Flare Finance Arbitrage Tool (or why I'm bullish on FLR but lukewarm about FF)

[Seoulite]

Recently the Flare Community youtube channel posted a video about a new arbitrage tool for Flare Finance.

One of the criticisms of Flare and Defi more generally from people on XRP chat is that it is just moving useless tokens around. And I gotta say watching this video that is exactly what it looks like. Set aside what an absolute nightmare this thing seems to be from a tax point of view (god help you Americans) and just looking at it, I am left thinking: what's the point? What purpose is this serving? Genuine questions here. I can imagine later on if there are lots of DeFi services on Flare Finance then the liquidity from these kinds of swaps would be useful, but right now, what purpose does it serve?

As a broader point, I am not a fan of the marketing angle that FF is taking with all this samurai stuff. IMO it depicts crypto as a bunch of tech geeks playing with numbers. I get the purpose is to the increase hype and engagement before the launch but personally I just don't like the image it puts across. Will normies want to be trusting their money to samurais and cryptokitties? (Aside: thank god 'Sparktan' didn't take off in a big way) I think that kind of stuff is fine for Doge coin or even BTC (you can't use it for anything anyway) but for projects that actually want to gain legitimacy and actually appeal to retail, I don't like it.

What do you guys think?

[brianwalden]

I'll play devil's advocate for purposes of discussion. In reality I don't have strong opinions, I'm waiting to see how this all plays out. Also, I didn't watch the video (sorry, I'm that guy), so I could have no idea what I'm talking about.

I hate to break it to you, but even a decade into the cryptocurrency era, 90% of it is just swapping useless coins around. The practical use just isn't there yet, for a number of reasons. What I find so interesting about DeFi is that it gives you the option to not just swap useless coins around. The biggest draw is the passive income aspect of it. You park your coins in a certain product and just let them sit there and earn money.

About the arbitrage thing, it's a necessary part of the market, it keeps prices tight and consistent across trading platforms. In the long run, that's good for people who are exchanging money to make a payment or some other real-world use. The people who are swapping around constantly are basically day traders, they're willing to pay the short term capital gains in order to make lots of little profits throughout the day. Also, the value of things in the beta test aren't realistic. The programmers aren't trying to model the actual profits you can earn. They're trying to test out what will happen in various situations, like if a whale decides to drain all the liquidity out of one side of a pool or something like that. I don't think you'll have the crazy trading opportunities in real life.

Penultimately (sorry I just wanted to use that word), I counter your samurais with the staid and professional marketing of UniSwap. Honestly at this point, cryptocurrency as a whole is mostly tech geeks playing with numbers. Even Elon Musk fits that description (ok, he plays with rockets, not just numbers). Crypto may feel old to us, but it's still a very, very new space. We're a long way away from hordes of normies putting their savings account into a liquidity pool. When the Fidelities and Vanguards of the world start offering these types of products, you'll get the professionalism.

Lastly, Flare Finance is just a set of applications built in top of the Flare Network. Someone else can, and I'm sure will, build their own set of DeFi products on the network. For every UniSwap, there's a PancakeSwap and SushiSwap.

[Seoulite]

9 hours ago, brianwalden said:

The biggest draw is the passive income aspect of it. You park your coins in a certain product and just let them sit there and earn money.

I agree, I think the whole focus of crypto will now start to shift away from moonshot speculation to passive income. Societal conditions like zero interest rates and sky high stock / real estate prices make it very attractive.

9 hours ago, brianwalden said:

About the arbitrage thing, it's a necessary part of the market, it keeps prices tight and consistent across trading platforms. In the long run, that's good for people who are exchanging money to make a payment or some other real-world use.

I get that, but I think what makes me uncomfortable is the fact that this is coming out first. As if the main priority is facilitating moving tokens around.

9 hours ago, brianwalden said:

When the Fidelities and Vanguards of the world start offering these types of products, you'll get the professionalism.

I think the professionalism can come sooner than that, but I agree we are a long way from normies putting money in liquidity pools.

9 hours ago, brianwalden said:

Lastly, Flare Finance is just a set of applications built in top of the Flare Network. Someone else can, and I'm sure will, build their own set of DeFi products on the network. For every UniSwap, there's a PancakeSwap and SushiSwap.

Right but Flare Finance seems to be sucking up a lot of bandwidth. Also a fair number of people think that Flare and Flare Finance are the same thing. Wonder if Flare had to give permission for them to use the name, and I wonder if they are regretting it now.

[Pablo]

On 3/4/2021 at 9:05 AM, Seoulite said:

As a broader point, I am not a fan of the marketing angle that FF is taking with all this samurai stuff. IMO it depicts crypto as a bunch of tech geeks playing with numbers.

Once this space grows to reach critical mass, platforms can rebrand easily. Even blue chip companies rebrand over their lifetimes. The only question needs to be: "is the marketing effective"? A lot of companies are desperate to tap into the youth market because banks are losing market share to platforms that are marketed in similar zany ways.

It's well known that preferences for financial service providers are developed early in life - as people get older, they tend to stay with providers they've had for many years. And within a decade or so, we'll see DeFi platforms providing full suites of lending and financial products so I say "get 'em young!"

I actually wouldn't be surprised if "Sparktans" becomes a key part of the brand, maybe polished and refined over time to look more "professional". Here's the other extreme - this site is really very dull: https://spartancapital.com/

[BillyOckham]

9 minutes ago, Pablo said:

It's well known that preferences for financial service providers are developed early in life - as people get older, they tend to stay with providers they've had for many years.

I think that may be changing and may no longer be true.  I recall a few years ago a banking executive saying that every product is now just one click away and brand loyalty will need to be earnt daily.

But I agree with your general point about rebranding always being an option.

I wait with interest to see how this all evolves.

[Seoulite]

38 minutes ago, Pablo said:

I actually wouldn't be surprised if "Sparktans" becomes a key part of the brand,

I concede your other points but I just can't get on board with Sparktans from a poetic standpoint. It's just ugly. 

Sparkies. Sparklers. Flare Fans. Flarers. There's got to be something better.

[brianwalden]

On that note, it bugs me that they call it spark but the symbol is FLR.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, brianwalden said:

On that note, it bugs me that they call it spark but the symbol is FLR.

Flare the company has a blockchain called Coston, with a token that is called Spark but is represented by the symbol FLR

I wonder if they wanted to avoid the issue Ripple had with the confusion around Ripple the company and Ripple the token in the early years, and ended up in the other extreme end.

[brianwalden]

26 minutes ago, Ripley said:

Flare the company has a blockchain called Coston, with a token that is called Spark but is represented by the symbol FLR

I wonder if they wanted to avoid the issue Ripple had with the confusion around Ripple the company and Ripple the token in the early years, and ended up in the other extreme end.

In fairness, I think Coston is just their test network name. I assume the main one will be called Flare just like Ethereum's main net is the Ethereum network and the testnet is Ropsten.

Personally, I call FLR flares, it just works better in my brain than spark.

[Seoulite]

13 hours ago, brianwalden said:

On that note, it bugs me that they call it spark but the symbol is FLR.

They wanted to be clever with the whole 'sparks' make 'flares' thing I think. But yeah, just call the damn token the Flare token.