网帖翻译

Down the rabbit hole

掉进兔子洞

The beguiling promise of decentralised finance

去中心化金融的诱人前景

And its many perils

但也存在诸多风险

The sceptics have plenty of fodder. The earliest adopters of bitcoin, the original cryptocurrency, used it to buy drugs, while cyber-hackers now demand their ransom in it. Hundreds of millions of dollars of ether, another digital money, were stolen this year after hackers found a bug in some code. Many “believers” are in reality trying to get rich quick from the global mania that has seen the value of crypto assets reach $2.2trn. Others are freakishly devoted. The entrepreneur who announced in June that El Salvador was adopting bitcoin as an official currency sobbed on stage, claiming it would save the nation.

质疑者的理由很充分。比特币作为原始加密货币最初被用于购买毒品，现在网络黑客勒索比特币赎金。今年，价值数亿美元的另一种数字货币以太币被盗，原因是黑客发现一个代码漏洞。许多“信徒”其实想在这股全球热潮中快速暴富，加密资产的总值已达2.2万亿美元。也有极度虔诚的信徒，萨尔瓦多的那名商人在6月份宣布将比特币作为该国的法定货币，他在台上抽噎着说这将拯救这个国家。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The crooks, fools and proselytizers are off-putting. Nevertheless, the rise of an ecosystem of financial services, known as decentralised finance, or “DeFi”, deserves sober consideration. It has the potential to rewire how the financial system works, with all the promise and perils that entails. The proliferation of innovation in DeFi is akin to the frenzy of invention in the early phase of the web. At a time when people live ever more of their lives online, the crypto-revolution could even remake the architecture of the digital economy.

骗子、蠢货、说客令人厌恶，但去中心化金融（DeFi）这种金融服务生态系统的兴起值得深思，它有可能改变金融系统的运作方式，并由此带来机遇和风险。去中心化金融的井喷式创新类似互联网发展初期的创新热潮。在一个生活日益网络化的时代，加密革命甚至可能重塑数字化经济的架构。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

DeFi is one of three tech trends disrupting finance. Tech “platform” firms are muscling in on payments and banks. Governments are launching digital currencies, or govcoins. DeFi offers an alternative path which aims to spread power, not concentrate it. To understand how, start with blockchains, vast networks of computers that keep an open, incorruptible common record and upxe it without the need for a central authority.

去中心化金融是颠覆金融领域的三大技术潮流之一。科技“平台”企业正在强行介入支付和银行领域，各国政府正在发行数字货币或政府数字币。去中心化金融提供了另一条道路，旨在分散而非集中权力。要想明白原因，先从区块链说起，庞大的计算机网络维护一个公开、防篡改的共享账本，数据更新无需中央当局的干预。

Bitcoin, the first big blockchain, created in 2009, is now a distraction. Instead, Ethereum, a blockchain network created in 2015, upon which most DeFi applications are built, is reaching critical mass. Its developers view finance as a juicy target. Conventional banking requires a huge infrastructure to maintain trust between strangers, from clearing houses and compliance to capital rules and courts. It is expensive and often captured by insiders: think of credit-card fees and bankers’ yachts. By contrast, transactions on a blockchain are trustworthy, cheap, transparent and quick—at least in theory.

诞生于2009年的第一种大区块链比特币已荣光不再，而创办于2015年的区块链网络平台以太坊正在达到临界质量，去中心化金融的大部分应用都以它为基础，以太坊的开发人员将金融领域视为诱人目标。传统银行业需要大型基础设施通过票据交换所、遵守资本规章和法庭来维系陌生人之间的信任。昂贵的交易费用往往被内部人士攫取：想想信用卡费用和银行家的游艇。相比之下，区块链上的交易具有可靠、费用低、透明、速度快的特点，至少理论上是这样。

Although the terminology is intimidating (fees are “gas”; the main currency is ether, and title deeds over digital assets are known as nfts), the basic activities taking place on DeFi are familiar. These include trading on exchanges and issuing loans and taking deposits through self-executing agreements called smart contracts. One yardstick of activity is the value of digital instruments being used as collateral: from almost nothing in early 2018 it has reached $90bn. Another is the value of transactions that Ethereum is verifying. In the second quarter this reached $2.5trn, around the same sum as Visa processes and equivalent to a sixth of the activity on Nasdaq, a stock exchange.

尽管术语令人望而生畏（费用叫做“矿工费”；主要货币叫做以太币；所有权契约叫做不可替代代币），但去中心化金融上的基本活动都是我们所熟悉的，包括交易所交易、放贷、通过被称为智能合约的自动执行协议吸收存款。活动的一个衡量标准是被用作抵押的数字化工具的价值：从2018年初的接近于零达到目前的900亿美元。另一个衡量标准是以太坊验证交易的价值，第二季度的交易量高达2.5万亿美元，几乎与VISA持平，相当于纳斯达克证券交易所的六分之一。

The dream of a low-friction financial system is just the beginning. DeFi is spreading to more ambitious terrain. MetaMask, a DeFi wallet with more than 10m users, acts as a digital identity. To enter a decentralised “metaverse”, a looking-glass world with shops run by its users, you lix your wallet to a cartoonish avatar who roams around. These digital worlds will become the subject of intensifying competition as more spending shifts online. Big tech firms could impose huge taxes on these mini-economies: imagine Apple’s App Store charging fees, or Facebook selling your avatar’s intimate secrets. A better alternative might be decentralised networks that host applications and are run mutually by users. DeFi could provide payments and property rights.

