Accelerating Consumer Crypto with Application-specific Protocols

The article argues that EigenLayer lets developers build specialized decentralized networks and verifiable services more easily, which it says makes building and experimenting in consumer crypto faster and cheaper. It compares this to cloud providers, which let apps use hosted services instead of building every component themselves. The article cites Farcaster, which recently raised $150M, and says Dan Romero's "Product-led protocol development" argues that protocols should start with a high-quality app that attracts daily active users, rather than building infrastructure and hoping a developer builds a killer app on it.