Left Curve Adoption

How DeFi goes mainstream

We often forget the ultimate goal is to advance crypto to mainstream adoption so it can unlock financial optionality for anyone and everyone. Or at least this is what I’d like to believe, so let’s run with it.

Is this the industry’s goal anymore? VCs continue to fund “new” projects that do nothing to advance this goal. Right now it’s just building new casinos to take advantage of a poorer and poorer retail base. Crypto is having its existential crisis right now. A tough bear market and tighter fundraising market should flush the appetite for new casinos.

Some of the most innovative stuff in DeFi has been bled to death as useless governance tokens get farmed and dumped to zero. A new wave of DeFi protocols launched with reflexive tokenomics or ponzinomics to give their tokens “utility” and make price go up. But the ponzinomics overcompensated and led to some spectacular meltdowns that shall not be named. Now that both ends of the tokenomic spectrum have been established a healthier balance should emerge over the next months and years.

So how does DeFi go mainstream?

Well we need to zoom out to how the crypto adoption curve looks like right now. I think crypto adoption advances something like this (not perfect, parts interchangeable):

The left curve stuff gains the most adoption first because it’s the easiest to understand. What’s a shitcoin? Price go up. What’s an NFT? Tradeable jpeg.

Zoom out and you realize most normies don’t even know what a blockchain is, much less what a liquidity pool is. Most normies don’t even make it to NFTs, and you expect them to use DeFi?

There is a long long road ahead to mainstream adoption. It starts with onboarding people through the left curve stuff that most DeFi evangelists look down on. Get them familiarized with how to navigate CEXs with shitcoins. Then how to navigate MetaMask and OpenSea with NFTs. Then how to navigate and collaborate in web3 with DAOs. Then how to use DeFi through GameFi. Then, they can unlock the multichain.

Tbh I think DeFi and most of crypto as we know it, is years from mainstream adoption. But the timeline keeps changing with the emergence of easy-to-understand crypto concepts like meme coins and NFTs. These concepts will start emerging and eventually clicking together for your average normie as the media reports on each new crypto trend and concepts start sticking in people’s heads. We’re watching crypto’s lindy effect build in real time. The retail consciousness is advancing from shitcoins to NFTs, the next wave of adoption will likely be driven by something a step above NFTs. Slowly but surely, we get closer to DeFi and crypto adoption. Onwards.