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.
#14 — Casey Newton, founder of Platformer, on launching Platformer, on the future of journalism and diversity in paid newsletters
#13 — Dan Teran, founder & former CEO of Managed by Q, on how to use Good Jobs to create great companies
#12 — Ankur Nagpal, founder & CEO of Teachable, on empowering everyone to build the internet
#11 — Joseph Cohen, founder & CEO of Universe on empowering everyone to build the internet
#10 — Blake Robbins on the future of media, Twitch, OnlyFans, and creator monetization
#9 — Polina Marinova on The Profile, being an independent writer, and changes in the media industry
#8 — Visakan Veerasamy on how to make friends on the internet
#7 — Adam Davidson (Part 2), co-founder Planet Money, journalist
#6 — Adam Davidson, co-founder Planet Money, journalist
#5 — Nathan Barry, founder of ConvertKit
#4 — Erik Berlin and Leah Culver, co-founders of Breaker
#3 — Lenny Rachitsky, founder & writer of Lenny's Newsletter
#2 — Greg Isenberg, founder of Islands and Late Checkout
#1 — Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad
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