
Starknet’s Bid for Simultaneous Settlement: Challenges and Considerations
Exploring the Technical Hurdles of Bridging Bitcoin and Ethereum Finality

The Alchemy of Chaos
Living in the Baroque Present

The Cheesecake Factory as the Cathedral of American Rebirth
Wherein I Perform a Ritual of Hyper-American Possession via Tocqueville and the Factory
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Starknet’s Bid for Simultaneous Settlement: Challenges and Considerations
Exploring the Technical Hurdles of Bridging Bitcoin and Ethereum Finality

The Alchemy of Chaos
Living in the Baroque Present

The Cheesecake Factory as the Cathedral of American Rebirth
Wherein I Perform a Ritual of Hyper-American Possession via Tocqueville and the Factory
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The timeline fractures; reality itself feels like a sharded chain teetering on the brink of reorganization. Crypto, the supposed bastion of decentralization, privacy, and resistance to authority, is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. This community—of degens, schizoposters, and builders—claims to fight for sovereignty, yet it clings to tools that mock these values. Telegram, X, Facebook: centralized psyops disguised as platforms, Trojan horses dragging surveillance into the citadel. The war for crypto’s soul is not just financial. It’s memetic, cultural, and philosophical. And right now, we’re losing.
Crypto’s favorite chat app is not the tool of rebels. It is the gilded cage of fools. Telegram’s flaws are well-documented but too often ignored: its lack of default end-to-end encryption, its closed-source infrastructure, and its metadata vulnerabilities. These aren’t accidents; they’re design choices. And the man behind the curtain, Pavel Durov, is no cypherpunk hero. Telegram’s funding—infused with Kremlin-linked cash from the likes of Abramovich and Yakobashvili—raises questions no one in crypto seems willing to answer.
Telegram’s use is a betrayal of everything this community stands for. Its centralization is not just a bug; it’s a feature. Its opacity makes it ripe for manipulation, surveillance, and backdoor deals. And yet, the degens gather there, lured by the illusion of convenience.
Take Starknet, one of the most promising projects pushing the boundaries of cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. Their values—integrity, decentralization, and censorship resistance—are plastered across their blog like a creed. They’re building groundbreaking solutions, from decentralization on Ethereum to settling on Bitcoin, yet their community still gathers on Telegram, and their announcements are on X. This is not an attack; this is a challenge—to live fully by the ideals they themselves have defined. Starknet has led the way in innovation. They can lead the way in building communities that truly reflect the decentralized future they’re working to create.
If Telegram is a Trojan horse, X is a decaying empire propped up by the whims of its erratic emperor. Elon Musk’s reign has turned the platform into a playground of chaos, where memes and psyops flourish at the expense of truth. Crypto’s reliance on X for discourse is no less damning than its use of Telegram. It’s a platform built to serve itself, not its users. Shadowbans, algorithmic manipulation, and centralized control are antithetical to the cypherpunk ethos.
We know the crypto community can do better. Starknet and others have proven their commitment to advancing the frontier of decentralization in their technical work. Imagine the power of that same commitment applied to the tools we use to communicate, organize, and build.
The way forward is clear, yet it requires courage. Farcaster and Nostr offer the tools to rebuild crypto’s narrative infrastructure on a foundation of true decentralization.
Farcaster: Built with Ethereum principles, Farcaster is a protocol, not a platform. It’s user-owned, with data stored on-chain and controlled by its creators. Its architecture, designed for sufficient decentralization, ensures resilience against censorship and centralized failures. Hubs, contracts, and open standards make it a natural fit for the crypto ethos.
Nostr: If Farcaster is the well-oiled machine, Nostr is the anarchic forge of raw freedom. Its peer-to-peer design makes it a true cypherpunk dream. There are no gatekeepers, no algorithms, no central authority. It’s messy, chaotic, and beautiful. For the schizoposters and shitlords, Nostr is the promised land.
