but it is widely accepted in the industry MT4/MT5 sees 85% of retail order flow for FX/CFD’s.  Similar to the current situation for exchange operators, MetaQuotes did not initially see the problem of third party application front end providers on the MT4 platform.  Starting in the late 2000’s a number of application providers to the FX industry recognized MetaQuotes’ MT4 dominance and decided to integrate their front end platforms into the MT4 Manager platform (think “matching engine” in exchange terminology).  For a while, all was well.  These third-party applications were bringing in new traders to the FX world and volumes were improving so MetaQuotes did not mind.  But when a few of the third-party applications decided to create their own back-end platform and replace the MT4 platform completely, MetaQuotes realized they had allowed these aggregation-platform intermediaries to gain a stronghold over the traders.  

Retail traders do not know, understand or care about what happens on the back end.  They did not even understand the terminology of the back end of a trading platform; Matching engine? Latency? API? A-Book?  B-Book?  Retail traders want a simple interface with their trading platform, and once they learn how to use one interface they do not want to change.  This was the lesson learned from the large brokers’ failed attempts to transfer their MT4-born clients to proprietary platforms.  Retail traders just knew the front end they liked and were used to.  When the aggregation-platform intermediaries decided to build/buy their own matching engines, Metaquotes lost the order flow. 

To their credit MetaQuotes acted decisively when they realized their vulnerability.  They terminated agreements with certain third-party providers and even sued one or two in court with a lot of publicity.  In the end, MetaQuotes shut down all their front-end “partners” so that traders once again would only see and use the MT4 front end platform which has allowed MetaQuotes’ dominance to continue to this day. 

I expect the large crypto exchange operators will soon see the same thing happening to them.  At first they will not mind these aggregation platforms as some of the downstream providers’ features will add volume to the exchanges.  But as soon as one of these aggregators decides to become an exchange unto themselves and cuts the existing exchanges out of the value chain, these giants will wake up and act to take back their traders.

Steve Leahy, Managing Director, ntrd

In reference to: 

Hayek and Stablecoins By Qiao Wang: (https://medium.com/@QwQiao/hayek-and-stablecoins-3c7f3291d728)

 If you’ve ever taken an Economics class, you’ve likely heard of Nobel Prize winning economist, F.A. Hayek. In his book published in 1976, Denationalization of Money -The Argument Refined, Hayek imagines a world in which currency is not subject to the whims of government, but to that of the competitive market. To clearly explain this scenario, the economist created his own privatized currency to solve for monopolization of money by governments. In theory, the pressures of a competitive market would promote the creation of a currency with better stability and solvency than a government currency could provide.

Qiao Wang’s article shows there are clear connections between cryptocurrency and Hayek’s “Ducat” currency, particularly in reference to Stablecoins. Both Stablecoins and the “Ducat” present similar approaches to solving for stability, mainly by employing creation/redemption mechanisms via smart contracts to control for the respective currency’s deviation from its intended price. However, stability mechanisms don’t necessarily provide solvency.

 If F.A. Hayek were alive today, he’d likely be intrigued with the focus of stability within cryptocurrency. Yet, Hayek’s “Ducat” had one main constraint: at any moment, “Ducat” holders would be permitted to exchange their coins for fiat at a determined fixed rate. To comply with this condition, well developed, smart monetary policy must be implemented to amass the capital necessary in the case of a wide-spread run on the currency. As it’s impossible to ensure the success of any currency, why invest if there’s no guarantee you’ll have constant access to value-storing fiat currency?

 Observing the notable Stablecoins currently on the market, none have completely solved for the issue of maintaining the unrestricted ability to exchange their cryptocurrency, at a fixed rate, for fiat. Many claim their currency is a reliable, long-term store of value, but more often than not, this is only partially true.

 In my opinion, there are a few reasons why many of these “Stablecoins” are susceptible to failure:

1) Stablecoins that peg their currencies to fiat currencies are invariably subject to inflation, and consequently, subject to volatility.

2) Stablecoins that depend on collateral-backed currencies (cryptocurrencies pegged to other cryptocurrencies) are subject to the volatility of that crypto-asset, which is also likely to be pegged to a fiat currency.

3) Stablecoins that mitigate currency devaluation via the issuance of value-storing entities to remove coins from the exchange, such as bonds or shares, rely on the reckless assumption that the currency will regain value. In the case that the coin is unable to recover, participants are left with unredeemable bonds and loss of capital.

4) Even if bond-utilizing coins regain value, there is no explicit pay out date for bond redemption, leaving bond holders unsure of when they’ll be refunded.

 Thus, an ideal cryptocurrency would possess long-term store of value capability without pegging to a fiat currency. Fortunately, the creation of a coin which satisfies those conditions does not appear too far off.

Steve Leahy, Managing Director, ntrd 

This morning Circle Internet Financial (“Circle”) purchased Poloniex, a Singapore-registered, Boston-based crypto exchange that is popular with traders who trade the most liquid digital assets (BTC, ETH, LTC, etc.), and trade “alt-coins”.  Alt-coins tend to be thinly traded, ICO-launched tokens that have caught the attention of regulators around the globe.  Many alt-coins are would be considered “securities” by regulators once the regulators get around to investigating them.  And generally, securities need to trade on regulated exchanges. 

So, the heat was on Poloniex.  They were justifiably concerned that the SEC in the US would come knocking and shut them down for operating a securities exchange without being regulated as such.  That would be the end of their cash cow, cause a massive settlement to the SEC, and potentially ban the ownership and senior staff from ever working in the regulated financial services industry in the US forever.  

Circle is a Goldman Sachs-backed payments platform that has not had a lot of positive press lately.  They raised a lot of venture capital in their early years, but have seemingly been left behind by PayPal, Venmo, and others in the online payments industry.  I had not seen anything about Circle in the blockchain space, nor in the digital asset space in the press.  The announcement today, and some details that have been leaked, confirm our thoughts of what is next for the digital asset exchange industry:

1. The next round of growth for these exchanges will be based on improving customer experience.  The massive growth of the existing exchanges was driven by a burning need for retail investors to get in on the Bitcoin craze.  The exchange companies were led by a technology-first mindset of the founders (which makes sense), but the customer experience was terrible.  Account opening processes were a mess, KYC processing took weeks, withdrawal and deposit processes failed, and customer support for these new-to-Bitcoin clients was non-existent.  Circle has specifically stated in their press release they will focus on scaling the business and the customer experience as their priorities for Poloniex.  This is the first move towards the digital asset exchange industry being taken over by the marketers.  We will see experienced financial services operators around the globe come into the space and greatly improve the client experience.  We will see more pull-driven marketing from these operators as the demand for new accounts has slowed with Bitcoin of its December highs.
2. The big financial services names know they need a piece of digital asset service providers.  They cannot yet take direct steps themselves due to regulators and public sentiment, but Goldman’s implicit backing of this deal is very telling.
3. Playing nice with the regulators.  Some leaked documents (that we believe to be correct if not authentic) show that Circle has spoken to the SEC in the US and plans to operate Poloniex as an “Alternative Trading System” (“ATS) in the United States under the supervision of the SEC.  ATS exchanges have historically been used for trading of low liquidity assets such as stakes in hedge funds, PE ventures, etc.  Though the digital asset exchange world is still a bit like the Wild West, we know the end result because we saw it with the retail FX & CFD industry since 2006 or so; the regulators will eventually get control and the winners in this game will recognize that early and work with the regulators.  Circle’s move with Poloniex means they are in early with the SEC and will be a significant competitor to Coinbase here in the US and across the globe.

Steve Leahy, Managing Director, ntrd