Saffron Weekly (11/12/22)
What’s new in the week of 11/11/22–11/17/22.
This week we talk about the current state of the market and impending launch of Saffron Academy.
Current State of the Market
The following are my own views and not expressed by Saffon.
I will not mince words — what has happened this week has been a devastating blow to our entire industry. In an era where we have zero regulatory oversight by the US Government, I want to reiterate that no matter how many celebrity endorsements they receive, no matter how many self aggrandizing fluff pieces they buy from news publications, no matter what kind of promotions they run — CEX’s (Centralized Exchanges) are not your friends. Until we receive the regulatory clarity that the industry has been asking for — users will always take on risk when they don’t self custody their own digital assets.
I am not guilt free of this, I have used (and still do use) two CEX’s as on/off ramps but they have always been temporary measures before returning my funds to cold storage. This is a practice that I recommend to all of my friends and family.
We have seen notable influencers fall into the FTX and BlockFi hype, and these individuals — whether intentionally or not — have led thousands of new, naive investors down the path of getting completely rekt. I will not name names but I’m sure they are already aware of who they are — and they do our entire industry a disservice with the damage that they’ve done.
We are going to receive a lot of attention now and I am optimistic that any regulations that are born out of this will be proactive and allow for technological innovation in this new industry. Through it all it’s important to remember that this is not an indictment on cryptocurrency, this is an indictment on greedy individuals who thought they could play, manipulate, and steal from their users. This is unfortunately a tale as old as time in finance, and we’d be naive to think that we have seen the last of it. As a crypto user you need to remain ever-vigilant of who you choose to custody your assets.
There is no other way about it — we have been suffering this year because centralized entities such as Celsius, FTX, 3AC, etc. have misused or misrepresented funds. This is not something that is unique to cryptocurrency and has been a significant problem in old finance as well — like I said, it’s a tale as old as time.
The biggest commonality throughout all of these scandals — whether it’s banks or digital assets — is human error in the form of greed or incompetence. What is the solution? Decentralize it all. It is near impossible to do what these bad actors have done under a decentralized system with transparency, security, and immutable smart contracts.
For those who are concerned, Saffron does not have any exposure to FTX and the other CEX’s that were impacted by this. There will be trying times ahead but we will see them through.
Saffron Academy Launches Next Week
On a bit of a brighter note, I’m proud to announce that our education platform Saffron Academy is launching next week. Here you’ll be able to explore Saffron Essentials, DeFi Basics, our updates, our newsletter, and more! You can take a look at past articles, videos, tutorials, and podcast episodes. The addition of the Topics filter and Video slider make it easy to find what you’re looking for at a glance.
We’ve spent a lot of time designing this and making sure it’s as intuitive as possible for users — and I can’t wait to start building this out. We have an array of new articles on their way meant to help onboard newcomers into DeFi — something that I’m sure has piqued the interest of a lot of people after this week — and we’ll be updating this education platform frequently.
We can’t wait to have you guys poke around here next week!
Developer Update
Turpintinz gives us another update on the Badger integration.
This has been an eventful few days. Anyone have a spare $9.4 billion? I cannot deny that it has been a little distracting. Through it, I’ve been plugging away with the Badger integration getting contracts documented and those production scripts going.
That’s all for this week, stay safe out there and check back for more soon.
Community resources
Web3 app: https://saffron.finance
Governance: https://gov.saffron.finance
Telegram: https://t.me/saffronfinance
Discord: https://discord.gg/pDXpXKY
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saffronfinance_
Github: https://github.com/saffron-finance/saffron
