Shapeshift and Maker raise the stakes in the Defi.

In the same days in which in the area of the European Union we record a laughable episode that shows how this part of the world is at the margins of future changes, in other areas of the planet the competition driven by innovation raises the bar of the clash; and not by little... Let's start with a brief mention of what has happened in Europe. The European Commission has just released a four-point proposal for crypto regulation. While the proposal talks about the usual stuff, i.e. the need for trading platforms and custodial services to ascertain the identity of their users and customers (which they already do now), a member of the Commission, Mairead McGuinness, saw fit to declare in a "tweet" no less that the European Commission has decided to ban anonymous crypto wallets (i.e. practically much of the blockchain structure dedicated to this industry).

https://twitter.com/McGuinnessEU/status/1417494016741023753

Of course, there is no mention of this ambitious project in the Commission document... and I don't see how there could be!

Not even China, which also seems sometimes confused on the subject, has ever dared to declare something like this, simply because ... it is not humanly possible, unless you go to all the millions of servers scattered around the planet and turn off one by one hundreds of thousands of blockchain wallets.
Without dwelling too much on this episode that only makes us divert time and energy from serious things, the question that arises is whether this McGuinness doesn't know the difference between a wallet and a trading platform, or if her tweet has deliberately wanted to spread panic.
In both cases, the level of quality is extremely low because even if McGuinness does know what a wallet is, the kind of FUD she wanted to generate is the kind that usually pops up in the fourth-rate media.
To get at least a small benefit from this media garbage, we can use it to skim our sources of information. Any magazine or newsletter in which you'll find McGuinness's unlikely statement devoid of appropriate critical commentary should make it onto an ideal blacklist.

Instead, let's move on to the real news.

Let's start with a premise that puts our topic in proper context.
On June 9, we had reported on a seminal paper from the Great Reset (World Economic Forum) on Defi (decentralized financing by blockchain).
A key Great Reset (World Economic Forum) paper on Defi defines the guidelines that states and financial authorities should follow to regulate financial decentralization triggered by blockchain. Having put all the cards on the table - rules, regulations, proposals and guidance covering the entire sector - and leaving no room for doubt or uncertainty, there would be no need to spread ambiguity in the media anymore, as by now the Defi was a fait accompli, precisely defined and fully regulated by the document.
Simply, states can choose to abide or not to abide by this objective instrument; therefore any further spreading of inaccuracies and fake news would have been residual. A completely useless rearguard behavior.
Obviously we have to put the above European affair in the category of these residual incidents without any importance.

Shapeshift and Maker

photo by @jarosphoto on Unsplash. Released under Unsplash License

Quite different instead is the story that concerns Shapeshift and Maker, just in the light of that fundamental document. The authors of the document had already declared the limits of the possibilities of a government to regulate the Defi sector.
If in fact it is easy to intervene with the force of law in the initial phases of a Defi project, since the creators and producers are well known and identifiable, once the project is on the net, it becomes property of all individuals on earth and therefore has no legal "responsible" on which to put pressure or to legally avail itself.
Well, the two creators of centralized exchanges and services, Shapeshift and Maker, have taken their word for it and raised the level of confrontation with regulators just as the WEF paper predicted.
The case of Shapeshift is particularly emblematic.
Founded in 2014, Shapeshift anonymously connected crypto buyers and sellers, until in 2018 the SEC ordered the Company to ascertain the identity of its users.
Needless to say, the Company lost 90% of its traffic and almost went bankrupt, barely surviving until today.

These days, however, the company has decided to give us a break, dissolving as a legal entity and decentralizing its platform in a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) without offices, bank accounts, staff, etc..
The platform therefore continues to function for users who access it without having to open an account, while developers continue to work on it with the prospect of being paid in the form of FOX tokens, the new currency created to incentivize use by users (FOX allows for a return on platform transactions).
In this way, if the number of users grows, the value of FOX will increase and developers will be incentivized to work, while if the thing is not successful, it will shut itself down. This is a drastic decision, but one that is in line with the very concept of a decentralized service.
Without the possibility of bank loans and government incentives of some kind, everything goes into the hands of the users. They will decide the fate of the service.
Rune Christensen, founder of Maker Dao, explains it well after making exactly the same move as Shapeshift, shutting down the company and completely decentralizing its Defi protocol. From now on, Christensen explains, the fate of the protocol will be "determined by the thousands, if not millions, of enthusiastic members of our community."

Conclusions

The choice of two of the most famous entities in the industry is therefore a complete novelty, since today's decentralized blockchain landscape is dominated by larger entities that, while offering a decentralized service, do some user identity verification and smaller entities that offer a completely anonymous service, but are expected to introduce user verification as they become "big."
Shapeshift and Maker Dao, on the other hand, have decided to offer anonymity (true anonymity) to their very large number of users (especially Maker Dao), bringing the idea of anonymity out of the almost "amateur" realm to which it had been confined until now.
Now any global regulatory authority is challenged to test what the WEF paper fears, i.e. the impotence of governments to take on a 100% decentralized service used by a sufficiently large mass of users.
As I said, the bar of confrontation has been set just a little higher these days. We will be watching developments closely.

The Cryptosniperz Team

DISCLAIMER

We are not giving any financial advice regarding cryptocurrencies, but rather giving applicable advice for new, intermediate and experienced people who are currently into cryptocurrencies or someone who is just now realizing what it is. Before you read this I must say that this blog will be based on the assumption that you have already done some research on cryptocurrencies and the Blockchain ecosystem. We will continue to provide explanations and details to the best of our ability, however we encourage you to do your OWN research because only YOU will know how this second financial revolution will best fit into your life. Thank you for reading our contents.