Aug 1, 2022 1 min read

What I read this week (week of 07/25/2022)

When OpenSea launched, the marketplace only offered NFTs created on the Ethereum blockchain. In going all-in on Ethereum, OpenSea was caught flat-footed by the rise of Solana, a newer blockchain that used a faster and more cost-efficient verification mechanism than Ethereum. Buying an NFT on Ethereum can rack up hundreds of dollars in processing fees, while purchasing NFTs on Solana costs pennies to process. It became apparent to Lu, the CEO of Magic Eden, that there was a big box of treasure sitting right underneath OpenSea’s nose.
Still quite a series of challenges, every growing new challenges are happening on he platform, for example, the Balloonsville incident. But the founding team had demonstrated real empathy - They refunded buyers and shut down Launchpad for three weeks to revamp the vetting process, referring artists to competing marketplaces during that period.

The 2009 Durbin Amendment had a side effect – limited what the big bank can do for their client, and have to offer all kinds of services that feeling like traps to users - overdraft fee, enforced minimum balances, etc. This gave fintech firm a route to standout.
Fintech firm typically work together with small banks – a win-win situation for both parties, given how difficulty to gain a new bank license.
Fintech firm has have to deal with the older protocol to integrate small banks' systems, which most early fintechs found themselves spending up to two years—and millions of dollars—just building connections into their partner banks’ legacy infrastructure.
This gave some infrastructure as a service players an opportunity to become the basic lego pieces in the fintech stack.

Though some of the protocol are based on HTTP/2, and it was a natural step to take the technology forward, though that’s not to say that either one is better. There are pros and cons to both options, and your specific choice should be in line with your needs.
There remains a heated debate in the technology industry as to whether companies should build a GraphQL API alongside an existing REST API or whether it should be a complete replacement. If you’re ever looking to stir up some controversy among developers, this is a good way to do it.

Seattle