Varian Rule in Crypto
Proof of Track 2025-03-17
Varian Rule
Saw this tweet from Jason, it says: everyone will have everything that the rich has. It is a pretty cool hook for thinking about next things to build.
Actually i saw this concept before ETHDenver, but cannot recall it, then asked AI. AI tells me it’s trickle-down theory, or diffusion of innovations theory. It’s actually Varian Rule in the original post.
Whatever you call it, it’s basically about the adoption of product from the rich to everyone.
Besides these examples, we can think of:
Private driver -> autonomous cars
Personal assistant -> AI agents
Personal shopper - Food delivery apps
So how do we think about it in crypto sense?
Crypto Things Followed Varian Rule
Crypto culture is based on individual fighting against the “old money” rich, so a lot of the tech are built for everyone to use in the first place.
Some sectors that are born to be used by everyone:
Private banking -> DeFi
Private asset management -> Wallets
Privacy protocols (money laundering services) -> Tornado Cash
Also, we can come up with the ones, that are used to be controlled by the rich, now everyone can do it.
Asset creation -> Pump.Fun, flaunch.gg, Pump.AI (putting it here cause it’s ORA’s ecosystem project)
Launching a token and adding liquidity (this is the most troublesome part) are hard for normies, especially when you cannot take out thousands of dollars just to test out the LP pool creation.
Now you can just launch token on these meme launchpads then snipe, then become your own manipulator.
Liquid staking
Setting up a node requires technical knowledge and 32 ETH.
Now you can just swap or deposit your ETH into liquid staking tokens, then enjoy auto yield and some extra restaking reward.
Network creation -> Caldera, Conduit, Gelato
Once upon the time, to build a layer 2, you need to hire a 150 eng team. And what they do is they just fork the obsolete version of Optimism codebase…
Now, with all these rollup as a service companies, anyone can create a L2, or L3, or anything. Just need to enter your credit card info and pay for subscription of your chain.
Opportunities are still there, cause there’s no RaaS for SVM rollups or L1s (only framework)?
(for somehow, i think of Dune’s booth in ETHDenver. They will ask you what chain they do not support, and usually you get it wrong. So many chains right now..)
Crypto Things Will Follow Varian Rule
Let’s do some predictions now. What things rich crypto guys are using? List them all:
Institutional investment / custody / VCs…
It’s hard for people to participate in primary market for a few years. Back to the very beginning, it’s actually easier with the booming ICOs.
Now we are seeing the trend that projects releasing NFTs and giving out primary market allocation thru echo.xyz, or even pump.fun is a kind of primary market opportunity.
Assistant
Rich people or KOLs usually do those campaigns that you finish certain tasks to get a reward of something. Then their human assistant will help distribute tokens to wallet addresses in their dm.
This kind of bounty payout or personal tasks can definitely be managed by AI agents (like opAgent), intent-based systems (like intent engine) in for everyone. Or they can just use disperse.app, but they just don’t have that demand at the first place?
Expensive NFTs & Exclusive DAOs
People definitely can not afford expensive CryptoPunks or some pass to exclusive DAOs (until they are still exclusive).
But this one’s tricky. If anyone can get it, are they still valuable?
DeSci (like longevity)
Contributing to DeSci is likely to be the most vaporwave concept lol, since they are slow in progress and hard to build actual outcome. Everyone in crypto want quick incentive.
To make it accessible, a possible approach may be having a prediction market for them, cause it will be retaining DeSci’s science nature (not launching a shitcoin, but putting “prediction” into it), and make it a profitable market.
Running Node
I know a lot of retails run node for farming airdrop, but it’s still a kind of high end thing. We need to enable more light nodes that can be run inside cell phone, so that everyone can get to use blockchains or networks more trustlessly.
Bots (MEV bots, Market Making bots, …)
Running bots is also a very exclusive thing. Only devs, only people that risk their fund to test in production.
To adapt it, maybe instead of having people run them, have the access of Bots shared with TEE session just like teleport.best?
Launch own Launchpad / protocol / strategy
Extending the concept of launchpad of everything, we may also need things like: launchpad launchpad, amm launchpad, defi launchpad…
For the strategy part, you can see now many open source AI quant strategy coming out (qlib, openbb). People can and will run it.
ETF / stable coin
ETF and stable coin are also exclusive because people only buy in if they are launched by high profile entities.
Well right now, a lot of traders only do copy-trade to KOLs or smart money. These KOLs or smart money can launch their own ETF or stable coin that gives yield with their return to attract more people to enter permissionly (if they don’t do private group chats, or paid communities)..
Crypto Cards
Previously, you need to stake to get crypto cards like crypto.com card. It takes around $400 of investment. It’s actually pretty strict.
I see now cards like bybit card basically allows anyone to get it. And one can get multiple with their different ID documents (id card, passport…)
Ending
These are the things i can think of.
Again, not as many as web2 world, because everything in web3 is built for everyone in the first place.
However, varian rule always work if ideas like liquid staking or rollup as a service is found.