Alright, I’ll leave another note here with feedback, but ultimately it is the community that has the answers and the core team should guide the community to find the answers. It boils down to truly leveraging reflexivity to unleash network effects (very few people actually understand reflexivity and fewer how it relates to networks and tokens) and understanding how you can engage and incentivize community in a smart and long-term sustainable way to create that flywheel.
I must state again that 0x is in an incredibly fortunate position, because it has done all the hard work, and created a tremendous infrastructure that caters to the long-term vision of where we are headed. I have seen many teams in this space, and I must say 0x team is quite incredible, in many ways, in terms of integrity, in terms of technical prowess, in terms of vision, in terms of people working together, in terms of making it happen. 0x could benefit a lot from a stronger more community where members actively engage and own the protocol, and gladly 0x has laid the foundation for that to happen. 0x essentially connects all the liquidity sources in DeFi and acts as a liquidity engine that will come to power all of DeFi in a way that Chainlink powers all of DeFi through decentralized oracles. But it is not inevitable, so it is important to acknowledge some of the blindspots so we can address where we have to pay attention, in order to ensure that the vision of 0x will be materialized. 0x was ahead of its time when it launched, and its time will come, if we figure out as a community to unlock the missing pieces, the catalyst if you will. Sometimes its just like a spark and all of a sudden perception changes and people see the true value that few people have seen because they were not paying attention. It is not a given that anyone wins however much of a lead they have so for. We must start to be hyper realistic where things are and what is missing.
First let me say this @_wwarren and @abandeali1 are unique as founders for this decentralized financial revolution. There are on the same level as the founders of those projects that everyone is so bullish about. In some way they have seen even further ahead, and thinking about this longer. I have met members of the technical team at Stanford Blockchain conference or throughout events in San Francisco, and these people have great talent, e.g. @Remco pioneering 0x Mesh. You have @brentoshiro who cares about the community and has been doing a fantastic job. @mintcloud crafting the product and talking to community, making proposals like starting this thread. Blake Henderson I have seen many times on Twitter with savvy takes about market making and behind the scenes I am sure doing a lot of great work. @0x_peter who have I talked to in person is a thoughtful economist and thinks about all the different details that are important to consider. Fulvia’s speech at 0xpo was amazing and its great to see female leaders also part of this project. The design of 0x is also outstanding and has been throughout and is only getting better thanks to Ben Burns and others. Zach Skelly has recruting many of these great people. You have Chris Kalani and John Johnson who have done a fantastic job with Matcha. Daniel Pyrathon, Steve Klebanoff I met at a hackathon in SF and these guys are awesome and we had fantastic conversations. Clay Robbins I had some conversations with as well and he is thinking quite deeply about this and having worked at Square previously also very pragmatically. Matcha is not that old and already so much growth and traction. And so many of 0x talent came from lucrative positions at very successful startups (Square, Dropbox, Fb, etc). Let me tell you it is not that easy to assemble a team like this. With a team like that you can almost solve any problem and stay nimble and agile. I cannot mention all and I have not made everyone but I am sure everyone else is also great. (I can only tag 10 people in this post unfortunately,
Then you have great community members like nikita who is doing this as if he is part of the 0x team. cryptohydrate I have met in person and he was so in awe of the project and to see that in another person who is not part of core team is great. And there are many others like SonofPegasus, mikkke who still believe in the project, provide feedback and hold a financial stake. You had Danial on Twitter mention too how underestimated the project is. There are staking pools like VolleyFire and many others who align themselves financially with the project. There are so many other wallets and liquidity sources integrating with 0x API. It is connected and linked already so deep few people actually see this.
In some ways this space is driven by these truly game-changing mathematical principles, and then you look at the market and it feels very odd because most market participants do not really behave rationally or have sophistcated views. It is just a market after all. They don’t really analyze tokens based on fundamentals. So much of what is driving this market and in some way punishing 0x is not 0x’s fault. In the long term it is better to be virtuous and have integrity, instead of trying to do something in order to get some short term gain. However, in this market like any other capital is looking for a return. There is cost of capital.
As a thought experiment then let us put ourselves in the shoes of someone who truly believes in this project and has been supporting it from the beginning. For most people of the community who cannot contribute with technical input or applying for a job at 0x, or creating a staking pool, or any other role, we have essentially the 0x hodlers, who despite other projects in the space returning vastly superior returns on capital, somehow still believe in the project, because of the principles of transparency and openness that are so important in order not to just re-create the same financial system on decentralized rails. And despite everyone inside the space making fun of them for holding something that others regard as worthless, they kept holding, similar to Bitcoin in its early days. In fact, most people we can assume have a position that they bought into post ICO, even if they got a small ICO stake, they probably bought in a range where essentially now they are break even or still under water, when other tokens like Chainlink, or Aave (formerly EthLend) have returned upwards of 100x. Again, I am just trying to communicate some of the voices that I have been hearing of people in the community, who still believe or who have already given up at a loss.
