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Derivatives have played a key role in almost every financial market in history. In the case of crypto-assets, you can make a case that derivatives have taken a second priority to the development of tier 1 blockchain protocols, exchanges and, of course, token sales. To some extent, the first iteration of Bitcoin futures at the CME and Cboe exchanges hasn’t have the major impact in the market that was initially predicted. However, with all the noise surrounding the potential approval of a Bitcoin Exchanged Traded Fund(ETF) and the emergence of trends such as security tokens, crypto derivatives are called to become a foundational building block of the next generation of crypto-assets. Crypto-derivatives are different from any other type of financial derivative in a key point: THEY ARE PROGRAMMABLE PROTOCOLS which opens the door to all sort of interesting possibilities. Today, I would like to review a group of new protocols that are innovating on the notion of programmable derivatives enabling the implementation of all sorts of sophisticated financial instruments. As Old as Writing Most people associate derivatives with sophisticated financial instruments from the 1980s. The truth is that derivatives have been with us since humans learned to make promise. The invention of writing certainly catalyze the creation of records that formalize commercial agreement that were based on the future delivery of goods. There are records dating back to 1700 BC in which farmers will borrow items needed for the harvest with the promise of a future payout. The first derivative that resemble modern products can be traced back to feudal Japan in the 1700s. Around 1730, the Dojima Rice Exchange is established with the full support of the government. At the exchange, there are two types of rice markets; the shomai and choaimai. The shomai market is where traders buy and sell different grades of rice based on the spot price. Rice vouchers are issued for each transaction and would be settled within four days. At the choaimai the first future market was operating. In the spring, summer, and fall different grades of rice were contracted with standardized agreements. No cash or vouchers were exchanged; all relevant information was recorded in a book at a clearinghouse. The contract period was limited to four months at a time These day, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange(CME) is synonymous with derivatives. The establishment of the financial powerhouse in 1919 represented the legitimization of derivatives in financial markets. Derivatives will remain obscure instruments until the 1970s in which computers make possible to execute complex mathematical models in a sub-second timeframe and, from there, derivatives have been at the center of every relevant financial instrument in the market and have been the cause of more than one disaster. Types of Derivatives Conceptually, a derivative is any financial product that derives its price from an underlying asset. From that perspective, there is no limit to the financial derivatives market. While we are here obsessing about a crypto-asset market that it remains somewhere below $300 billion, financial derivatives amount to somewhere above a QUADRILLION dollars market which, in an important part, remains virtually unregulated. The types of mathematical models that can represent derivatives is effectively infinite but there is a small group of classes of derivatives that encapsulate most models in the market: The Quant’s Dream: Programmable Derivatives What make crypto-derivatives different from any other financial derivative is the simple fact that they are programmable smart contracts that can be dynamically used in higher order contracts. While a bank will spend years building the legal contract that represents Swap model, a hacker can use a crypto derivative protocol and build a financial derivative in minutes. More importantly, the nature of crypto-derivatives enables the implementation of more sophisticated financial models as there are many things that can be expressed in code and smart contracts that can’t be done using simple statistics. The Security Token Catalyzer The emergence of security tokens should, without a doubt, become one of the factors that streamlines the adoption of crypto-derivatives. By definition, many security tokens are representations of underlying alternative assets such as real estate leases or money loans which makes it natural to create models based on the future performance of those assets. More importantly, a large percentage of the derivative product in today’s financial markets can be adapted to the security token space. I’ve written about the impact of derivatives in security tokens here…. Crypto-Derivative Protocols In general, the attempts to implement derivative models for crypto-assets haven’t been widely successful. However, in the last few months, a new generation of protocols have emerged that seem to bring the right combination of financial and crypto rigor to establish a solid foundation for the crypto-derivative space. Here are a few of my favorites. {Set} Protocol {Set} Protocol is an Ethereum-based protocol for collateralized ERC20 tokens. Practically speaking, a {Set} token is an ERC20 token with two additional functions: issue and redeem which serve to convert between the {Set} token and its constituent tokens. The architecture of the {Set} Protocol is illustrated in the following diagram: While the {Set} Protocol team has their eyes set on enabling higher order derivatives such as index funds, they recently launched to illustrate the possibilities of the protocol. TokenSets dYdX dYdX is one of the most complete derivative protocols in the market. At its core, dYdY introduces the notion of a Margin Trading Protocol which mimics the analogous behavior in financial markets. In traditional margin trades, a trader borrows an asset and immediately trades it for another asset. The asset must be repaid to the lender, usually along with interest, at a later date. Margin trading includes both short sells and leveraged longs. The dYdX Margin Trading protocol uses one main Ethereum Smart Contract to facilitate decentralized margin trading of ERC20 tokens. Lenders can offer loans for margin trades by signing a message containing information about the loan such as the amount, tokens involved, and interest rate. These loan offers can be transmitted and listed on off-blockchain platforms. Recently, the dYdX team released a series of second-layer contracts that use the base Marging Trading protocol to implement more sophisticated financial constructs such as Price Oracle or Lenders. Dharma Dharma protocol is a highly generic construction that allows debt agreements of virtually any type to be issued, crowdfunded, and traded as tokens. The Dharma protocol is based on two main concepts: · Represent the end-consumers of the protocol — i.e. entities looking to borrow or lend crypto-assets. The main two types of Agents are Debtors and Creditors. Agents: · Represent utility players who provide value-added services to the network and compete in their respective marketplaces for compensatory fees. The main two types of Keepers are Underwriters and Relayers. Keepers: Firmo.Network The Firmo protocol is an interesting addition to the crypto-derivatives ecosystems. Technically, the platform implements a higher level domain specific language called FirmoLang that enables the implementation of financial instruments using tokens on any blockchain. Obviously, that’s another way of saying that FirmoLang enables the implementation of crypt-derivatives across different blockchains 😉 The platform already offers compilers for the Ethereum Virtual Machine and other platforms should soon be supported. These are just some of the main examples of derivative protocols that are becoming relevant in the crypto space. As trends like security tokens or crypto ETFs become more popular we should see crypto-derivatives become a more relevant component of the next generation of crypto-assets.

