Investment Thesis
Protocol-level investments and new financial primitives. Open-source money, programmable economics, governance, mechanism design.
What Excites Them
Novel mechanism design, protocol-level innovation, governance experiments, new economic primitives
What They Pass On
Forks without innovation, governance theater, projects that could work without a token
How to Pitch
Fred values strong technical teams with novel mechanism design. Show how your protocol creates new economic primitives.
Key Frameworks
Governance Minimization
Best protocols reduce governance surface area over time, becoming more credibly neutral
Composability as Moat
Protocols that are most composable become the hardest to displace
Notable Writing
NFTs enable direct creator-fan economic relationships
Breaking down DeFi infrastructure layers
How projects should think about distributing tokens
Best protocols minimize governance over time
Blockchains enable open markets for AI training data and models.
Protocol treasuries and grants are the future of blockchain development funding.
Developer tooling adoption is the best leading indicator for blockchain ecosystem health.
Virtual worlds need digital scarcity and ownership that only blockchains can provide.
Podcast Appearances
Key Quotes
“Developer tooling adoption is the best leading indicator for ecosystem health.”
— Medium
“The goal of governance should be to make itself unnecessary over time.”
— Blog
“NFTs are the Lego blocks of the ownership economy.”
— Blog
Background
Co-founder of Paradigm. Co-founder of Coinbase. Former Goldman Sachs trader. Duke CS.