Regens and Degens - The Daily Gwei #406
Harnessing degenerate behavior for regenerative good.
There are many different ways to “invest” in the Ethereum ecosystem - money, time, social capital etc - but not all investments have the same returns. If you invest money, your personal return would be a capital gain. If you invest your time, then your return would be personal growth and most likely a better income stream. If you invest your social capital, your standing within the community would become more favorable. I think these investment strategies fall into 2 main buckets - ideologues (regens) and profit maximalists (degens).
I strongly agree with Superphiz’s tweet above and I’m personally most interested in investing my time, energy and social capital in ensuring that Ethereum continues to grow in a way that is prosperous for humanity. This often comes with derision though as what’s long-term prosperous for humanity can be short-term detrimental to someone’s profits. For example, if you’re only in crypto to make profit then you probably don’t care about the technology nor its goals - you will simply do whatever is necessary to maximise your monetary return. Of course, there’s nothing “wrong” with this, but profit maximalist goals are in direct conflict with the ideologists goals.
Let’s unpack that for a bit - what goals do each of these groups have? Well, profit maximalists are pretty self-explanatory - they just want to make as much profit as possible and don’t really care about anything else. On the other hand, while the ideologues are interested in monetary profit as well, their primary objective is based on their ideology and thus they care deeply about things other than money. Though of course this isn’t to say that the profit maximalists don’t care about the technology - I’m sure they do to an extent - but it is a secondary objective for them.
So what if we could convert profit maximalism into something positive for the ideologues? Well, the term ‘regeneracy’ or ‘regen’ was coined by Kevin Owocki from Gitcoin and refers to a concept that taps into the ‘degeneracy’ (profit maximalism) of crypto but for regenerative purposes such as funding public goods. An example of this would be a gambling project on Ethereum diverting 1% of all of their profits to Gitcoin effectively harnessing their users “speculative short-term degeneracy” for longer-term, healthier network-wide goals. How sustainable this model is depends on the project, but even if it only results in a one-off diversion of funds to something sustainable I’d still consider it a win.
All of the ideologues/regens in the Ethereum ecosystem are responsible for ensuring that Ethereum stays true to its ideals, values and ethos. The profit maximalists/degens serve an important role too as they provide the capital investments for things to be built and their speculation can also be harnessed for the public good. I really do think we’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to creating a symbiotic relationship between regens and degens and I’m excited to see what the future holds on this front.
Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano
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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.