1/ @placeholdervc has always encouraged networks allowing people to earn the majority of a native cryptoasset, but liquidity mining has become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
2/ Speaking with a team recently that’s building on a newer layer-1, they asked us if we, as an institution, *wouldn’t* stake.

Stating that in their ecosystem investors are foaming at the mouth to liquidity mine, but it’s clear those investors are short-term oriented.
3/ As @jmonegro has analogized, you wouldn’t take dividends from a company at the Series B stage, so why are we encouraging institutional investors to sap early rewards from the broader community?
4/ Early-on, people I respect encouraged this type of mining, and this is no swipe at them.

I believe they did it out of good intention, and experiments should be run, then learned from.

As is predictable at this stage of the market, the opportunists have perverted the idea.
6/ As an early-stage investor, we help fund, design, and navigate the nascent stages of a network.

We are a partner to the entrepreneurs.

But we know our role is as a 3-10 year placeholder, that should get diluted, eventually ceding our place to others.
7/ If your liquidity mining strategy is full of institutional investors to pump your numbers, then you’re missing the point.
8/ The dream here is for the everyday person to earn their wages, and store their capital, in cryptonetworks.

But that requires limiting how extractive a large player can be with their capital.

Mechanism design needs more work here.
8/ Once a network is live, reward labor & consumers, not capital.
9/ @cjremus @ChainflowPOS is focused on lowering institutional extraction, and I know there are many other efforts (feel free to add them here).

Values over value.
You can follow @cburniske.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: