Exactly 2 years ago, I wrote a showerthought post (to be fair, most of my posts are that, except for the rare researched one like Games & Blockchain) about decentralized sequencing. A year after that post, and one year ago from this post, we had a brief discussion on Optimism governance forums. This is not a topic I’ve talked about much because it just isn’t that important - battle-tested provers and contract upgradability are much more so. First, unlike monolithic L1s, you only need one hone...

Exactly 2 years ago, I wrote a showerthought post (to be fair, most of my posts are that, except for the rare researched one like Games & Blockchain) about decentralized sequencing. A year after that post, and one year ago from this post, we had a brief discussion on Optimism governance forums. This is not a topic I’ve talked about much because it just isn’t that important - battle-tested provers and contract upgradability are much more so. First, unlike monolithic L1s, you only need one hone...

Markets are boring as sin and covered to the death, so I don’t really talk about it publicly. I’m intrigued by one thing though - when crypto goes through a secular bear market. Before we begin, let me just say that markets are dynamic, and anything can happen and probably will. I have less than 10% confidence in anything I say here, so please just see it as pure speculation and conjecture. None of this is meant to be prediction. Now, I’m not going to talk about secular bear markets here, the...

Markets are boring as sin and covered to the death, so I don’t really talk about it publicly. I’m intrigued by one thing though - when crypto goes through a secular bear market. Before we begin, let me just say that markets are dynamic, and anything can happen and probably will. I have less than 10% confidence in anything I say here, so please just see it as pure speculation and conjecture. None of this is meant to be prediction. Now, I’m not going to talk about secular bear markets here, the...

I’ll begin by saying it’s quite a popular opinion that Tron, TRON Foundation and its oligarch, Justin Sun, are sketchy as hell. This is not a post about the morality of Tron, but rather an observation of its successes and what we can learn from them. I feel this is a very underlooked topic for what is arguably the third most successful chain after Bitcoin and Ethereum. I certainly don’t intend this to be a history lesson, but will cover the basics. Tron comes very much from the 2017-ICO-era o...

I’ll begin by saying it’s quite a popular opinion that Tron, TRON Foundation and its oligarch, Justin Sun, are sketchy as hell. This is not a post about the morality of Tron, but rather an observation of its successes and what we can learn from them. I feel this is a very underlooked topic for what is arguably the third most successful chain after Bitcoin and Ethereum. I certainly don’t intend this to be a history lesson, but will cover the basics. Tron comes very much from the 2017-ICO-era o...

Black-and-white narratives are often popular in crypto. One of the more popular ones is how crypto’s chief purpose is to “eliminate intermediaries”. A more accurate one would be to “eliminate bad and inefficient intermediaries in very specific fields”. But hey, that does not a good meme make. To state the bleeding obvious, the “every man for himself” memes are detached from reality and stuck in 20,000 BC. Skilled service providers are the lifeblood of every advanced economy. They can do a par...

Black-and-white narratives are often popular in crypto. One of the more popular ones is how crypto’s chief purpose is to “eliminate intermediaries”. A more accurate one would be to “eliminate bad and inefficient intermediaries in very specific fields”. But hey, that does not a good meme make. To state the bleeding obvious, the “every man for himself” memes are detached from reality and stuck in 20,000 BC. Skilled service providers are the lifeblood of every advanced economy. They can do a par...

As my previous posts & tweets have mentioned, blockchain has no place in most single-player games. Any attempt at forcing it will be detrimental to the experience. But let’s try to brainstorm if there are any niches where it makes sense, at all? Single-player games developed by a DAO So, maybe blockchain has no place in these games, but can blockchains help in their creation? Again, single-player games require a strong and coherent vision - a cathedral approach is basically a pre-requisite. P...

As my previous posts & tweets have mentioned, blockchain has no place in most single-player games. Any attempt at forcing it will be detrimental to the experience. But let’s try to brainstorm if there are any niches where it makes sense, at all? Single-player games developed by a DAO So, maybe blockchain has no place in these games, but can blockchains help in their creation? Again, single-player games require a strong and coherent vision - a cathedral approach is basically a pre-requisite. P...

The title is a bit of a misnomer, because decentralization is merely a means to an end. Here are the actual goals of public blockchains, as I see it:Corruption-resistance: no double-spending or otherwise changing the results of transactionsCensorship-resistance: the network cannot censor anyone’s transactionsPermissionless access: anyone can run a node and get their transaction included and very other transactionsThe solution to corruption-resistance are twofold:Economic security: run mechani...

The title is a bit of a misnomer, because decentralization is merely a means to an end. Here are the actual goals of public blockchains, as I see it:Corruption-resistance: no double-spending or otherwise changing the results of transactionsCensorship-resistance: the network cannot censor anyone’s transactionsPermissionless access: anyone can run a node and get their transaction included and very other transactionsThe solution to corruption-resistance are twofold:Economic security: run mechani...