建立“低摩擦”金融系统的梦想只是个开端，去中心化金融正在向更具雄心的领域迈进。去中心化金融钱包MetaMask可充当数字身份，现有一千多万用户。要想进入一个去中心化“元宇宙”，你需要将MetaMask钱包与一个四处游荡的卡通角色绑定在一起，用户在这个镜像世界里经营自己的商店。随着线上支付的日益增多，这些数字化世界将成为激烈竞争的对象。大型科技企业可以从这些小微经济体中获取巨额税收：想象一下苹果应用商店收取费用，或者“脸谱网”出售你的角色隐私。更好的选择可能是承载各种应用、由用户共同运营的去中心化网络平台，去中心化金融可以提供支付和产权。

Crypto-enthusiasts see a Utopia. But there is a long way to go before DeFi is as reliable as, say, JPMorgan Chase or PayPal. Some problems are prosaic. A common criticism is that blockchain platforms do not scale easily and that the computers they harness consume wasteful amounts of electricity. But Ethereum is a self-improvement machine. When it is in high demand the fees it charges for verification can climb, encouraging developers to work on minimising the intensity with which they use it. There will be new versions of Ethereum; other, better blockchains could one day replace it.

加密爱好者看见了乌托邦，但要想让去中心化金融像摩根大通和贝宝那样可靠，还有很长的路要走。有些问题是老生常谈，饱受诟病的是区块链平台不易扩大规模，它们使用的计算机造成巨大的电力浪费。但以太坊是一部自我完善的机器，当需求量大时，验证交易的手续费将上涨，鼓励开发人员尽量减少以太坊的使用强度。未来将出现新版本的以太坊；总有一天它会被其他更好的区块链所取代。

Yet DeFi also raises questions about how a virtual economy with its own norms interacts with the real world. One worry is the lack of an external anchor of value. Cryptocurrencies are no different from the dollar, in that they rely on people having a shared expectation of their utility. However, conventional money is also backed by states with a monopoly on force and central banks that are lenders of last resort. Without these, DeFi will be vulnerable to panics. Contract enforcement outside the virtual world is also a concern. A blockchain contract may say you own a house but only the police can enforce an eviction.

但是，去中心化金融也存在这样的问题，即拥有自身标准的虚拟经济如何与现实世界互动。一个担忧是在外部世界缺少价值支柱，加密货币与美元没什么不同，它们都有赖于人们对货币实用性的共同期待。但是，传统货币还受到政府的支持，政府垄断着军队和充当最后贷款人的中央银行。如果没有这些，去中心化金融容易引起恐慌。虚拟世界外部的合约执行也是个问题，区块链合约可能显示你拥有一座房产，但只有警察才有权执行驱逐令。

Governance and accountability in DeFi-land are rudimentary. A sequence of large irrevocable transactions that humans cannot override could be dangerous, especially as coding errors are inevitable. Money-laundering has thrived in the ungoverned grey zone of services lying between Ethereum and the banking system. Despite the claims of decentralisation, some programmers and app owners hold disproportionate sway over the DeFi system. And a malign actor could even gain control over a majority of the computers that run a blockchain.

去中心化金融领域的监管与责任尚不完善。一连串人类无法撤销的大宗交易可能很危险，尤其是代码错误是难以避免的。在以太坊和银行系统之间不受监管的灰色服务地带，洗钱活动已变得猖獗。虽然说是去中心化，但一些编程人员和应用程序的所有者对去中心化金融系统的影响力过大。另外，运行区块链的大部分计算机甚至可能被恶意参与者控制。

Alice’s adventures in DeFi-land

爱丽丝梦游去中心化金融仙境

Digital libertarians would prefer that DeFi remain autonomous—imperfect but pure. Yet to succeed it must integrate with the conventional financial and legal systems, as Gary Gensler, a crypto-expert who is America’s financial watchdog, has outlined. Many DeFi applications are run by decentralised organisations which vote on some issues; these bodies should become subject to laws and regulations. The Bank for International Settlements, a club for central banks, has suggested that govcoins might be used in DeFi apps, providing stability.

数字自由论者希望让去中心化金融保持自主性，虽不完善但很纯净。然而，去中心化金融必须与传统的金融和司法系统相结合才能取得成功，美国金融监察人士、加密专家格雷·金斯勒说道。去中心化金融的许多应用由去中心化组织运营，它们在一些问题上有投票权；这些机构应该遵守法律法规。有“中央银行俱乐部”之称的国际清算银行指出，去中心化金融的应用程序可以使用政府数字币，从而提供稳定性。

Finance is entering a new era in which the three novel but flawed visions of tech platforms, big government and DeFi will compete and intermingle. Each embodies a technical architecture and an ideology about how the economy should be run. As with the internet in the 1990s, no one knows where the revolution will end. But it stands to transform how money works and, as it does so, the entire digital world.

金融正在迈入一个新时代，科技平台、大政府、去中心化金融这三个存在缺陷的新兴领域将彼此竞争和并存。每一种都体现出某种技术架构和关于经济运行方式的意识形态。正如上世纪90年代的互联网，没有人知道这场革命将何时结束，但很可能改变货币的运作方式，也将改变整个数字化世界。