One use case for blockchains I haven't seen yet: block trades.

Imagine a buyer or seller wants to transact a large amount of crypto but doesn't want to do it on an exchange because of slippage or counterparty risk. What about a decentralized facility where (a) buyers/sellers submit a request for quote (b) liquidity providers respond and (c) buyers/sellers either accept liquidity provider quote or counteroffer. Smart contract guarantees the requisite amount of coin is held by buyer/seller and liquidity provider and processes transaction if/when agreed upon. A trustless, self custody solution to block trades applicable to any onchain asset.

My thoughts on DESO vs. FOCUS:

Lets start with valuations. As of the time of this post, DESO is trading around $150 million while FOCUS is around $190 million. Those are fully diluted valuations. Many are wondering why FOCUS is trading at a premium to DESO. There are a few key differences which tell the story.

1. DESO tokens are more or less completely unlocked. However FOCUS tokens are only ~20% unlocked and will remain that way for the first year. Who owns the 20% of FOCUS tokens which are currently circulating? Early reservation holders. Individuals reserved FOCUS using DESO over a year ago and finally got access to their FOCUS tokens upon launch.
2. The core team put a floor on FOCUS in DESO terms which will remain in place at least the first year. The floor was set at an ~11% premium to where FOCUS reservation holders committed because the reserved DESO was staked and generated more DESO.
3. There is a significant liquidity difference in the automated market makers (AMMs) between DESO and FOCUS. Specifically, DESO has much more liquidity. Why does this matter? Lets say $1 million enters the ecosystem and buys DESO and then uses the DESO to buy FOCUS. If he or she is only trading vs. the AMM, then the FOCUS price will go up more on a percentage basis than DESO will because FOCUS has less liquidity. Note the same thing happens on the way down. If a FOCUS holder sells all their FOCUS and then proceeds to sell their DESO, the FOCUS price will decrease more than the DESO price. To illustrate this point, even though FOCUS is currently trading at a 35% premium to the floor, there is less than $500k USD being bid by the AMM between the floor and the current price.

Putting it all together what does this mean? The FOCUS reservation holders are the ones holding the supply. They feel comfortable holding FOCUS because they know the floor is in place and worst case they can just sell into the floor. As new money enters the ecosystem, DESO gets bid and then FOCUS gets bid. Based on (3) above, FOCUS should go up more in price than DESO. Does this imply FOCUS reservation holders should just hold FOCUS? What gives?

The answer is not necessarily. At some point the FOCUS premium will be large enough to attract FOCUS holders to start selling for DESO. Furthermore DESO holders currently earn a 20% staking yield which further incentivizes FOCUS holders to move back to DESO. There's a theta component to this whole premium game as well. After one year when more FOCUS unlocks begin and the floor is potentially removed, all bets are off. At this point, don't expect FOCUS to trade at a premium to DESO.

The objective of FOCUS holders is to maximize their DESO holdings. Are they better off holding and waiting for a potentially higher premium to DESO or taking the current premium in the market and staking? Time will tell.

I've seen quite a bit of confusion regarding the DESO and FOCUS prices and how they relate to each other so I wanted to make a post to summarize.

DESO is required to purchase FOCUS.

Imagine you're an outside fund who just discovered the ecosystem and you want to invest $1 million in FOCUS. How do you do this? First you send $1 million USDC to your wallet and purchase $1 million worth of DESO. This will increase the DESO price. Note the FOCUS price in USD will also go up (because FOCUS is based on DESO) but the FOCUS price relative to DESO will not change.

Now you use the DESO you just bought to buy FOCUS. What happens to the prices now? FOCUS price goes up in both DESO terms and USD terms. No change to the DESO price.

For the reasons outlined above, if new demand comes in and wants to buy FOCUS, there is direct buy pressure on DESO.

A helpful way to think about exposures is as follows:

*If you buy DESO and hold it, you want the price to go up. Easy.

*If you buy FOCUS and you're only interested in thinking about your FOCUS in DESO terms, then all that matters to you is the FOCUS/DESO price. This is listed directly under the FOCUS/USD price on openfund and is currently around 0.0000658.

*If you buy FOCUS and you want to think in USD terms, then you've got exposure to both DESO/USD price and FOCUS/DESO price. If DESO/USD goes up and FOCUS/DESO doesn't move, you make USD. If FOCUS/DESO goes up and DESO/USD doesn't move, you make USD. Vice versa if they fall.

Note the exact logic above applies to the OPENFUND token as well. This is precisely why the core team refers to FOCUS and OPENFUND as DESO sinks.

Total marketcap for all crypto assets is currently $3.3 trillion.

DeSo is trading at $160 million.

This represents 1 / 20,625 of the total.

If you're new to the ecosystem, keep those numbers in mind as you discover this world class blockchain and collection of apps built entirely from the ground up.

Focus is key.

Now that DeSo is trading at $20, we only have another 20x to reach a conservative fair value.

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

What is the mechanism by which coin holder royalties are distributed to coin holders on NFT sales?

Just collected my first NFTs, thanks @cloutpunk !