{"id":415739,"date":"2026-01-01T07:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T01:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/failure-is-an-option-in-crypto-finance-crypto-news-2\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T07:20:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T01:50:50","slug":"failure-is-an-option-in-crypto-finance-crypto-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/failure-is-an-option-in-crypto-finance-crypto-news-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure is an option in crypto finance – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n

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\u201cYou have to enjoy failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 James Dyson<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

In a 2003 research paper, Google engineers shared<\/a> their new approach of building \u201creliable computing infrastructure from clusters of unreliable commodity PCs.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a radical change. Instead of paying up for super high-end Sun servers engineered for near-perfect reliability, Google was embracing cheap, commodity hardware running free Linux software. They then developed additional software to work around the hardware\u2019s frequent failures.<\/p>\n

Redundancy through volume, they found, is cheaper than precision through engineering.<\/p>\n

This is the model for modern AI data centers, too: You can\u2019t have a three-month training run crash just because one GPU dies out of 20,000.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not, however, the model for manufacturing the GPUs themselves.<\/p>\n

Instead, semiconductor fabrication plants are built to produce GPUs with an ultra-low level of defects, which demands near-perfection at every step of an incredibly complex process \u2014 the opposite of Google\u2019s recommendation for data centers.<\/p>\n

But this is not engineering perfectionism. It\u2019s an economic necessity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do we need to have 99.9999% reliability at every step of the process?\u201d Ben Thompson asks<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s all the cost of capital equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mostly that\u2019s because the $200 million ASML machines every fabrication plant uses to make cutting-edge semiconductors \u201care the most overengineered things on earth,\u201d Thompson explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This creates a feedback loop of spiraling cost and perfection: Fabrication plants have to be near-perfect to be profitable because the ASML machines are so expensive \u2014 and the ASML machines are so expensive because they have to be perfect.<\/p>\n

As a result, it now costs as much as $20 billion to build a single semiconductor fab.<\/p>\n

Thompson compares the process of making semiconductors with hyper-complex ASML machines with the process of making rockets at SpaceX, where Elon Musk chooses to \u201cblow up a bunch of Starships because you don\u2019t want to be wasting anything on complexity that actually isn\u2019t necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repeatedly blowing up rockets helps SpaceX find the \u201cexact line where you want to be,\u201d as Thompson puts it \u2014 the line between complexity and usefulness that allows them to avoid the astronomical upfront costs required by perfection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, failure can be a feature, not a bug, of complex systems.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about the journey\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Failure is a core feature of crypto systems, too: Every blockchain is designed around the assumption that some percentage of its nodes will be malicious or faulty.<\/p>\n

This makes blockchains resilient \u2014 like Google\u2019s data centers, they continue to produce valid blocks despite individual failures. But that fault tolerance doesn\u2019t extend to the code running on<\/em> the blockchain.<\/p>\n

Smart contract code, written by fallible humans, will inevitably have bugs or design flaws. This can be costly, because unlike traditional finance, there\u2019s no reversing a crypto transaction once a flawed contract or protocol is exploited.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Code eliminates intermediaries, but at the cost of zero fault tolerance.<\/p>\n

This makes code-is-law crypto a system that philosophically<\/em> embraces decentralized fault tolerance but architecturally<\/em> demands perfection.<\/p>\n

There is no way to design your way around that.<\/p>\n

In traditional finance, where systems are permissioned and transactions are reversible, banks can aim for near-perfection by implementing ever-stricter KYC\/AML rules and hiring ever more compliance officers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In crypto finance, where systems are permissionless and transactions are irreversible, we can only aim to learn from our mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There have been a lot of them: from The DAO exploit that nearly sank Ethereum in 2016 to the record-setting $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025.<\/p>\n

With luck, though, these could come to look in hindsight like Elon Musk\u2019s exploding rockets. Each exploit reveals an attack vector \u2014 reentrancy, oracle manipulation, protocol design flaws \u2014 that can be fixed in future iterations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like Starship explosions, the failures show what actually needs hardening vs. what was unnecessary caution \u2014 each an opportunity to find the right balance of complexity and usefulness in a new kind of financial system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crypto is often judged by its failures, which is fair enough, given their frequency and size.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the failures aren\u2019t bugs in<\/em> the process of building a new financial system. They are<\/em> the process.<\/p>\n

To enjoy crypto, then, you\u2019ll have to enjoy failure, too.<\/p>\n

Happy new year.<\/p>\n\n

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. \u201cYou have to enjoy failure.\u201d \u2014 James Dyson In a 2003 research paper, Google engineers shared their new approach of building \u201creliable computing infrastructure from clusters of unreliable commodity PCs.\u201d This was a radical change. Instead of paying up for super high-end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-415739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415743,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415739\/revisions\/415743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}