Bankless
January 2, 2026

Silver Is Going Parabolic, Bitcoin's Quantum Threat, & ETH’s 2026 Setup

Silver Is Going Parabolic, Bitcoin's Quantum Threat, & ETH’s 2026 Setup by Bankless

By David Hoffman and Anthony Sassano

Date: October 2023


Crypto is graduating from its teenage rebellion into a fundamental-driven adulthood where institutional plumbing matters more than retail hype. This summary breaks down why the "culling" of 2025 sets the stage for a 2026 defined by protocol unification and existential technical hurdles.

  • 💡 Why is silver outperforming Bitcoin in a "risk-on" environment?
  • 💡 Can the Ave DAO survive a "stealth privatization" by its own founding team?
  • 💡 Is Bitcoin’s refusal to upgrade making it a sitting duck for quantum computers?

The Great Maturation

"Crypto kind of went from being a teenager to like an adult now."
  • The Culling Effect: 2025 purged the "fundamentally worthless" tokens and grifts that defined the previous cycle. This resets the baseline for investors who now demand actual utility over speculative vaporware.
  • Institutional Indifference: TradFi players are sticking to BTC and ETH while ignoring the long tail of altcoins. This lack of a "bid" means only projects with real revenue will survive the next 12 months.
  • Precious Metal Divergence: Silver and gold are acting like crypto used to, fueled by AI hardware demand and monetary hedging. Crypto must prove its value as a tech platform to regain the attention it lost to "bare metal" assets.

Governance Convergence

"You can’t have some centralized entity just like bolted on and kind of leeching off."
  • The Ave Conflict: Ave Labs attempted to redirect front-end fees away from the DAO, sparking a civil war over brand ownership. This highlights the terminal risk of "equity vs. token" misalignment in legacy DeFi protocols.
  • Uniswap’s Unification Play: Uniswap is absorbing its labs entity into the DAO to align incentives before turning on the fee switch. This creates a blueprint for how mature protocols can finally capture value for token holders without regulatory suicide.

The Quantum Clock

"Bitcoin ossified way too early as a protocol."
  • Quantum Vulnerability: Nick Carter warns that quantum computers could derive private keys from public ones by the late 2020s. If Bitcoin doesn't start a decade-long migration now, it risks a "divide by zero" total collapse.
  • Cultural Rigidity: Bitcoin’s "no hard forks" dogma prevents it from adapting to existential threats. Ethereum’s culture of constant upgrades like Glamsterdam makes it the only hedge against a post-quantum world.

Actionable Takeaways

  • 🌐 The Macro Move: Capital is rotating from speculative "early" bets into "fundamental" infrastructure as crypto integrates with global finance.
  • ⚡ The Tactical Edge: Audit your portfolio for "equity-heavy" protocols and favor "unified" models like Uniswap that prioritize token-holder value.
  • 🎯 The Bottom Line: The next year belongs to the builders who can navigate the transition from "underground" experiment to "boring" global backbone.

Podcast Link: Click here to listen

Welcome to Bank list. It's the first Friday of 2026 and on this Friday we are bringing in Anthony Sesano to substitute for Ryan who got stuck in a little bit of a snowstorm. So we're bringing in our favorite substitute to go through the weekly news in crypto with us. Anthony, welcome to the show.

Thanks David. It's good to be here again and happy new year. And it's funny that you mentioned that Ryan got stuck in a snowstorm when it's like really hot here anywhere I am in Australia. So, it's like snow. Why is it snow?

Oh, that's right. We're in the middle of winter up here.

There are some evergreen subjects that we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the first the silver, gold, and S&P 500 breaking all-time highs because that all happened in the last seven days. And then we're going to go back and touch on a civil war because while it was kind of like two weeks ago, there was still some updates. And I also want to get your takes on it as well. Meanwhile, while A is diverging, Uniswap is converging. So, there's a lot more alignment in the Uniswap ecosystem. We're going to talk about that news as well as Michael Celig, the new CFTC chairman that just got named who is a very big pro crypto CFTC chairman previously from the SEC. We're going to talk about that and then also we're going to talk about Quantum's threat because that's I know you know about Quantum and otherwise focus on chain security. So, I want to get your takes on all of these subjects and more.

But before we get into all of that, it's the 1st of January. So, what's your take on 2025 as a whole? And then also, I want to pick your brain about what you're excited for, what you're looking forward to, where you think Signal is coming down the pike this year in 2026. So, let's start with 2025. What do you think about 2025?

Yeah, I think 2025 was a kind of obviously volatile year in the markets in particular, but I think it was like a kind of maturation year for crypto. Like for a long time now, I remember like a lot of people in the ecosystem have wanted like a cleansing of crypto. Like get rid of the scams, get rid of the griffs. You know, all these tokens are worth so much when they shouldn't be worth as much as they are because they're fundamentally worthless. And I'm not talking about, you know, people can argue about what what token should be worth what, but I'm talking about like these tokens that are part of projects that are that are dead. So, everyone wanted this cleanse, and it felt like we got that cleanse to an extent, I think, in 2025.

And I think that was from the fact that like crypto is no longer like this niche thing, right? When you have the president of the United States talking about it like every other day, crypto is not like a niche thing anymore. And then we have all these traditions coming in and they're kind of like, I mean, they're coming in a different way. Some of them want to be supportive and additive. Some of them want to just obviously control everything and be extractive, but they're coming in in a really big way. They're getting excited about things like stable coins. We've kind of gone mainstream on the tech side, I think. You know, obviously on the asset side and the market side, everyone already knows about Bitcoin, but when it comes to like the tech side of things, I think we've gone a lot more mainstream now.

And I think that it was a funny thing watching people's reactions to that because I think a lot of crypto natives didn't like that because they felt like, well, you know, are all the gains gone now? Like cuz we're not early anymore. Like where's the excitement? like where's the the kind of fun stuff? Like is it just going to be boring stuff like stable coins and like lowrisk DeFi? You know, people gave Vitalic crap about it for talking about it because they're like, "Oh, this is this is boring." You know, we came to crypto cuz we want the fun exciting stuff. But, you know, I think that really is kind of I guess like the main theme of 2025 to me is that graduating and coming into like the real world and not just being, you know, a teenager anymore. Like crypto kind of went from being a teenager to like an adult now. And I think some people get left behind in that transition because they just really don't vibe with that kind of world anymore. They want it to be early. They want to be part of something that feels underground. And yeah, I can't like say that crypto is underground anymore.

I think maybe the what you're saying the word that is coming to mind for me is culling. 2025 was a year of culling where we kind of just purged exactly what you said. The the DNA of crypto is like congratulations, you found crypto, you are early. And that is just no longer true in 2025 and 2026. And that is so much of what this industry has stood upon is like you're early. You're actually in you found this weird corner of the internet that's going to take over the world. But in 2025 and stable coins that is actually happening. And so much of what people came here for and some of the DNA that many projects and the valuations of tokens have stood upon is actually just fundamentally different now. And there is going to be a zeitgeist change, a cultural change for what it means to be in crypto moving forward cuz we're kind of now entering the middle years of what it means to be in in crypto. I think I think this is what you're saying and I what I definitely agree with.

Yeah, definitely. And and I think on that as well, like if we look at, you know, just the the market side of things, which is what people pay attention to, they use it for all sorts of signal. Um, I think the big reason why a lot of these other tokens are doing so poorly is because the institutions, you know, the Trady folks, they're not really interested in this stuff, right? They've dipped their toes in with BTC and ETH and they're kind of uh, you know, building on those on Ethereum obviously. Uh, but like everything else from what I've seen, they don't seem very interested in. And I think when you have like no bidders just coming from retail and then the institutional side isn't filling the bid either for these tokens, that's why they're they're kind of where they are. And now I think maybe in 2025 we went too far towards like one side where there are a lot of good tokens that got caught up in this as well.

And and you know I look at them and I'm not going to mention any for obvious reasons but I look at some of them and I'm like you know what this is actually undervalued now. Like I don't think that this should be as low as it is. But then I look at other things and I'm like wow this thing is still worth x amount. Like why? Like who's buying this stuff? So, I think that also jaded a lot of cryptonatives in that they were hoping for quote unquote alt season, right? Like where it always happens after Bitcoin runs up, you know, the alt alts go crazy as they're as they're known to do. Uh that just didn't happen this time. And and obviously we had the memecoin stuff which was I guess like a small pocket. It reminded me more of of maybe like DeFi tokens when they kind of happened in 2020 rather than like a huge new thing that was bringing in tons of new capital. If anything, it actually extracted most of the the gen capital that was left.

And now we're left with the fact that, okay, well, if the institutions aren't buying these things and the crypto natives don't want to buy them because they know a lot of them are just not, you know, not worth much. And there wasn't any old season, everyone's like, ah, what's happening? So, I think that's why maybe if you go on crypto Twitter, you see a lot of people being depressed or sad about this and kind of burning out because, you know, what they came into crypto for isn't what's happening anymore. And as you said, like it's not early anymore. So, that stuff is probably not going to happen going forward.

It feels like crypto is going through uh yeah, like I said, like a calling. It's going through a pretty tough time in 2025 and and I think people are kind of gearing up for a little bit of continuation in that in 2026. Part of that is what we're going to talk about today. The attention is elsewhere. So, three things have hit all-time highs, none of which are crypto. Silver, gold, and the S&P 500. Silver has really been the standout in December at the end of this year. It's really just gone parabolic. it's gone up 150 to 160% uh in 2025 and most of that has really come in December November and December of this year and why why is this happening it's being squeezed from two different sides it's being used as you know the silver to the gold that the monetary inflation hedge demand because gold has been on a tear. Silver's catching up a little bit, but it's also just increasingly used in solar solar arrays, electronic vehicles, and just electronics in generally. So, there's two sources of demand there.

Alongside silver, gold also hit its own new all-time high above $4,500 an ounce. And again, gold has been a fantastic asset to hold this year. Yearly gains are 60 to 65%. Uh, and then the S&P 500, uh, the the normal stock market, uh, has hit $6,99. That's a new all-time high for the S&P 900, uh, 500. Year-to- date gains of 17 to 18% in 2025, the third straight year of doubledigit returns after the uh, the 2022 draw down, which we were all kind of uh, brought up in. And so AI, gold, you know, precious metals, turns out the alt season is in precious metals. All of this is outside of the crypto arena. So, while crypto kind of goes through its grow growing pains, it's like it's it's maturing and it's losing a lot of this fun of being a kid. Now, it has to be an adult and it has to be a little bit more responsible than it ever was before and some it's losing some of its DNA. At the same time, attention is just in other markets and crypto is just not the first place where a wild west risk on investor goes to get returns.

And what I find funny about that uh in particular with gold is that you know Bitcoiners would make fun of gold bugs for for many years, right? Because gold was actually doing nothing for a long time. It was pretty much sideways for I think over 10 years if you look at its kind of last all-time high to where it broke its all-time high like I think it was like 2010 to to somewhere in the 2020s. It just sat and kind of went sideways. So that wasn't exciting. But then obviously you had crypto which was going nuts every you know few years and and just and posting these enormous returns uh which which is kind of a funny contrast now where it's kind of flipped where crypto is going sideways not doing much but you know gold has gone ridiculous like and looks like a crypto chart and same with same with silver but I I think you hit hit it on the head with regards to like demand as well like because I think people don't realize especially when it comes to like other precious metals other than gold is that a lot of them are actually used in industry you know gold is to an extent But you could say the vast majority of gold's value is is speculative, right? It's it's kind of a store of value um uh thing there. But with silver and and other kind of precious metals, they are definitely used very heavily.

And as you said, because they're used within kind of computing parts and AI has just inflated the cost of all of that, that's just going to feed down to the bare metal like for for lack of a better term, right? The literal bare metal. So I think there there are also consequences of that too where obviously hardware is just getting expensive across the board and if the the components to make that hardware are getting expensive then that's just going to continue that trend in 2026. So, I think at some point something will have to give where it's like, well, who's buying this stuff? Like, someone's going to be buying it in order for it to all kind of like flow down. And, you know, people have been screaming about the AI bubble bursting, all this sorts of stuff. Like, I I think at some point, yeah, there'll be some kind of crash and like just like there is in any market. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I don't have a good read on precious metals. It's not something that I've followed.

But when it comes to crypto, I think it's good for us to maybe be quiet for a little while, build actual kind of products and services that people want to use and and mature as an industry because I I don't think what we have been previously over the last 1015 years is is sustainable at all because it was just based on speculation only really. It wasn't based on you know fundamentals and I hope my hope is in 2026 we can see more of this kind of shift towards fundamentals.

Yeah, certainly. When the crypto industry collectively kind of goes through a painful period, goes through go through a cuddling of the herd to me, I'm like, "Okay, yeah, I I feel bad with everyone else." But I know that there's a light at the end of the tunnel that once we go through this period, you know, people drop out, people just leave and go elsewhere. Eventually, that turns into the fruits for everyone who stays. And so, kind of ultimately it's just a waiting game. It's like, yeah, you have to be a little bit masochistic. You have to accept the pain. It hurts. And then one day you are a lot more wealthy because you held on while the industry grew and fundamentals were reoriented and repprioritized. And that's how we grow healthier as an industry. We have seen this cycle before quite literally every time. There is actually a true cycle in crypto.

Let's get into the crypto prices. Starting with Bitcoin. 88,500 on the week. We are up three, excuse me, we are up 2% on the week for Bitcoin. And then Ether, pretty similar story. Uh we are at $3,000, flirting with $3,000 right now, up 3.5% on the week for e Ether. Uh Matthew Sigle, uh who is uh he's one of the analysts over at VanC, he tweeted out, "Bitcoin long-term holders have flipped into net accumulators, which is something that we definitely did not see over the last year in 2025. One of the big indicators that people like to look at is uh Bitcoin long-term holders. Are they selling or are they holding?" And over 2025, long-term Bitcoin holders were selling. They were putting supply of Bitcoin into the market. One of the reasons why Bitcoin didn't really push past its all-time highs into the the 130 140 territory. So, people decide to sell as Bitcoin holders. But, this has flipped as of recent times. Bit long-term Bitcoin holders are no longer selling, which is an indication of what appetite is and if there are new supply going into the market. So, it's a very bullish setup. It's a very bullish signal to say that people are not selling Bitcoin.

And then in the world of Ether, there is a story with the DATs. This is um Sharlink. Sharplink is now earning 500 ETH per week just from Ethereum staking. I don't know what percentage that is off the top of my head. Maybe you do, but this is another indication of just like oh the Ethereum DATs for as much as there is a hangover. Nonetheless, they were successful in soaking up supply and whatever percentage of supply they soaked up will be a function of how much future supply issuance they will also soak up. And that's what we're seeing here from Sharplink. Sharp link just reserving 500 Ether a week off of the secondary market for Ether. What's your commentary here, Sazzle?

Yeah, I I I think it's like if you look at the the market kind of action and you showed that chart about like kind of long-term uh selling and stuff like that. I think that was definitely what we saw across BTC and ETH in 2025 where you had these obviously with ETH you had the DATs come online and I think a lot of early ETH investors and I'm talking really early investors like maybe potentially close to the ICO or at the ICO they probably were like well I' I'm already up like a million% right like and and it feels like the ecosystem is maturing and it feels like maybe now is the time to kind of cash out right like maybe now's the time to actually when there's so much kind of like as you can call it like liquidity right There's so much liquidity coming into the system because of the DATs. I think they took advantage of that. I think the same was true for BTC because of the ETF liquidity and also obviously Sailor was was still buying as well and other kind of BTC DATs. So I think a lot of them did that but then a lot of them would have also been selling and then rebying as into the in the ETFs because it's more tax advantage way. That's why that these kind of onchain analytics actually have weaknesses as well. Like it's not just an exact science. There are there are lots of kind of nuances here with this, but but from what I I've seen anecdotally myself and what I've and what you can see in the market as well, it certainly does feel like a lot of these long-term kind of holders, these big whales, uh we're cashing out there.

