The developer highlighted what he considers the spirit of the smart contracts platform. He believes that short-term exaggerated excitement is driving Yield Farming.
Last July 1st, Vitalik Buterin explained that some people value Ethereum for its global-access financial infrastructure, which enables new forms of social organization. On the other hand, some people who prefer to take advantage of the platform to achieve yield, especially with the new trend of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) known as Yield Farming.
Yield Farming consists of using cryptocurrencies on DeFi platforms to take advantage of high performing rates. In other words, users receive tokens to finance or request loans, which open the possibility of obtaining profits.
Ethereum has exceeded one million daily transactions for the first time so far in 2020. The increase in operations would relate precisely to Yield Farming. Buterin believes that short-term exaggerated excitement is driving the current phenomenon in the field of DeFi.
The developer considers that the most valuable parts of the DeFi ecosystem may be the most boring. That is the case with providing a cryptocurrency with an interest rate that equals the inflation rate. He recognizes that it is already something prominent in the ecosystem since many people consider it valuable. However, he argues that these types of proposals require additional improvements.
For instance, Vitalik considers that PoolTogether is a creative tool that can help people boost their ability to save. He also praised Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) as well as Microsoft Leading Researcher Glen Weyl, who has presented fun and optimal mathematical ideas.
Ethereum’s Dialectics
Vitalik Buterin finally added his vision of what he considers most valuable about Ethereum. In a Twitter message that he posted last March, he resorts to German philosopher George Hegel’s dialectical theory, which bases on the fact that two opposites, thesis, and antithesis, solve in a higher form of synthesis.
Hegel thought that a thesis was the origin, the base, or the starting point. He established that a thesis is true until an antithesis contradicts it. Therefore, starting from an origin or thesis, the antithesis will be characterized by facing those principles, which will produce a dialectical conflict leading to the synthesis.
Knowing that this process begins with a thesis, Vitalik mentions centralized organizations and the trust that citizens may or may not place in them. These elements are the principles on which he suggests acting to drive changes with a proposal such as Ethereum, which in any case would be the basis of the engine of transformation.
The antithesis that Buterin presents is that of escaping the censorship that central organizations impose by living in isolation, with the mentality of a “do everything by yourself” man of the mountains. This approach contradicts the thesis, causing a conflict between both.
According to Hegel, the synthesis was born there, which Vitalik notes as follows: “Use blockchains, cryptocurrencies, smart contracts and other technology to build new and better ways to minimize trust and authority for people to cooperate and interact.”
Based on Hegel’s approaches, it is possible to understand the idea that Buterin focuses on: to produce changes in society, it is necessary to identify the thesis. This would be like identifying that the censorship that some centralized organizations applies to surround and limit human beings.
This thesis confronts the notion that citizens can live detached from the central organizations that they control. In summary, this would be possible using cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and other technologies that allow them to cooperate and interact with each other.
By Alexander Salazar
