During the Ethereal Summit event held these days in Tel Aviv, among the various participants there was also Vitalik Buterin, the man behind the Ethereum blockchain, who expressed his views on topics such as Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings).
The peak of funds raised through ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) took place in 2017, however, also due to the fact that many of them turned out to be scams, the phenomenon suffered a setback and now there is more talk of IEOs (Initial Exchange Offerings).
Precisely with regard to ICOs, Vitalik Buterin proposed a different approach to use and creation by suggesting a sort of smart contract in which the users commit their tokens to the project. The system would be designed to prevent the ICO creators from disappearing with the funds.
Vitalik Buterin, as mentioned by CryptoPotato, said:
“What this is a spin on the ICO idea that I had one and a half years ago. So the idea is instead of projects having ICOs where people will just send them the money, and they, well, go away, you have a scheme where people put their tokens into a smart contract. The developers don’t just have access to the tokens, they can’t take them. Instead what happens is the money gets put in Compound, or some other interesting thing […] and then the interest goes to the developers.”
Such a system would allow the user to earn interest on the tokens that the user stakes in the smart contract.
Obviously, everything is part of a broader vision of what is now called Decentralised Finance (DeFi): using the blockchain allows all people in the world to have access to financial instruments.
“I’m very excited about that DeFi offers in principal. The idea that anyone, anywhere in the world can just have access to a system that lets them pay each other […] and basically lets them choose their own financial exposure is very powerful to me. That’s something that a lot of people just don’t have access to”, explained Buterin.
