> I've tried reading a few "yellow papers" for crypto projects and they are so abstract and full of jargon that I never come away knowing more than when I started reading.
In some cases, this is by design. The project is nonsensical and/or a scam, and the white paper is an obfuscatory smokescreen to provide an illusion of sophistication.
I feel like this describes so much of the tech industry.
A lot of what we do might be sophisticated in some far corners, but at the end of the day the end results can be trivially explained.
"Taxi ordered from a phone app, "Sleep in other people's homes", "Restaurant delivery service with GPS tracking", "Exercise bike with a screen showing workout videos", "Someone else shops for you", etc.
Unfortunately with crypto, a lot of it is trivially explained as "obfuscated scam"
> "Taxi ordered from a phone app, "Sleep in other people's homes", "Restaurant delivery service with GPS tracking", "Exercise bike with a screen showing workout videos", "Someone else shops for you", etc.
I don't think anyone ever claimed these were complicated or sophisticated, though? They're straightforward user-facing apps. A more comparable example might be cloud services or a good chunk of security products.
In some cases, this is by design. The project is nonsensical and/or a scam, and the white paper is an obfuscatory smokescreen to provide an illusion of sophistication.