Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if this has much specific relation to the Mango hack, but you raise an interesting point mentioning the possibility of a developer hacking his own network (who would be more qualified to do so?) - my broader point is this: there is a lot of incentive to get these platforms up and running, and not always a lot to build them safely and even less to truly audit them. Often the developers make their money up…
> What the average Joe need to know is that DeFi, while capable of producing huge gains, also comes with a lot of risk both market-wise and protocol safety-wise. Gains have to come from somewhere. If they're not backed by something in the real world - say capital investment making some process more efficient or whatever - then the alternatives are that they're illusionary or backed by shenanigans.
Yes. Key concept. There were people in the crypto space who believed they'd invented financial perpetual motion. If you could run money through enough different transactions, you'd get a net gain without doing anything in the real world. That mostly went away when the entire crypto sector crashed. The "Line goes up" video[1] covers this mindset.