How to use the "aggregation of three elements" to allow DeFi protocols to capture value
Editor's Note: This article comes fromGolden Finance, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
Editor's Note: This article comes from
Golden Finance
Golden Finance
, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
An aggregation platform is such a platform that can form a direct relationship with users, can provide users with services at zero marginal cost, and reduce user acquisition costs through a virtuous circle between supply and demand. This dynamic can create incredible network effects, resulting in a winner-take-all situation, and for those winners, the accumulation of trillions of dollars in enormous value.
Almost all online activities in today’s society are supported by corresponding aggregation platforms. For example, you can find the most popular TV shows on video aggregation service providers like Netflix; you can also buy them on product aggregation platforms like Amazon. All kinds of consumer goods; and when you want to travel, you can find a vehicle through a vehicle aggregation platform like Uber.
Unsurprisingly, some decentralized finance (DeFi) projects have also begun to move towards aggregation platforms. The decentralized financial aggregation platform is currently providing many useful services to the market, such as: the revenue optimizer can automatically balance the user's deposit income according to the interest rates of different decentralized financial platforms; intelligent order routing can provide traders with the most Good pricing execution; meta assets are trying to integrate other assets (such as USD stablecoins), thereby reducing the unsystematic risk of any independent entity. This series of actions shows that the development of the decentralized financial industry in the direction of aggregation has become a future trend. The interface is "packaging" all decentralized financial products into a more user-friendly application, so that they can Access more high-end features or portfolio management tools. Most importantly, these projects can aggregate user needs and then filter them through different decentralized financial protocols. Although it is still early days, more and more users and funds are starting to flow to decentralized finance.
However, some people can’t help but wonder, can users capture value while decentralized finance provides value to users? Can decentralized financial aggregation platforms become value siphon giants? Here I have to mention the "three elements required to become an aggregator" proposed by Ben Thompson. These three elements are: 1. Can you establish a direct relationship with users? 2. Can it serve users with zero marginal cost? 3. Can the need to reduce customer acquisition costs drive multilateral networks?
In the face of the above three elements, the decentralized financial aggregation platform must be carefully evaluated, especially the last element, which means that when users come to the aggregation platform, the platform needs to become very attractive, at least allowing Decentralized financial service providers join and are eager to get more value from it, which can attract more users to enter the market, and can effectively reduce customer acquisition costs, because users will be actively attracted to the platform in this cycle , and previous users and decentralized financial service providers have provided a lot of value on the platform. In this case, the decentralized financial service providers (which form the basis of the lending protocol) are open-sourced, so each aggregator has one-time access to all services. Not only that, when a new user is attracted to the decentralized financial aggregation platform yearn, they only need to simply deposit funds, and then they can find the decentralized financial service provider that can provide the highest yield. While this is great, it doesn't seem to make yearn more valuable to the next person, the protocol foundation itself is evolving to have better network effects, but it doesn't make yearn itself Better results, and it doesn't cost them less to acquire the next customer. Therefore, if decentralized finance does not have the above three elements, then the so-called "decentralized financial aggregation platform" is not actually a real aggregation platform, and it will be difficult to capture the value created by itself.
So, what does a decentralized financial aggregation platform mean if it is not a true aggregation platform? You must know that in the field of decentralized finance, the loyalty of users to aggregation platforms is not high. Not only that, decentralized financial aggregation platforms do not have network effects, and there is only one goal for employing capital, which is to earn the most money. Not only that, since the decentralized financial aggregation platform does not own user data and operates on an open database, the cost of user switching is almost zero, which means that even if the platform can provide the best service, users can easily Therefore, the decentralized financial aggregation platform itself also has certain inherent defects. And for those decentralized financial aggregation platforms that want to capture more value than acquire users, they may provide users with worse services, and of course doing so will also cause a large number of users to leave.
At this stage, the encryption industry is developing at an extremely fast pace, and few decentralized financial projects can become a continuous industry theme. All these fluctuations can have a dramatic impact on market infrastructure, so it will make it difficult for the development of decentralized financial infrastructure to catch up with the development of the market, and many people who work full-time in the field of decentralized financial infrastructure also realize that the difficulty is not small . Not only that, but these variables are constantly changing, making it increasingly difficult to know the correct answers to these questions. Therefore, the emergence of the decentralized financial aggregation platform at this time seems to be at the right time. Users don’t have to worry about which decentralized financial platform is the most suitable, which platform can ensure the best benefits in the entire ecosystem, and the aggregation platform can automatically find the most suitable one. investment targets.
Here comes the most important question, how should the decentralized financial aggregation platform use the three elements to capture value? Will it become a real-world industry monopoly giant like Amazon and Uber?