Um now, in terms of like what this looks like going forward, I think we did clear most of that in 2025, if not potentially all of that. I think that ended with the 1010 crash, uh which obviously like reset a lot of the market and we've had to recover out of that. I think that's why we had like a pretty poor end to 2025, but I think we're we're mostly past that now. And I think if you look at the broader kind of investing world, pretty much like every other asset class except crypto has performed, right? Like and not just performed, but like gone into what you could call bubble territory where they've just gone parabolic. And when people and smarter investors and and kind of like bigger investors see that, you don't really want to be in that when it's doing that. like you if you're if you're in it already, you're going to start taking profits out of that because a parabola is by very nature not sustainable. So if you're noticing that and you're you're thinking, okay, well, it's time to take chips off the table, but you don't want to sit in cash because you you expect rates to start going down, you know, next year or continue going down. So maybe you look at crypto, you know, maybe you guys say, "Okay, well, crypto hasn't done much." You know, it's still growing though, like ETH and BTC have these really good um, you know, drivers of uh, of demand from ETFs, from from DATs, things like that. And and in particular, Ethereum, there's so much happening there. Like you can make a investment case based off anything you want really, like not just stable coins, but a bunch of other things. So I think you might see a rotation back there.

Um, and it's funny because when I say every asset class, I do mean like everything. Even things that people don't consider to be asset classes, like trading cards for, for example, have just gone nuts. Like leooss, you know, stuff like that, right? Has just gone just gone crazy. So, so crypto really is that that one that hasn't. And that's actually really advantageous for crypto going forward because, you know, if everything else decides to slow down a bit, then these investors are going to be like, well, where can we go next? Like, where can we rotate into next? And I do think a lot of that capital is is definitely going to look at crypto and be like that's attractive, you know, it's attractive at these valuations because it's not in a bubble. It's not in a parabola. Like it's it's been quiet for a while. So let's kind of accumulate uh now.

Yeah. Let's get into some crypto native topics. I think the big one that has been ongoing is the A civil war, especially culminating in Stani, the founder of a buying 84,000 A tokens. That's not $84,000.$84,000 84,000 a tokens which are priced at something like $110 a piece. Uh there has been this has been an ongoing um topic. We've talked about this a few times on the roll just because it continues to go. But let me just kind of cover through the details since I have you Anthony. We I'll go start from the beginning and we'll go up to the the current moment. So this all started in December 4th where a labs the centralized entity that uh that works around the A protocol announced an integration with cow swap on the A front-end interface. The stated goal was better swap pricing and me protection on the A front end. But importantly, the fees earned by a for this swapping feature was swapped from the DAO to the A labs entity. That was really the trigger that really kicked off this entire cascading set of events.

Mark Zeller, the pseudo accepted leader of the A DAO, characterized this as a stealth privatization of A since roughly $10 million per year that would have gone to the DAO. It was now being sent to A Labs through the swap frontend swap feature. A labs led by Stani said that the front-end revenue was not something that the DAO was inherently titled to. The front end is owned and operated by A Labs. So therefore, previous cow swap fees were simply donated, voluntarily donated from labs to the DAO in the past. So that's kind of where the lines are being drawn. A Labs is this private company that builds products and charges for services. and the DAO owns the protocol but not necessarily the website or front-end operations. This has created a pretty big division in the Ave community and a proposal surfaced from a individual in the A forums called Tulking that demanded pretty aggressive actions including seizing A IP the code and the brand forcing A Labs to become a DAO owned subsidiary and also clawing back past revenue earned by using the A brand from A Labs.

