Yesterday, another crypto platform Vauld announced it was pausing all withdrawals.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of crypto platform that halts or limits withdrawals:

Vauld
Celsius Network
BlockFi
Hoo Exchange
AEX

Almost all crypto ecosystems want to disrupt the current financial system by asking us not to trust the system.

Why would crypto want to eliminate trust? Trust is at the heart of all human endeavors. Our species’ superpower is cooperation, and cooperation requires that we trust one another. Modern life exists on a web of trust, we rely on millions of other people to do their jobs and demonstrate a high regard for people they’ll likely never meet. We trust that the building we are living in will not collapse, and we trust that the milk we are drinking is not contaminated.

Today, we can move our capital without fearing it will disappear en route and at near-zero cost. The value driver is not SWIFT, the internet, or the computer chips, but our trust that a transfer will actually happen.

Technology has been promising to eliminate the middleman for decades, only to present new middlemen. Middlemen are inevitable. We depend on them to provide more than just trust: security, convenience, customer assistance, and so on. They make user interfaces intuitive and navigable. They help you recover your belongings when you forget your password or your keys. These services provide value, and that comes at a price. Competition and innovation can reduce the cost of trust, but they do not eliminate it.

Is there a better system? Yes, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The core values of DAO are simple. Decentralized, Permissionless, Trustless.

Decentralized: No central authority to make all the decisions.
Permissionless: There is no gatekeeper, everyone can use the platform equally.
Trustless: Eliminates the need to involve a mutually acceptable trusted third party.

It is not eliminating the middle man nor eliminating the trust between all the transactions. Nothing rebellious, it is just a fairer and more efficient alternative to our current system. The good thing about a non-rebellious innovation is that it can be widely accepted faster and the government is not going to kill it at its infancy stage.

Many alternative coins are going to die during this crypto winter. But companies that are involved in Web 3 or DAO and could survive over this winter are going to be the next big thing.