ETH Denver Ethereum Magicians Business Models Ring

02/14/2019 | 1:00pm - 2:00pm | Denver Sports Castle

Business Models

Coinbase charges higher fees than other platforms, but people continue to favor it

UX is crazy important. Cannot gain adoption or liquidity without users.

If you cost money, but offer a better experience, it can work

On the other hand, UniSwap is like bancor but without the token

Getting users on platform is one of biggest issues. DAU/MAU is pretty low right now.

Kevin calls shenanigans on DAU/MAU and txn count

Customer Experience
User aquisition
Path to revenue
What does user engagement look like

People will start to flock when they see real value

Depends on location. Venezuela for example.

Prediction markets, have to be an economist to really understand app. But a normal person would still enjoy the outcome of a predicition market without knowing inner workings.

Have shifted as a community from decentralization at all costs, to compromising to gain users

Want centralized service to manage gas on behalf of user.

Cannot jump straight into decentralization. No one used dapps a year ago.

Show people the value of behind the scenes decentralization.

Matt Condon did user testing and realized nobody really cared about the decentralization. UX/UI needs to improve. Once there is demmand for the platform, decentralized features can be added.

People are scared to operate on exchanges.

Burner Wallets

Have to evaluate compromises in onboarding.

Silo'd onboarding

Retail focused products. Focus on the average consumer.

Abstraction granularity for different types of users

Good UX is picking and choosing data to show user

Enable laymen to do something they cannot do with legacy applications

People focus on trying to build a great solution.

Finding the bleeding issue in a centralized entity

Long tail. Can blockchain solve?

People say blockchain will thrive in disenfranchised areas

Aren't as many centralized financial services solutions in developing countries

As people do project, it can be a good thing. You get to capture value, hire people, people will pay more becuase its better. Does this translate to blockchain world. Winners will emerge and they will get value.

Notion of trying to monetize open source is difficult. I don't think all open source projects have a path to monetization. I want to see companies build a coalition/pledge to give back to open source funding. Social pressure to contribute to the legal aid system.

Panvala is doing something similar. Makes ethereum more secure. They do have plans in the future to do something like that.

Is Gitcoin gonna do what y combinator does. Get people into a program, hold hand.

Gitcoin Labs, CLR Matching,

CLR - Matching contributions from large donors. Giving back based on the number of contributions recieved from the general community.

EF & ConsenSys CLR Matching

Tachyon, Y comb, Incubator type systems

A lot of services is how open source companies are making money. Pay money to reduce latency.

Services rather than products. Would take months to learn how to effectively implement open source. Instead, pay to have it done quickly.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Power biz models of web 2.0, want to migrate to blockchain. EIP 1337. Security audited reference implementation of subscription provider in dapp. Gitcoin grants is using it.

Idea is that ICOs and Utility tokens are faux pas right now, if we can use subscriptions, it would be more legally safe. Don't have a buncha bag holders.

Token Foundry recently implemented the standard. Groups within consensys are trying to monetize using a subscription based API.

Unless I really care about it, I probably will not pay for subscriptions.

Reduces friction

ICO requires so much due dilligence

Purchase decision being quick is a huge roadblock to remove.

More people in top and middle of the funnel.

Could implement 'Free Month' or something.

People used to IPO when they already had an established biz, crypto flips that upside down

Business is War

Main Takeaways

Have to compromise decentralization at some points to gain users. Possibly implement decentralized features later.

Collaborative Funding, grants, accelerators - CLR Matching,

Have to find way to monetize open source. Possibly pay money to reduce latency.

Subscriptions > ICOs
Less Due Dilligence
Less significant investment
Purchase Roadblock

Metrics: DAUs/MAUs/Txns. DeFi changed that.

Predicition markets: Computer scientists and economists care about behind the scenes of a prediction market. But normal people just care about the calculated outcome.