A Cautionary Tale for Crypto: Previous Olympic Host Cities
Cities spend 10+ billion dollars on infrastructure to host The Olympics, but what happens when the spectacle is over? Will web3 public goods also become ghost towns when speculators leave?
Sarajevo, 1984. Fans line the stands and cheer as athletes bobsled through the chutes as they race for a place on the podium. Cameras capture the moment in vivid detail as the sleds reach speeds upwards of 90 mph on the newly minted course.
Of course… things change decades later. Most of these facilities are single use with no future plans once the spectacle is over. Below, a picture of the course after nearly 4 decades of neglect.
Sarajevo is not alone in this fate. The abandonment of post-Olympics infrasture is well documented. Despite the enormous cost and precision engineering, lack of long-term planning turns these investments into canvases for vandalism, rust, and decay.
What does this have to do with crypto and web3?
We have witnessed and incredible amount of building during the 2018-2019 bear market, which served as the infrastructure that capulted the DeFi Summer 2020 and NFT Summer 2021 spectacles. Fortunes were won and lost as speculators chased for their own place on the podiums.
The infrastructure that was created during this boom cycle was impressive. decentralized exchanges (DEXs), oracles, lending protocoles, synthetic assets, etc. And not just one protocol for each category. Dozens. Hundreds? How else would you host a spectacle the was larger and lasted longer than the Olympics?
But what happens when the speculators go away? What happens to all that engineering effort that built these products and protocols. According to one site, over 2,000 scam or abandon projects exist since Bitcoin launched. That’s a non-trivial amount. And while another 8,000 may technically still be alive, the next bear market cycle may see 1/4 to 1/2 go away.
Like all software, there’s a life cycle to every project. However, many crypto/web3 projects become so focused on the short-term cash grab of the current cycle that they have no plan to exist when the cameras turn away.
What’s left looks like this.
The main projects will likely have staying power. However, those without plans on how to persist when there are no fans to cheer them on, will find themselves without the funds nor a viable business model to support the upkeep.
A Cautionary Tale for Crypto: Previous Olympic Host Cities
Nice to see someone put some things into context -- dying projects and losing money isn't something native to crytpo! Not at all. It's splattered throughout history.