the chonk
4 min readMar 1, 2022

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Ponzi-forks as a service (PaaS). ‘Defi 3.0'

This might ruffle some feathers. To quote Jay Z, “This might offend my political connects.” sorry?

It ain’t FUD, I have no horse in this race & has zero effect on my life whether it lives on & prosper or gets crushed like a cockroach, buried 7 ft deep.
Like the saying goes "If you like it, I love it". It’s a free world, allocate your funds however TF you want.

Only commenting cause it keeps popping up on my timeline & since I’m a curious chonk, I looked into it.

Big words, promises & marketing jargon for something that basically does fcuk all. not worth the time to list them all but let’s skim through a few.

I will refer it in full each time { Farming as a Service (FaaS) } Defi 3.0 because it’s cringey AF yet so amusing. Lul.

Let's dig in.

strip apart all the layers of abstraction. down to its most basic tenets, butt ass naked.

[1] What TF does it actually do?
[2] Tokenomics & mechanics. What’s the secret sauce?
[3] Whats the "innovation" to justify the self proclaimed "Defi 3.0" narrative?
[4] My thoughts

[ 1 ] What does it do?

Errr...It’s basically a "yield optimizer." Or think of it as 'outsourcing’ it to someone else. (But don’t protocols like that exist already? 3.0 bro) You buy the token which is then your share of the “rewards" from protocol’s farming yield. with sprinkles of MLM ponzinomics + my fav, double digit % transfer taxes. that’s it. it’s a yield ponzi-mizer.

[2] Tokenomics & mechanics. What’s the secret sauce?

Tokenomics
Double digit “transfer tax" sounds good ey? gets “redistributed" to existing holders +the “treasury" & liquidity pool. Whatttttt.

So if you bought on day 1, you would get say 3% “reflections” from every other knucklehead that bought after you. And why am I forced to agree that a % of my capital goes to the LP ? Protocol not having to put up their own $$ for liquidity. Brilliant. but team’s tokens are vested.. Are the “reflections” for those vested also? Have u checked? Here’s some alpha, go check & see what they do with it. GL anon.

secret sauce? Mayonnaise. There is no secret sauce. It’s not as if there is a ML bot analyzing optimal strategies and rebalancing within milliseconds.(there are protocols literally building this) You’re better off giving your capital to the battle tested hentai loving bunnies over at yearn or the pie loving pastry chefs at PieDAO. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Shameless plug but a legitimate real life example: you earn a portion of the treasury farming yields at PieDAO when locking up your dough for veDOUGH. No ridiculous 2 digit transfer taxes, no “forced LP" bullshit.

[3] Whats the "innovation" to justify the self proclaimed "Defi 3.0" narrative?

Again, pardon my french. The answer is...fcuk all. Nada.

I just mentioned 2 protocols above doing the exact same thing, minus all the bullshit. I looked into 1 of this crap which shall remain nameless & a couple red flags popped up. Remember the “innovators" mentioned above? Well, the contract deployed on chain shows its basically a fork. Lol. And there’s literally no new features. What innovation? They don’t even bother changing comments & references to the original code they Ctrl C + Ctrl V it from. Another red flag is the contract on their site & (dead) GitHub (1 commit.lol) differs from what’s actually deployed on chain.

Nothing wrong with being a fork. But at least add value. I asked in 1 of the project’s TG & someone really said “no need to reinvent the wheel if it works". Yeah, we would all be using Nokia 3310 & pagers if people didn’t innovate. Conveniently(or not) the contract on their site / github does not have any reference to the original fork, but the one deployed on chain does. innovative much?

[4] My thoughts

With all due respect to the builders but I think it’s garbage. This of course doesn’t apply to ALL Farming as a Service (FaaS)lol protocols. To generalize a whole sector on a few bad actors is unfair to those adding real value.. if you’re a believer, ask these difficult questions. I’ve lurked in a few of them. And there’s usually only 1 or 2 anons asking the tough questions, who then get labelled by the mob as trying to FUD the project & eventually leave. It’s a copycat shitshow bound to go to zero. Not all, but most. Those who add real value & pivot will survive, for most, say goodnight.

Tick tock ⏳…..

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