The cryptocurrency industry has long been obsessed with acronyms. Popular terms include “TVL” (which stands for “total value locked” in the network’s smart contracts) and “DeFi” (which stands for “decentralized finance”). Then there’s the infamous “WAGMI,” which means “We’re going to make it,” which is the battle cry on social media.
While much of the alphabet jumble in the crypto world is silly and even serves as a way to divert more substantial metrics, there is one acronym that will always be useful: DPS. Coined by Avalanche blockchain founder Emin Gun Sirer, it stands for “dramas per second”.
DPS doesn’t have a formal definition like TPS (“transactions per second”), but it can be translated as what kids call “resonance” and roughly correlates to the level of hysteria. For example, a huge commitment is a huge boost to DPS. Did the founders of a certain project promise a breakthrough technological discovery years ago? This is great for DPS. It sets the stage for a promise and debate about how superior money will ultimately be. Better yet, will the first implementation of this breakthrough fail completely? What you’re seeing is record-breaking DPS. (Of course, I was Hub for high DPS events.)
DPS is the most valuable metric today, as the cryptocurrency industry has largely failed to shore up anything of substance for a decade or so of professionalization. If the technical implementation goes wrong, or the blockchain shuts down entirely, or gets hacked, there are hardly any consequences to the outside world. If a blockchain fails, the only real victims are often the people trying to trade tokens on it. In other words, it makes sense to reduce “vibes” as an indicator of success.
This week we saw DPS showcased alongside the Shiba Inu project, a meme coin created after Dogecoin’s resurgence in popularity in 2020 when its team’s failed attempt to create a layer 2 solution. The Shiba Inu team is excited about this new “Shibarium” that will facilitate applications and games with lower fees and higher throughput. Unfortunately, the code that actually facilitates the transfer of tokens is a bit…too bad. this Network is unusable almost from startup And ended up locking up millions in funds that they couldn’t get back.
At least the Shiba team is moving towards legalization. In this sense, DPS can be considered positive: if you don’t try, then you can’t fail. The halcyon days of committing to a six-year transition and shrugging off execution of those goals, like Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake, are dwindling as “number up” no longer constitutes a strategy. In the past, large projects in the cryptocurrency space could largely ossify and still attract enthusiasts with promises.
Strangely, an increase in DPS means an increase in Effort.
Many of the projects that exist in the cryptocurrency space today are held together by Scotch tape and technology, and are almost entirely controlled by their founders or venture capital-focused boards. Hacking and shoddy engineering have made the space look like a scam to outsiders. But trying to clean up the tech for wider appeal will require a high level of DPS as items get culled, often on their own terms.
DPS hit an ATH (“All-time High”) this summer amid a string of thefts and failures in the cryptocurrency market due to many endogenous and exogenous factors. Now, I think DPS means the field is maturing. And, one day, I hope that more substantive indicators will also play a role.
Svlook
