Crypto does not need to replace all financial activity. But it may be used in place of some activity, and opens up some new use cases that we did not have before. Somebody can purchase their coffee with fiat and their NFT (which may be an ENS domain) with an ERC20.
Take decentralized escrow, which underpins auctions, crowdfunds, markets, atomic swaps and more: it does not require a private third party.
Most traditional escrow are companies that will do data collection, long settlement windows, arbitrary thresholds, high take-fees, and restrictions based on locale.
A decentralized, open source, forkable, global, instant-settlement, ownerless, and feeless protocol to handle escrow of digital assets is rather novel.
ERC721 is a great example. A group of people defined an open source standard, and then a variety of clients began to support and build on top of it. It is now a multi billion dollar industry shaking up the art world.
If you think you can write a better spec for a transferable non-fungible record of ownership, like a domain name asset, that works across any EVM blockchain, go for it. It’s an open system, hence why other specs like ERC1155 exist and find traction to meet different needs.
These kinds of open source and decentralized standards and protocols is also what gave us the web. It is valuable to have a system that is built on open protocols rather than a closed and highly permissioned infrastructure.
Take decentralized escrow, which underpins auctions, crowdfunds, markets, atomic swaps and more: it does not require a private third party.
Most traditional escrow are companies that will do data collection, long settlement windows, arbitrary thresholds, high take-fees, and restrictions based on locale.
A decentralized, open source, forkable, global, instant-settlement, ownerless, and feeless protocol to handle escrow of digital assets is rather novel.