A friend emailed me last weekend about his project, and this line stuck out. Am I just not finding the right pockets, or is the whole market shrinking? This is in the context of a web3 project launched during what could easily be called a hype cycle. What I'm sharing here is an observation and… Continue reading Timing is hard
Category: written-words
The Brale Stable Coin, SBC
The Brale team released SBC a few weeks ago, requesting comments from industry participants. It's the second step in a series of many steps. The first was Base; the second was SBC; more are in the works. We know a lot is happening in the market, and we hope to contribute to some stability over time. While… Continue reading The Brale Stable Coin, SBC
Creative Processes
The brand narrative at Brale and the visual elements have started to come together and it feels really special. The web page got updated, it's fun and very simple. Here it is dark mode: And as you go through the page you can find all kinds of fun cues that started in the very beginning… Continue reading Creative Processes
Abstracting gas fees
The Brale team spends an inordinate amount of time these days talking about, thinking about, and working with folks new to DeFi protocols. Most of the world's CeFi & TradFi leaders still need to wrap their heads around gas fees which frequently come up as a barrier to entry. Showing someone gas fee trackers rarely… Continue reading Abstracting gas fees
The Value Layer – Expanded
Since I wrote the original value layer blog post, I've wanted to expand on the idea and start cataloging the different global systems connected through these primitives. At one point, I had hoped to get folks to contribute to it as an open-source project. Due to time constraints, that never happened, but I finally had some time… Continue reading The Value Layer – Expanded
Who is investing in Iowa?
Iowa capital pools, venture funds, and venture-funded businesses are everywhere. Ten years ago, a friend once said something like, if you blew up the room Dwolla launched in 2010, it would set the ecosystem back 20 years. That might have been true then, but it's certainly no longer valid. Searching available capital in the state… Continue reading Who is investing in Iowa?
Traditional Ledgering and Blockchains
At Money 20/20 last week, a topic that came up over and over in discussions was blockchain performance compared to traditional databases used to ledger transactions. One must be excellent at double-entry bookkeeping and performant state machines to use a traditional database to ledger transactions. The overwhelming majority of banks and FinTechs use this approach… Continue reading Traditional Ledgering and Blockchains
What if you don’t have to choose?
The old saying goes something like, "fast, cheap, and good. pick two ". There are even lovely Venn diagrams all over. Like this one 🙂 This idea tends to fall into conventional wisdom and applies very well to most things. It has often come up in the context of Transfer Types and various payment providers.… Continue reading What if you don’t have to choose?
Mono-rail to no rails
Sharing observations and findings after spending more time in the DeFi world has been a fun part of the journey. It helps communicate to people inside of traditional finance environments and those outside them.Talking about moving money in a traditional environment very quickly focuses on transfer types and funds flows. Transfer types are typically mono-rail-type… Continue reading Mono-rail to no rails
Payment regulations and the evolving value stack
It has been surprising how much discussion has been about creating new regulatory frameworks, particularly for fiat-backed stablecoins. Surprising because the current framework works well for fiat-backed stablecoins, something that is pretty boring if done correctly. The regulation is unclear when applying current regulation to other forms of stablecoins, like algo-stables. The current regulatory structure in the… Continue reading Payment regulations and the evolving value stack