In 2021, my expectation was for rollups to mature around late 2023 / early 2024. I was wrong, and I’ve acknowledged this many times before. I knew the crypto industry - and really, most emerging sectors - have a tendency for planning fallacy, and I was a lot less optimistic than most at the time (remember #L222?). But I was still too optimistic. I think app-specific rollups, if they had continued development would have achieved it by now - they have been pretty close since 2021, but most deve...

In 2021, my expectation was for rollups to mature around late 2023 / early 2024. I was wrong, and I’ve acknowledged this many times before. I knew the crypto industry - and really, most emerging sectors - have a tendency for planning fallacy, and I was a lot less optimistic than most at the time (remember #L222?). But I was still too optimistic. I think app-specific rollups, if they had continued development would have achieved it by now - they have been pretty close since 2021, but most deve...

In many ways, each Uniswap release has been a landmark and a signal for the progress of the application layer. But, of course, crypto applications have been around long before Uniswap. They first started as application-specific L1s - the first useful one I can recall is Namecoin in 2011. The most interesting ones were the Graphene cousins - BitShares and Steem. Before Ethereum went live, BitShares offered a DEX, user-issued assets which included everything from memecoins and algostables, and ...

In many ways, each Uniswap release has been a landmark and a signal for the progress of the application layer. But, of course, crypto applications have been around long before Uniswap. They first started as application-specific L1s - the first useful one I can recall is Namecoin in 2011. The most interesting ones were the Graphene cousins - BitShares and Steem. Before Ethereum went live, BitShares offered a DEX, user-issued assets which included everything from memecoins and algostables, and ...

Earlier this year, I listed the various demand drivers of ETH, and opined on how important each were. For me, the most significant demand driver for crypto asset is what “long-term reserve-asset”. Basically, belief in an asset as an alternative store-of-value. Combined with economic collateral and related “money” aspects, which may be collectively categorised as “monetary premium”, I believe this is at least 90% of the value of a crypto asset. Conversely, in the post above, I had rated L1 tra...

Earlier this year, I listed the various demand drivers of ETH, and opined on how important each were. For me, the most significant demand driver for crypto asset is what “long-term reserve-asset”. Basically, belief in an asset as an alternative store-of-value. Combined with economic collateral and related “money” aspects, which may be collectively categorised as “monetary premium”, I believe this is at least 90% of the value of a crypto asset. Conversely, in the post above, I had rated L1 tra...

For over a year now, I’ve commended Tezos as the L1 with the best tech roadmap in the industry, and they’ve continued delivering relentlessly. Indeed, my last thread before quitting Twitter was about Tezos’ achievements. Unfortunately, tech matters very little in crypto - it’s first and foremost a socioeconomic movement. So, despite their fully decentralized enshrined rollups, there’s been very little real adoption - nearly everything interesting is happening on Ethereum rollups. But here’s a...

For over a year now, I’ve commended Tezos as the L1 with the best tech roadmap in the industry, and they’ve continued delivering relentlessly. Indeed, my last thread before quitting Twitter was about Tezos’ achievements. Unfortunately, tech matters very little in crypto - it’s first and foremost a socioeconomic movement. So, despite their fully decentralized enshrined rollups, there’s been very little real adoption - nearly everything interesting is happening on Ethereum rollups. But here’s a...

A key requirement for a well-functioning DAO is user rights. Irrespective of what the tokenholders, delegates, or other governance decision makers do, users must always retain rights. While there are some attempts like Optimism’s Citizen House, this is not enough. Another interesting proposal is Lido’s dual-governance: the users of Lido, i.e. stETH holders, participate in governance as much as LDO holders. Users of public protocols and blockchains are largely pseudonymous, and most people don...

A key requirement for a well-functioning DAO is user rights. Irrespective of what the tokenholders, delegates, or other governance decision makers do, users must always retain rights. While there are some attempts like Optimism’s Citizen House, this is not enough. Another interesting proposal is Lido’s dual-governance: the users of Lido, i.e. stETH holders, participate in governance as much as LDO holders. Users of public protocols and blockchains are largely pseudonymous, and most people don...

DAOs are meant to be an abbreviation for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Such an entity would actually necessarily require no governance. Adding in governance makes it definitely not autonomous and arguably not decentralized. Largely because crypto is all about tokens and speculation, DAOs have thus headed down the public companies model, with tokenholders as shareholders. The only real innovation here has been skirting securities laws and thus increasing accessibility to tokenholders....

DAOs are meant to be an abbreviation for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Such an entity would actually necessarily require no governance. Adding in governance makes it definitely not autonomous and arguably not decentralized. Largely because crypto is all about tokens and speculation, DAOs have thus headed down the public companies model, with tokenholders as shareholders. The only real innovation here has been skirting securities laws and thus increasing accessibility to tokenholders....