We’ve all heard about the story of the Trojan Horse. The real danger of the trojan horse is that they make you feel safe, no threat is ever expected, and it is precisely when you feel the safest that you’re the most vulnerable. Once the trojan horse is let loose, there is nothing you can do but watch as the chaos unfolds.

The year is 2040, you wake up inside your VR pod and almost instantly hear \*DING\* \*DING\*. You look up to see a notification, “good morning, you have received 15 $wake coins”. You get out of your pod to go and make some coffee and just before you can start the machine, \*DING\* “congratulations, you have completed 15 steps, you have received 15 $walk coins”. Not a bad start to the day.

With the rise of any new industry comes its fair share of frameworks for analyzing the industry. With the rise of crypto, many of the brightest minds have shared their own breakdowns of ways to look at crypto as a technology or an investment. In this article I decided to compile 5 of the most important ones.  

Crypto maximalism is by far the strangest but most fascinating thing in the crypto space. People back their chain of choice like it’s their local football team. Ever since taking a deep dive into this space I never really understood maximalism. I personally watch a ton of football (actual football, not handegg) but don’t support any team, however I noticed striking similarities between the hardcore football fans and crypto maximalists. So this is my 50IQ attempt at understanding maximalism.

Okay the title is kinda clickbait, decentralized governance itself isn’t a meme, in fact it is a necessity. It’s the popular mechanism of decentralized governance through token voting that I think is somewhat of a meme.

Most of you have probably read/watched Ready Player One and been both mind-blown and petrified by what life in the metaverse would be like. While the term ‘metaverse’ has become a popular buzzword recently to make people throw money at random shitcoins, this concept has been around since the 1990s. John Perry Barlow was an internet rights activist amongst other things and in 1996 he issued the declaration of the independence of the cyberspace.

2021 was the year of the L1 trade. From SOLUNAVAX at the beginning of the year to FOAN towards the end of the year (shoutout white wolf), every L1 caught a bid. Something even a blind person could see is that whenever a new L1 caught a bid, there would be a massive rotation of capital into that ecosystem. Everytime that happened, the native DEX always performed the best.

The Play-to-earn (P2E) movement has seen a lot of prominent figures from the traditional gaming world migrate over to GameFi. That’s a good sign, but for P2E to live up to its potential it needs more complexity and sustainability. Current games are run by ponzinomics which attracts short term engagement until the game has been plundered, then people move to the next one. After a point there is only so much fresh blood you can attract to the Ponzi.

Institutional Isomorphism is an interesting theory adapted from the ‘Iron Cage’ theory outlined by Max Weber. Weber essentially said that bureaucracy and the rational spirit is such a strong method to control humans that once it kicks into full force it will become like an Iron cage that humans will be imprisoned by forever until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.