The Programmable Short: Four Crypto Derivative Protocols You Should Know About

receives a lot of hate on the from professional, successful designers. The main arguments I’ve seen are that contests and spec work are a great way to have your work ripped off, to work for free, or to submit a into the ether that goes unappreciated or unrecognized. 99designs internet design This is a huge problem, but I don’t believe it’s 99designs’ fault. I believe the people creating the contests and managing them are to blame, and I also believe my contest addressed these issues and led to a better experience for both the designers and me, the client. My first mistake on 99designs was opting for an open contest (instead of a blind contest). An open contest allows everyone to view all submissions and all of the ratings, whereas a blind contest shows the people contributing but hides their specific submissions. I chose to have an open contest because I’m exercising complete transparency in my business. Open salaries are the main item, because companies like to hide behind a business charade and negotiation which 1) makes their employees prove or guess their worth instead of just knowing it 2) perpetuates the wage gap for women, people of color, and other under-represented groups in tech … because they are working against a system that has punished them for speaking up for themselves for many generations. I’m taking transparency a step further than most because I think it helps everyone. Putting our company bank account on our website so employees know how we’re doing financially, tracking exact costs and margins on our microgreens so that when customers buy a salad they know where it came from and exactly how much it cost us as a business, etc. So with all of that transparency at the core of our company I thought an open contest was a no-brainer. But after running it for a day and receiving hundreds of reiterative designs, I realized that transparency is really about consent. Designers on the site had no choice but to submit a publicly available logo, but in so doing they also completely exposed their work to thousands of other designers on the site who could just take their work, apply it, and profit from it. After realizing what was happening I reached out to the 99designs support team and they flipped the visibility of my contest. The single most important thing I did in my entire contest was to rate, review, or decline every single submission. Literally every single one … if a designer who competed in my contest didn’t receive enough feedback, reach out to me. With 1 day and 5 hours remaining in my contest here’s where I stand as a client: I’ve received 451 submissions at the time of this post and it’s absolutely exhausting to go through every single design, figure out exactly why I like it and why I don’t, look through the submitter’s history to understand what I like of their work, give the designer specific feedback on my preferences and how their submission caters to that and how their past work does too, etc. But if you as a client aren’t able to do this then you’ve failed. There are hundreds (likely thousands) of people who are giving you their mental energy to read your design brief, think about it, sit down at their computers, work on a design, and then be confident enough to submit it to you knowing that it may not be seen or even acknowledged. Another decision I made as a client was eliminating designers early in some cases, even if they were very talented. To eliminate early is a tough balance … you may be taking away a chance from a designer who could give you everything you need from a branding perspective. But on the other hand, you could be making them work for hours and hours without any chance of being paid. I don’t know if I have the specific answer, but my approach was to look at their entire portfolio (if they had one), talk to them about their design(s) (communication is critical especially in such a nuanced and subjective area), and to be confident in potentially losing out on a masterpiece. In doing so you are respecting their work but also respecting their time moving forward. I love 99designs because I got my professional start as a software engineer many years ago on oDesk and Elance (now ). I put myself out there in a similar way and a really great mentor of mine Jerry found me, nurtured me as a software engineer, and launched my career. I went from literally counting the dollars in my wallet to afford ice cream to billing the Department of Defense, Department of State, and many other clients of mine $200/hr. Upwork From there I’ve started the , which is a hyperlocal salad and produce delivery company. I’ve incorporated as a Delaware C-Corp with because they are a really incredible service for high growth startups such as my own. I’m using 99designs and other services because I can’t afford to hire the amazingly talented people I’ve worked with over the last decade. I’ve put in ~$10k of my own savings, I’m finalizing a $30k seed round using a , and I have my first customer in Denver ready to start selling salads. Gardeno Foundation Gust Launch SAFE I say that I’ve successfully branded my company even with a day remaining on the contest because I’ve met dozens of amazing designers in just a couple of days. I’ve received some really incredible submissions, of which I think I have some pretty remarkable finalists. No matter how tired I am of reviewing and critiquing I’m going to see this initial phase of the contest through so that I can give everyone a fair shot. I can’t wait to reveal the results!

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