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DeFi, Elmo in Flames


#279
Let It Burn!

Published:

Mar 16, 2019


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DeFi, Elmo in Flames

Published:

Mar 16, 2019


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If 2018 was the year of the ICO token creation bubble, then 2019 may be the year of “token destroy.”

FinTech Collective was in attendance at this week’s EthCC (Ethereum Community Conference) and EthParis (Ethereum developer hackathon), both of which were held in Paris. Developer turnout and talent was very strong, with Ethereum continuing to cement its leadership as the developers’ blockchain platform of choice despite scaling and price concerns.

Interesting themes coming out of the hackathon included blockchain implementations of zero-knowledge proofs, developer debugging tools, and privacy for decentralized voting.

But the most interesting trend of all was “proof-of-burn” – the process of destroying tokens on a blockchain. In fact, two of the four ETHParis finalists were concepts around eradicating tokens that users had received from futile ICOs or spam air drops. One project allowed users to write text messages that would be permanently transcribed on the blockchain to create an immutable record of what was learned (basically Twitter for “proof-of-burn”). Another had a leaderboard for those who cleared the greatest amount of blockchain bloat by burning frivolous ERC-20 tokens.

We’ve certainly come full circle from the ICO heydays. But sometimes to start anew, you must first lay complete waste to the past …



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