I work at Optimism and leading a defi research project. I’m at the point where I have gotten existential and wonder to myself, wtf are we building. 

Zooming out, what is the point of defi? Do we need half of these applications that offer only slight modifications to base primitives?

Strong feelings only.

Eternal optimist.
defi partnerships @optimism

Lower hanging fruit is done, innovation will come from specialists not generalists, so the likelihood of “smart generalists” coming up with the next uniswap is low.  So the only options left are the fork and improve for vast majority of founders.