For the next few episodes of Means of Creation, we are piloting a series of web3 explainers—unpacking some of the fundamental concepts of web3, from first principles. The goal is to explore various topics, trends, and projects that people want to learn more about but find confusing! Essentially, to ask the questions we’ve been too afraid to ask in public.
If you want your questions answered, or have topics and/or guests you want to recommend, feel free to do so by tagging @Means of Creation on Twitter.
We hope you find these conversations valuable!
In this first episode, we explain DeFi, or Decentralized Finance.
Cryptocurrencies have taken a major hit over the last few days—Bitcoin and Ethereum have fallen by almost fifty percent from their all-time highs. However, the proponents of DeFi still believe in its long-term potential to be the future of finance.
If we zoom out a little, this belief seems to be well-founded: as of this writing, the value locked in various DeFi projects is $196B. As recently as 2019, that number was merely $600M.
DeFi proponents also go on to claim that we’re just getting started—the advantages of an open and decentralized financial system have the potential to capture trillions of dollars of value.
In this episode, we're joined by Nat Eliason, who helps us unpack this claim. Nat is a writer, crypto engineer, and educator who’s been at the forefront of DeFi long before it became became a trend.
He brings with him a wealth of experience in this space—he teaches a very popular course called DeFi Orientation which enables people to get started in DeFi and earn money from their crypto assets. He helps crypto companies with their tokenomics and smart contract development. He also writes Almanack, a newsletter about DeFi, tokenomics, yield farming, and other related topics.
Nat's experience as an educator and operator lets him simplify complex theories but also demonstrate how to apply them in practice. He was the perfect guest to bring on to explain the rapidly changing world of DeFi.
Inside Spotify's Vision for Audio Creators
#33 - Alex Kantrowitz on going solo as the creator economy goes mainstream
#32 - Kat Tenbarge on Why Influencers Need Watchdog Journalism
#31 - Alex Zaccaria, Co-founder & CEO of Linktree
#30 - Turner Novak on Substack Pro, Twitter Spaces, and what makes Clubhouse engaging
#29 - James Young, founder of Collab.Land, on buying Li's first NFT for 13.37 ETH and investing as a form of activism
#28 - Sam Lessin
#27 - Allen Lau
#26 - Katia Ameri & Elijah Daniel
#25 —Joshua Cohen on the Professionalization of the Creator Economy
#24 — Evan Britton on creating a Wikipedia for a new generation and bootstrapping an ad-based business
#23 — Community Hangout with Li, Nathan, and Adam Keesling
#22 — Chris Messina on why the passion economy needs a more stable foundation to keep expanding
#21 — Nadia Eghbal on the parallels between open-source software development and online creators
#20 — Eugene Wei on all things technology, film and media
#19 — Indie Hackers founder Courtland Allen on how to build a profitable online business
#18 — Li and Nathan on the future of online education and "Universal Creator Income"
#17 — Aella on being a top 0.08% OnlyFans creator and opportunities for tech in the adult content world
#16 — Joseph Albanese, CEO and co-founder of Stir, on building business tools for creators and collab culture
#15 — Taylor Lorenz on the creator economy, online entrepreneurship, the changing media landscape, & more
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
Organic Marketing Simplified: Master podcast marketing, fuel podcast growth, and make money podcasting!
THE GO BIZ GUY
The Sigma Femme Podcast
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Tim Ferriss Show