Why is crypto so complicated?
For about a month, I have been taking courses in python programming. It's a slow process but I want to learn to code so that I can later interact with the blockchain. I believe that coding can be quite complex and it's definitely hard to grasp everything. However, when I look at some recent crypto projects, I tend to believe that when it comes to complexity coding is actually easy compared to some projects out there...
Why the heck is everything so complicated
In the last weeks and days, I have tried to read and understand several Defi concepts and each time I had to give up in frustration. I simply didn't get it. After the third trial in understanding the whitepapers, I just couldn't take it anymore. Am I that stupid not to get it? Or is it simply too complex to understand?
Never invest in something that you don't understand
One of my mantras when it comes to put money somewhere is that I need to understand how things work. I want to know where the money comes from. Where the profits come from and how the project makes these profits. Without knowing this, my golden rule is not to invest. I'm probably not the only person who works like that.
To get people into a project, it needs to be simple and understandable
From running my own projects, I realize how difficult it is to keep things simple and easy to understand. The more people understand a project, the more potential investors we might get. So there is a financial advantage in making things clear and easy.
Ways to break down ideas in an easy way
I brainstormed a little bit and I will try to list things that could help to reach this goal.
Information vs. Whitepaper
Most whitepapers are what they are called: a lot of white paper with a lot of text. I think it's important that all the information is regrouped somewhere and the whitepaper is perfect for that. However, whitepapers are often information overload (that's what I witnessed recently). I believe there should always be another document that is colorful and interesting to read where a person gets only the information that is really relevant to her. I would consider it as a kind of sales brochure.
Playing with visual helpers
For me personally, I love when things are pleasing to the eye. Meeting a wall of text is never a good thing. I like when things are presented with graphs, pictures and diagrams or even in videos. This helps to understand things a lot, especially for visual people.
Get outside feed-back
Another approach is to present your project to people who don't know anything about it and get their feed-back. When we build something complex, it is probably very clear in our own head but not really for the person who reads our whitepaper. Feed-back from people that are not involved allow to point out questions that might arise. Maybe these questions seem trivial for us but they are probably not for most others.
Explain only what needs to be explained
A big problem that I personally often struggle with is to limit the information to the strict minimum. The more information, the more confusion can be. Therefore, a lot can be obtained by keeping the explanations to a minimum, especially in what I called above a sales brochure. What is important for the person who wants to invest? What does he/she need to know?
I believe that most people on platforms like hive are rather better fitted to understand complex tokenomics. However, when even we don't get most of it, there is absolutely no chance that a „normal mainstream“ person gets it. I believe it would be good for Hive and crypto in general to invest more time on breaking concepts down and make them easy to understand.
What about you? How do you deal with all those whitepapers?
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I don't have a technical background, which is why it's also complex for me to understand some of the coding concepts. I think that because blockchain technology's fairly new, that the experts haven't broken it down yet into layman terms for the general public.
Of course, there's already information out there, but mostly keeping the topic minimum and general.
We are living in a complex world but if we want people to invest in our projects we have to make sure that what we do is clear and understandable for others I believe.
Yes, this goes for everything people are trying to market/sell.
I agree with you, DeFi projects should be more easy to understand by the "normal" audience, if not, they will not work in the long run
It's not an easy enterprise to break down a complex concept so that it can be understood by average people but I believe it's really necessary to do it. As you say, if people don't get it, it won't run for long.
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I agree there should be something like a "sales brochure" for anything what seeks investments from people not familiar with a project.
Out of curiosity, when you say defi you mean diesel pools, or in a more general sense / ecosystem?
Diesel pools are in my opinion quite easy to understand. I was trying to get to understand two projects that @ph1102 suggested. One was on BSC and the other as well but planning to come to Hive.
That's interesting. A project that wants to expand from BSC to Hive. Does it have to do with Cubfinance's 2nd planned IDO?
That's one of the projects. Looks intersting but I didn't get it :-)
So basically they invite us to buy a defi token with HIVE (SWAP.HIVE). Hmm, what could go wrong?
Hmm I think it helps when there is a community to discuss. Sometimes there are coders among the chat groups or people who are more knowledgeable in such areas. I usually ask around if I have doubts or questions about crypto stuff like projects, whitepapers, etc.
It's always great to be able to talk about a project and help each other to understand it. In my opinion it would be great if more effort would be put into making projects more understandable for people.
Again I agree, if I wanted to read all the whitepapers I would not even have the time to do. And it would not be worth it as there is often so much "blabla-bla" in there like "we want to rule the world" and "make it a better place". Although it might be a good thing that is what basically what anybody wants and thus not worth mentioning.
Whitepapers are great and all but in my opinion there should be a much simpler document with only what I need to know before I invest. If I want to break my head and read the whitepaper, then it's up to me :-)
Well my friend python is really interesting although I wholeheartedly suggest you start by learning solidity, I think it will be much more useful for you to know how to create an intelligent contract, and that will give you a better understanding of python, than for true using it you can make your own comment response bots for hive, among many other things.
There are whitepapers that are complicated, I agree with that, but nowadays if you review the ones that today, the models are usually the same, with some modifications only in the nft or graphics, but as a starting point, when auditing the contracts , you realize that they are generally the same or have the same code as others.
There are really very few projects that are innovative in terms of whitepaper and contracts.
Hello my friend :-)
The idea behind learning python is to be able to write automatisation scripts for the hive blockchain using BEEM library. Solidity might be the next step :-).
Most of the whitepapers as you say are copy paste things and the problem is that in the first place they were too complicated for the average person. I think a lot of efforts should go into making these projects easier to understand.
Code is hard to read unless there is clear documentation on it. So this usually means people commenting and making sure it is readable. I think maintaining that is also quite tough so I would not be surprised if they are skipping that either.
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Yes I believe a lot of effort should be done in this respect.
It would definitely be nice if things were easier to understand. I know there are some things I would like to expand into but don't understand enough to risk it.
Good article, thanks.
Thanks for your feed-back. There is often a need for more simplicity and I think the complexity is a big barrier for people at the moment.
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Great to hear you are learning python. I have played around with it some but not with the blockchains. Have you see a good library to use with the Hive blockchain?
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There are several Hive libraries for python. I know of BEEM which is quite powerful. I still need to learn how to play with it :-)
Thanks for the information.
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Sometimes it doesn't matter to know everything in the smallest details to USE it... But, I do have the same problem as you... I want to know "how it works" and I think that others want the same... But, mostly, they don't... lol...
Well trying to know how things work, comes with a cost... loosing a lot of time and getting a lot of headache lol
It's a real talent to be able to break down very technicals concepts in a digestible way so regular people can understand them.
In my experience, the best people with that skill are very good marketers (with some technical background) who are used to work for tech companies. It's definitely a rare breed.
I took some coding lessons a few years ago so I can tell that it's not a easy thing to learn ! Wish you all the best with that.
It's indeed quite a unique skill and I believe we need more people with that skill to mend the gap between the "nerds" and the "normal" people :-)
I have wanted to automate some of my Hive routines and didn't really know how to get started. I guess the first step would be how to sent a transaction to the blockchain. I have not been able to find this information and don't really know where to start looking. Like you said....too complicated. !PIZZA
Once I find out, I will tell you lol