That proposal did not go through because it was stated to be non-compliant with governance, but nonetheless kind of made waves in the discourse surrounding the topic. And then a separate proposal came from Ernesto uh a former former A Labs CTO now associated with BGD Labs. The proposal asked for moving the trademarks, domains, and social accounts to the DAO. The rationale was that if the Dow pays for development and marketing, the DAO should control the brand and key distribution assets like domains and socials. There was a snapshot vote put to a vote over this process that was opened on December 23rd, which notably is 2 days before Christmas that was aligning with the general idea of giving a holders explicit control over brand related assets, trademarks, domains, social and naming rights. Ernesto publicly objected to the timing and the process of this. He said the vote was pushed while discussion was still active and he urged people to abstain. Mark Zeller agreed with the criticism that the vote was rushed during the holidays intentionally to kind of dissuade voting participation.

Uh, nonetheless, a significant amount of A showed up to vote. Ultimately, there was about a million A tokens who voted no, about 55% and about 750,000 A tokens that voted to abstain, about 41%. Stani voted no, Mark Zeller and the Dow side mostly voted to abstain. Uh and basically the implication here is that a labs will retain control of the relevant brand and distribution assets under the status quo because the proposal failed. Interestingly to note the top three voters controlled 58% of the total voting power. The largest voter probably dominate I'm guessing was 27% and the second largest was 18. Uh and so this is kind of where things have um laid off has laid out as this all happened. the A token really sold off in the market. It was down 20% on the week uh with an additional drop happening in the vote window. Uh and that this is kind of where things have shaken out. Sonny last lastly last thing Sonni publicly said that the disagreement is a part of decentralized governance and he intends to make economic alignment between A Labs and token holders clear going forwards and he stated that a recent $15 million purchase of A that Stonyie made on the market was not used to vote on that proposal. So, that's kind of the mess of everything going on.

Sass, when you were watching all of this drama unfold, what did you what was your first thoughts or impressions impressions or takeaways?

Yeah, I mean, this has kind of been a a tension, I think, within the DeFi protocols for quite a while now in particular, where yeah, there's they've got this kind of labs entity, which is a centralized entity, and it basically has developed everything up until that point. Uh, and then you have this DAO that really doesn't really have that much power over over things, right? The Some projects will say, well, everything belongs to the Dow, so we're just going to give it to the Dow, like some of the the the labs kind of teams and then dissolve the foundation or dissolve labs, whatever it is. Some will spin it off into different entities and and give some kind of control to the Dow. But yeah, I mean, we saw this tension with Unis swap as well for a while, which has kind of been funny to see because that's done a 180. I think we're going to discuss that as well. They've done a 180 on that. Um but I yeah I I think that if these things are to succeed long term and be sustainable and not be capturable to an extent and kind of and kind of fend off like not just see this is the thing about capture is that like if it's a lab's doing it then yeah okay it's relatively transparent you can probably rely on them to have the best interest of Ave at heart and not want to kill anything. Maybe they just want to make money for themselves, but that's, you know, that's not too bad considering that what could happen if a hostile takeover was done by a competing protocol or by someone who just wanted to destroy RB for whatever reason. Like then it starts to get really really kind of messy with with the DAO model as well where it's like, okay, if the DAO owns everything, then how do we prevent that from happening? How do we prevent that from from kind of killing the protocol and and aligning all these incentives as you mentioned there? Stani wanted to align the economic incentives here.

So, I think maybe the the the cleanest way to do it is really to give everything to the DAO because like if you're talking about something that's supposed to last like decades, you know, if if that's what your kind of aim is, you can't have some centralized entity just like bolted on and kind of leeching off, right? Like where and it's kind of like a a cancer where it keeps leeching off and then eventually it keeps growing and growing and growing and kind of like kills the host sort of thing. uh because that's what uh we see in the in the kind of real world where these centralized entities if they don't you know a lot of centralized entities get bought up by private equity firms and these private equity firms comes along and they just they're a cancer they just suck everything out and then that business goes under because it's just like uh they're done with it right they move on to the next thing so that could happen with within crypto protocols as well whereas with a Dow you have more distribution of power you have more kind of I guess like distribution of of uh of how many people are involved with this thing and it's necessarily centralized. There are people that have more power than others, but it could potentially lead to better outcomes than the way it's currently structured and fairer outcomes, too, because people want to feel like they're actually, you know, especially token holders, they want to feel like they're actually getting uh value out of it. They want to feel like their investment is going to go up, too. Uh, and I think that it's a nice way to kind of protect against that.

