“Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.”
— Neil Gaiman
It comes naturally for humans to trust one another. Especially when one of the humans is an “expert” on a specific topic and the other is not. This is human nature.
Unfortunately, greed is also human nature.
Bitcoin was created not to change human nature, but to resist it. Users of Bitcoin voluntarily engage in a system that was designed to subvert their innermost desires and wishes.
Bitcoiners do this because they understand that humans are inherently fallible. Bitcoin users understand that immutable & unstoppable code can protect them from one another as well as themselves.
DeFi is often marketed as sharing this same characteristic. However, it almost never actually does. Unlike Bitcoin, most of DeFi is not immutable or unstoppable. And, to make it worse, it’s nearly impossible for a new user (and oftentimes veteran users) to be able to decipher what kind of risks a DeFi application actually presents or which humans they need to trust if they choose to use it.
DeFi apps are interlinked with one another, creating a complex world of possible doomsday scenarios that makes the mind spin. For years, I have been working to convince developers that they need to go beyond standard technical documentation when it comes to their projects and to begin properly documenting the systemic risks that pervade the DeFi ecosystem.
Unfortunately, the most treacherous risks of DeFi are not properly documented because of the ecosystem’s inherent complexity and the developer community’s unwillingness to go above and beyond to critique their own work. In their private chats and journals, DeFi developers do engage in adversarial thinking. There are specific issues and scenarios that keep them up at night thinking and worrying. But they often don’t share these concerns with you, the end-users.
So, that’s what we will try to do here.
Blec Report was created to offer DeFi users accessible explanations of the risks associated with specific DeFi, Web3 and crypto applications. It’s not about audits and it’s not about docs. It’s about one person applying adversarial thinking to how a DeFi app works, what it’s connected to, what data it relies on, what kind of control the developers have, how its governing organization is managed, and much more.
I’m not a developer. I am a tech-savvy person who has been observing this space for a while and has been right about a lot of things. I feel that I have proven that you don’t need to be a developer to be able to figure out the risks of DeFi apps. At a certain point, these investigations become more about logic and reason than they are about mere code.
Ultimately, this is about looking at DeFi through the eyes of someone who understands that humans are fallible creatures. This is adversarial thinking.
I believe that if you are going to be required to trust someone, you should know that you’re trusting them and be aware of the risks involved. Willful ignorance – the kind that humans have been so good at for thousands of years – will get you rekt in a world of irreversible financial transactions.
Blec Report isn’t about discouraging you from using DeFi.
It’s about encouraging you to use it with your eyes wide open.