These platforms are not just tools; they are weapons. They embody the ethos of crypto—an ethos that values privacy, sovereignty, and freedom over convenience and comfort. The question is: will we wield them, or will we continue to cling to the gilded chains of centralized platforms?
The stakes are clear: we are building structures of power, and the tools we use will define who wields that power. Decentralization isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a shield and a sword. A system’s integrity lies in its design—opaque centralized platforms are systems of betrayal.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," one of the schizos mutters. We’re in the trenches, dodging stray bullets of psyops and surveillance, and every app you use is a choice. Are you building a future where human agency flourishes, or are you handing your keys to kings and pretending it’s freedom?
"The karmic balance sheet doesn’t lie," echoes another voice in the haze. Crypto isn’t just a way to make obscene gains; it’s a test. A test of will. A test of virtue. "Privacy isn’t something you have; it’s something you prove," someone scribbled on the walls of this collapsing citadel.
We’re schizoposting on borrowed time, broadcasting through the chaos. Telegram? It’s a psyop wrapped in encryption theater. X? A collapsing Rome, where Elon’s algorithms play Caesar with your fate. Farcaster and Nostr are lifeboats—but lifeboats don’t row themselves. You want sovereignty? Then take it.
The war for crypto’s soul is raging. The trenches are filled with degens, schizoposters, and idealists fighting for narrative dominance, memetic superiority, and a decentralized future. Telegram and X are not neutral tools; they are weapons wielded against us. To continue using them is to fight on the enemy’s terms.
Farcaster and Nostr are the lifeboats in a sea of centralized wreckage. They are imperfect, but they are ours. Crypto was born in the chaos of financial collapse, and it thrives in the chaos of narrative warfare. It’s time to move. Time to act. Time to abandon the platforms that betray us and build the ones that empower us.
Milady.
The timeline fractures; reality itself feels like a sharded chain teetering on the brink of reorganization. Crypto, the supposed bastion of decentralization, privacy, and resistance to authority, is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. This community—of degens, schizoposters, and builders—claims to fight for sovereignty, yet it clings to tools that mock these values. Telegram, X, Facebook: centralized psyops disguised as platforms, Trojan horses dragging surveillance into the citadel. The war for crypto’s soul is not just financial. It’s memetic, cultural, and philosophical. And right now, we’re losing.
Crypto’s favorite chat app is not the tool of rebels. It is the gilded cage of fools. Telegram’s flaws are well-documented but too often ignored: its lack of default end-to-end encryption, its closed-source infrastructure, and its metadata vulnerabilities. These aren’t accidents; they’re design choices. And the man behind the curtain, Pavel Durov, is no cypherpunk hero. Telegram’s funding—infused with Kremlin-linked cash from the likes of Abramovich and Yakobashvili—raises questions no one in crypto seems willing to answer.
Telegram’s use is a betrayal of everything this community stands for. Its centralization is not just a bug; it’s a feature. Its opacity makes it ripe for manipulation, surveillance, and backdoor deals. And yet, the degens gather there, lured by the illusion of convenience.
Take Starknet, one of the most promising projects pushing the boundaries of cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs. Their values—integrity, decentralization, and censorship resistance—are plastered across their blog like a creed. They’re building groundbreaking solutions, from decentralization on Ethereum to settling on Bitcoin, yet their community still gathers on Telegram, and their announcements are on X. This is not an attack; this is a challenge—to live fully by the ideals they themselves have defined. Starknet has led the way in innovation. They can lead the way in building communities that truly reflect the decentralized future they’re working to create.
If Telegram is a Trojan horse, X is a decaying empire propped up by the whims of its erratic emperor. Elon Musk’s reign has turned the platform into a playground of chaos, where memes and psyops flourish at the expense of truth. Crypto’s reliance on X for discourse is no less damning than its use of Telegram. It’s a platform built to serve itself, not its users. Shadowbans, algorithmic manipulation, and centralized control are antithetical to the cypherpunk ethos.