And we cannot say that these holders are short-term thinking or impatient. They have endured the bear market, they have watched Bitcoin go past ATH, they watched Ethereum go past its ATH, and meanwhile ZRX until a few days ago was down 80% from its ATH. Many people also bought way closer to ATH, so still some way for them to break even. I don’t like talking about price as much as 0x core team, but it is just what is on people’s mind and it is driving the market, so we have to at least acknowledge it. It is sad that now the speculators will come in and profit on the mispricing while all the long-term holders will break even or have given up at a loss. The speculators will not stay. The token is there to reward the core team pushing to make it happen and early stakeholders who supported the project with capital. Generally, by holding capital for long time you signal where innovation should happen. There is value in that and even more if that capital can be more active by staking or other means. It is normal and understandable in a market that is obsessed with price to look at and say the project is worthless it feels like that is what is conventional wisdom. To be contrarian, it must not stay that way for long. It is unhealthy to invite speculators to come in and profit from this mispricing or depressed asset prices while they will provide little value to the community. They will come and go. It is normal for anyone involved with the project outside the team to doubt themselves and wonder if they were wrong in their assessment of the project. It is painful and almost irrational to hold on so long.
Think about the army of Chainlink marines who now have ownership of the protocol it is like free marketing they are spreading the word and the message, creating memes which creates a community flywheel. Also node operators need to hold the token in order to perfom the core function of the network. Similar to Tesla which has not done any marketing to focus on product and shipping is good. That is what 0x has done, and I applaud them for not having engaged in behavior that many exhibit in order to push prices. At the end of the day, you need to have tangible results and something that has value in order for the token to have value. @_wwarren has said this many times and I agree with it.
I think at the core of this is understanding how reflexity drives markets and how tokens are vehicles for network effects and aligning incentives of all stakeholders. Do not forget one set of stakeholders. It is also important to be very realistic as to how things are, and not how we wish them to be, in order to effect change. The goal for any network is to become a decentralized network that is owned by everyone. Another core element is understanding how perception drives value and creates its own feedback loop and therefore reality.
0x is in a great position because it somehow is the Bitcoin of DeFi and just how early on in Bitcoin’s cycle people dismissed it, we have a situation here, where essentially the perception of 0x is that it is worthless. Note it is not to say that it is worthless, just that this is the perception of majority of market participants at the moment. This is also a great opportunity, because they might just all be wrong. 0x might be one of the most valuable networks after all. We essentially have a situation here where most people already in the space have written off the project, and they stopped paying attention. So much is happening and if the sentiment is elsewhere the opportunity cost is too high, so many people do not realize the growth of 0x that is about to happen or even has happened in last few months. It is so interesting to watch the different set of participants in the markets and how they view / perceive 0x and how that is going to change and how it will affect the token. How perception creates its own reality. Unless you are a part of 0x core team or 0x long-term hodler, it is very difficult to see this. If the perception of many market participants is that the project is worthless it is reflected in the price, and continues to negatively perpetuate this kind of reality. But if the fundamentals do not match that reality, then at some point it will reverse. Reflexivity goes both ways, and what we may be about to see is a sort of short squeeze of perceptions, where most market participants have written off the project or fail to truly understand its potential and how it is also manifesting into reality. Unfortunately, 0x has also not been able to take advantage of this reflexivity as much as for example Uniswap, Chainlink or Aave. Or think about how Synthetix invented liquidity mining and how they can print sUSD, etc. The point is that 0x community could come together and also figure out a way to create this kind of flywheel, especially now that it is based on the great foundation that was put in place by 0x team.
As a side note, I do not think renaming the token is a good idea. It would be against the principles that you have stewarded of transparency and honesty of just now changing the token name to drive some hype. While it is true that some of the older generation of tokens have lacked, it is also not true at the same time. Chainlink for example has outperformed almost any other token and it was released during the same time as 0x. 0x should stand for the values it has championed while acknowleding that the tokenomics have to change. If incentives change, capital will notice. Just changing the painting won’t do much. 0x team could support the community to figure out the tokenomics. The burden should not fall on a few individuals. How can you create network effects if you are missing the most powerful force via reflexivity by leveraging the token in such a way that it aligns the interest of all stakeholders and makes them feel they own a piece of something valuable that is growing and supports the values that they care about.
At the end of the day, it is about 0x team having actually delivered, which they have, the awareness of changing what needs to change, which is happening, signalling to the market that you are willing and open to change, which is also happening and focusing on those blindspots. The sentiment is slowly changing and could rapidly accelerate. Any project must understand that not having network effects comes with a price that cannot be calculated, and just focusing on the technology is not enough. You cannot win simply by having the best technology because the best technology is a product of having network effects of people adopting your product and it constantly being improved by all the stakeholders. The answer is unlikely to come from 0x team alone, or any other individual or set of stakeholders. This is the moment for the community to come together and figure this out together. The answer is in all our heads, and we must communicate together to figure this out.