Values Matter

I've been saying it for years.

Crypto's core values, of which decentralization is a big one, matter.

I've been saying it so much that I stopped saying it. I stopped saying it because, over time, it became increasingly apparent that the number of people who didn't ignore what I was saying became lost in an evergrowing sea of people who did ignore what I was saying.

I got into crypto in early 2016, more than nine years ago from the time I'm writing this post. When I went to my first crypto event around that time, I felt like I was walking into a room of like-minded people, looking to find solutions to hard problems, with an eye toward making the world a better place.

The spectrum of people I was fortunate to meet ran the gamut from super-smart engineers, leading with technology to do things better, to more radical activists, looking to change the world with new governance systems. I usually found my views somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.

At the time, ICOs were the norm. VC's hadn't co-opted the space with their push to rebrand crypto with the more marketing-friendly and neutered "web3", which provided and still provides cover for the centralization their involvement typically encourages.

I started interacting with many different networks as proof of stake emerged and gained momentum. I expressed early concern with its rich-get-rich economics. To me, the responses to these early concerns represented where the compromises really started, e.g. "there's no other way to do it" and "don't worry, people will act altruistically".

While over time the staking economy has accepted the former, we've seen the latter logic fail repeatedly and often. Stake centralized fast back then. It continues to do so exponentially through today thanks to staking's compounding economic structure.

Nobody really wants to talk about it though. In my experience, the first mention of "decentralization" more commonly elicits eye rolls than calls to action.

These early compromises, combined with crypto's VC takeover post-2017 and the injection of a new generation of acolytes ever willing to adopt the Silicon Valley zero-sum game playbook, it's no wonder that crypto's core values began to fade into the utopian distance.

Over this time, I've become aware of being thought of or referenced as one holding the more radical views within the staking networks Chainflow supports. That's probably the kinder interpretation. The other one is "That guy from Chainflow who keeps talking about decentralization and won't shut-up about it."

For a while I was feeling quite dejected about this. Then a couple things I realized started giving me hope again.

The first is that given my history in crypto I thought that adherence to crypto's core values was table stakes. Reframing my experience has led me to realize that working to uphold crypto's core values, which I and now we at Chainflow work hard to do every day, can become a differentiator. Doing this is what makes Chainflow different.

Our thesis at Chainflow is that there are still people in crypto who care about preserving crypto's core values. We posit that the number of people who care about crypto's core values has continued to increase since I entered the space just over 9 years ago. While the number of people who care has increased, their percentage of the overall crypto and "web3" sphere has decreased, a lot.

This brings me to the second point that brings me hope. As I mention above, we recognize that not everyone cares about crypto's core values. And it may even be that the vast majority of people in the crypto and especially "web3" space could care less about them.

To these people this space is simply the next market/industry/whatever to extract value from. So these people could care less about who Chainflow is, what we do and why we do it.

Chainflow doesn't need or want their support.

Who we do need are those who believe crypto can help build a brighter future. These are the people we want to connect with, have stake to us and collaborate with to achieve this goal.

And because Chainflow continues to be a smaller, independent and bootstrapped operation, devoid of the desire for world domination, going public or otherwise repeating the same big-money moves that have dominated traditional finance, we don't need a majority to support us.

We'll do just fine with support from the minority who still cares. If that's you, we'd appreciate your support with delegations, supportive feedback and collaboration ideas. Together we can maintain a niche that feels like the crypto we want and that fights back against the trends and narratives that threaten crypto's potential to build a brighter future.

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