But yeah, it's it's kind of funny seeing this play out with a because it's like I would say the biggest DeFi protocol uh in terms of uh just like uh general awareness as well. uh because if they can't fend off against this sorts of stuff and they can't work this out then the smaller ones like it's kind of like okay well how are the smaller ones going to do it then like so I think that's another signal that gets sent to to the market is that like if a can't do it then what's the chance these other smaller ones uh can so I think that if a can work it out and they can kind of uh come to a nice conclusion there same with unis swap obviously unis swap probably be the the two heaviest hitters there if they can kind of make something that works that's really positive for all of defi especially in this I guess new era where making it so that tokens can share in the the revenue or the profits of the protocols is actually not going to get you arrested now because we have a a different government in the US. Right. So I think that was a big thing as well that plays into all of that.

The the reason why this is happening to a and unis swap is because of how simply old a and unis swap are. They just come from such a long history. Like at unis swap uh the entity unis swap was made in 2019. A I think even earlier than that and that was actually a pre preendler era. that was um who was the SEC commissioner before that forgetting forgetting his name but it was similarly not as welcoming to having tokens directly capture value and so the foundation model was established even before Gary Gendler to really protect around this and I don't really think the industry at the time really considered or knew or had the foresight to understand that creating two differently owned entities one owned by a token and one owned by equity shareholders would produce the the long-term consequences that we're dealing with today. Uh and I think you know newer foundations for example Morpho the fact that it's an a competitor completely unrelated uh but just there just happens to be only one asset with Morpho and I know Kane Warwick from Infinex and also synthetics he also made Synthetics also did this with the same strategy there's actually just one asset there was never any um equity around synthetics and same thing with Infinex and that just hap that he's got a little bit lucky Kane's a little bit more uh risk uh he's into Kane's into risk let's say that. Uh and so the nature of how these things came to be developed back in the 2018 to 2021 eras really matters.

And I don't really expect this to be as relevant from for a newer protocol launching like in the last year because they just don't have the same baggage. The A labs and the A DAO has had years and years and years of buildup of team members and sophistication and process and they've just ultimately come to be very divergent even though they are both growing towards the same outcome of growing the A protocol. They're just such different organizations like they are there are org charts respective or charts for for each of those not for the Dow but it has its own process. Um, and so I think this is like a unique example just to talk about these two projects the most. And so I think this is an important conversation for the industry to really learn about how do we have complete investor protections and investor rights so that there is only one uh asset to own and hopefully it's the token. But nonetheless, I kind of expect this to be largely constrained in industry impact to really just these two protocols and the other ones that have um foundation versus uh equity misalignments. I don't really expect this to be I I expect this problem to be solved in real time because we are all watching this as an industry.

Yeah. I don't think it's a it's an insurmountable problem. Um I do think for newer teams what they have to be careful about is not going straight down. I think that that actually leads to worse outcomes because then if you go straight Dow you have way too many cooks in the kitchen during the earliest phase of the protocol and they expect to get paid right and they expect to for the token to go up. So I think because obvious like you can have a Dow without a token but normally they go kind of hand in hand and if you do a token too early I think that's pretty pretty bad for some some some projects. Uh so I think yeah you can start off quite centralized and that's what this safe harbor thing is about in the US. I know the SEC wants to do this where essentially you can have like safe harbor for like 3 years, you can remain centralized, build out your thing and then you decentralize it over time. I think that's the better model because yeah, if you go straight Dow from what I've seen in the past, it's it's doesn't doesn't do very well.

Yeah, I think Dows need to decentralize as necessity. You don't make a Dow for making a Dow's sake.

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