We know the crypto community can do better. Starknet and others have proven their commitment to advancing the frontier of decentralization in their technical work. Imagine the power of that same commitment applied to the tools we use to communicate, organize, and build.
The way forward is clear, yet it requires courage. Farcaster and Nostr offer the tools to rebuild crypto’s narrative infrastructure on a foundation of true decentralization.
Farcaster: Built with Ethereum principles, Farcaster is a protocol, not a platform. It’s user-owned, with data stored on-chain and controlled by its creators. Its architecture, designed for sufficient decentralization, ensures resilience against censorship and centralized failures. Hubs, contracts, and open standards make it a natural fit for the crypto ethos.
Nostr: If Farcaster is the well-oiled machine, Nostr is the anarchic forge of raw freedom. Its peer-to-peer design makes it a true cypherpunk dream. There are no gatekeepers, no algorithms, no central authority. It’s messy, chaotic, and beautiful. For the schizoposters and shitlords, Nostr is the promised land.
These platforms are not just tools; they are weapons. They embody the ethos of crypto—an ethos that values privacy, sovereignty, and freedom over convenience and comfort. The question is: will we wield them, or will we continue to cling to the gilded chains of centralized platforms?
The stakes are clear: we are building structures of power, and the tools we use will define who wields that power. Decentralization isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a shield and a sword. A system’s integrity lies in its design—opaque centralized platforms are systems of betrayal.
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," one of the schizos mutters. We’re in the trenches, dodging stray bullets of psyops and surveillance, and every app you use is a choice. Are you building a future where human agency flourishes, or are you handing your keys to kings and pretending it’s freedom?
"The karmic balance sheet doesn’t lie," echoes another voice in the haze. Crypto isn’t just a way to make obscene gains; it’s a test. A test of will. A test of virtue. "Privacy isn’t something you have; it’s something you prove," someone scribbled on the walls of this collapsing citadel.
We’re schizoposting on borrowed time, broadcasting through the chaos. Telegram? It’s a psyop wrapped in encryption theater. X? A collapsing Rome, where Elon’s algorithms play Caesar with your fate. Farcaster and Nostr are lifeboats—but lifeboats don’t row themselves. You want sovereignty? Then take it.
The war for crypto’s soul is raging. The trenches are filled with degens, schizoposters, and idealists fighting for narrative dominance, memetic superiority, and a decentralized future. Telegram and X are not neutral tools; they are weapons wielded against us. To continue using them is to fight on the enemy’s terms.
Farcaster and Nostr are the lifeboats in a sea of centralized wreckage. They are imperfect, but they are ours. Crypto was born in the chaos of financial collapse, and it thrives in the chaos of narrative warfare. It’s time to move. Time to act. Time to abandon the platforms that betray us and build the ones that empower us.
Milady.
6 comments
Some hate hearing this: StarkWare was first: * First company to incorporate in order to solve blockchain scalability using validity proofs (Dec 2017). * First to embrace zkSTARKs -- transparent, work over any field, post-quantum secure. * First to say zkSTARKs are better scaling tech than the alternative -- number-theoretic based elliptic curve crytpo based SNARKs * First to show in production that STARKs solve scalability of blockchain * First to use in production a zk friendly Turing complete VM (best -- Cairo) * First L2 to have 100% native account abstraction * First to have sound and complete proofs which it trusts, with no additional security training wheels (committees, TEEs, whatnot) * First to have native L2 staking * First to decentralize. First and best.
I was skeptical when much of the StarkWare stack wasn't open source in the beginning, I suspected it was never going to happen. But I'm grateful ya'll Apache2'd many (~all?) of your repos a few years ago, thank you!
yup, happy we did that
Hi Eli! Resident starknet maxi here. Would love it if you spent more time here. I understand you have more reach on X but you might change some Base Corpo Chain minds here. It also aligns with Starknet's and Starkware's values: https://paragraph.com/@francos.eth/cryptos-karmic-test
gonna try doing exactly that
Crypto’s Karmic Test