One of the most interesting things about Uniswap's success is how many people with traditional finance backgrounds said it would never work.

My first instinct is to dunk on them but the funny thing is the problems they outlined then are the main issues we're working through now

Capital efficiency, slippage, flexibility, etc.

The finance peeps were right. These are all problems that need to be solved for defi to eat the world

What they miscalculated about Uniswap was not its inefficiencies or its shortcomings...

but that the *benefits* of *truly* decentralized finance are so great they can outweigh inefficiencies.

Working w/ smart contracts feels so magical it can be easy to fall into the trap of "what we're doing is different from anything that came before" https://twitter.com/tarunchitra/status/1291071505552605184

And it's true, smart contracts are pretty magical. They give you very specific superpowers.

None of which are understanding market dynamics, economics, incentives, etc better than anyone who came before you.

It's always good to contextualize your work and learn from others.

Smart contract superpowers are decentralization, permissionless innovation/composability, the ability to trust your money in a program not a person, censorship resistance, etc.

These are the competitive advantages of DeFi. Without them DeFi is nothing.

My point is, if you're building something you call defi:

1) it's okay to dunk on traditional finance for its shortcomings but you should do your best to learn from it as well

2) Making it actually decentralized, permissionless, trustless etc is a huge competitive advantage