A year ago, I wrote a post about Games and Blockchain. Admittedly, it was a reactionary post as I was pretty tired of the VC hype “A huge wave of AAA games will change the blockchain landscape in 6-12 months and onboard the next billion users”. I had first started writing about blockchain scaling on reddit in 2020, but no one really cared till I went bombastic and hyperbolic deliberately in mid-2021 - very much against my own nature - and it worked. So, having learned from that, I used some o...

A year ago, I wrote a post about Games and Blockchain. Admittedly, it was a reactionary post as I was pretty tired of the VC hype “A huge wave of AAA games will change the blockchain landscape in 6-12 months and onboard the next billion users”. I had first started writing about blockchain scaling on reddit in 2020, but no one really cared till I went bombastic and hyperbolic deliberately in mid-2021 - very much against my own nature - and it worked. So, having learned from that, I used some o...

I wrote a post in September about where blockchain apps make sense. A few months after that, Vitalik wrote a detailed post about a similar topic, which pushed me to realize my initial model was incomplete. So here, I’ll attempt to expand on it. Blockchain apps make sense where you need all three: 1) Peer-to-peer operation: this includes P2P software like IPFS, BitTorrent, multiplayer games, messaging apps, and yes, blockchains. It’s important to note that if you just want to eliminate a centr...

I wrote a post in September about where blockchain apps make sense. A few months after that, Vitalik wrote a detailed post about a similar topic, which pushed me to realize my initial model was incomplete. So here, I’ll attempt to expand on it. Blockchain apps make sense where you need all three: 1) Peer-to-peer operation: this includes P2P software like IPFS, BitTorrent, multiplayer games, messaging apps, and yes, blockchains. It’s important to note that if you just want to eliminate a centr...

In crypto, you’ll often find absurd “metrics” to chest thump about how one chain is better than other. I’d argue economic activity is the most important metric to judge the economic value of a blockchain. And yes, economic activity correlates far more to the value of the chain’s underlying asset. To be clear, you can have a chain focused on free applications which does negligible economic activity that is still very valuable to its hundreds of millions of users doing a gazillion TPS. That doe...

In crypto, you’ll often find absurd “metrics” to chest thump about how one chain is better than other. I’d argue economic activity is the most important metric to judge the economic value of a blockchain. And yes, economic activity correlates far more to the value of the chain’s underlying asset. To be clear, you can have a chain focused on free applications which does negligible economic activity that is still very valuable to its hundreds of millions of users doing a gazillion TPS. That doe...

Imagine you could let Darth Vader run a supercomputer with a gazillion TPS and he still couldn't corrupt the chain, while you can verify on a budget smartphone. This is the superpower of validity proofs. A monolithic execution layer requires 1000s of block producers and non-producing full nodes with a majority needing to be honest. As a result, even if you don’t care about ease-of-verification, you need conservative hardware requirements, let’s say something like a 16-core CPU, 256 GB RA...

Imagine you could let Darth Vader run a supercomputer with a gazillion TPS and he still couldn't corrupt the chain, while you can verify on a budget smartphone. This is the superpower of validity proofs. A monolithic execution layer requires 1000s of block producers and non-producing full nodes with a majority needing to be honest. As a result, even if you don’t care about ease-of-verification, you need conservative hardware requirements, let’s say something like a 16-core CPU, 256 GB RA...

Prompted by @dankrad, it's worth looking at the type of blockchain applications that make sense, and what sort of demand we're looking at. I largely agree with Vitalik's blueprint (minor disagreements noted, and also my post on the topic), so this is the template we'll follow. As always, my blog posts are pure rambling, and I have thought and searched about this topic for less than an hour since that tweet.Money: considering population in countries with unstable economies ...

Prompted by @dankrad, it's worth looking at the type of blockchain applications that make sense, and what sort of demand we're looking at. I largely agree with Vitalik's blueprint (minor disagreements noted, and also my post on the topic), so this is the template we'll follow. As always, my blog posts are pure rambling, and I have thought and searched about this topic for less than an hour since that tweet.Money: considering population in countries with unstable economies ...

For me, a “monolithic blockchain” is one where every user has to naïvely reprocess all transactions to verify integrity. The more transactions the network processes, the higher the system hardware requirements. It’s not only requiring a powerful server to reprocess transactions in real time, but also state and history bloat builds up over time, potentially to the point the blockchain’s complete ledger is forgotten and inaccessible because it became economically infeasible. This causes two pro...

For me, a “monolithic blockchain” is one where every user has to naïvely reprocess all transactions to verify integrity. The more transactions the network processes, the higher the system hardware requirements. It’s not only requiring a powerful server to reprocess transactions in real time, but also state and history bloat builds up over time, potentially to the point the blockchain’s complete ledger is forgotten and inaccessible because it became economically infeasible. This causes two pro...

Crypto has always been the perfect storm of planning fallacy. Things take ten times longer than anyone expects. In mid-2020, Loopring, zkSync (later zkSync 1.0, now zkSync Lite) and StarkEx with DeversiFi (now RhinoFi) went live in production. Optimism and Arbitrum were running testnets, the projects claimed and it seemed like 2021 would be the year of the rollups. Few remember, because few were following then - which is precisely why I started writing about rollups. It was pretty easy to fol...

Crypto has always been the perfect storm of planning fallacy. Things take ten times longer than anyone expects. In mid-2020, Loopring, zkSync (later zkSync 1.0, now zkSync Lite) and StarkEx with DeversiFi (now RhinoFi) went live in production. Optimism and Arbitrum were running testnets, the projects claimed and it seemed like 2021 would be the year of the rollups. Few remember, because few were following then - which is precisely why I started writing about rollups. It was pretty easy to fol...

When it comes to blockchain scaling, we have often ended up with reductive narratives like “TPS number go up gud”. Since then, we have evolved to care more about security properties as well, leading to the rise of rollups. However, even so, there’s great value to be had in granularly examining the actual scalability demands for each type of application and their potential respective product-market fit. Now, some will say that it’s too early, but I push back against this narrative. Ever since ...

When it comes to blockchain scaling, we have often ended up with reductive narratives like “TPS number go up gud”. Since then, we have evolved to care more about security properties as well, leading to the rise of rollups. However, even so, there’s great value to be had in granularly examining the actual scalability demands for each type of application and their potential respective product-market fit. Now, some will say that it’s too early, but I push back against this narrative. Ever since ...

I have discussed about the various demand drivers for ether on Twitter and Reddit many times before. There was never enough material to expand it into a blog post, but I have found a thought experiment that may be intriguing - how we can estimate what ETH’s demand profile looks like, i.e. why people are buying ETH, and how much for each reason. Unfortunately, I have zero programming skills and have no idea how to analyse on-chain data, but perhaps others can. Looking at you, Data Always! It i...

I have discussed about the various demand drivers for ether on Twitter and Reddit many times before. There was never enough material to expand it into a blog post, but I have found a thought experiment that may be intriguing - how we can estimate what ETH’s demand profile looks like, i.e. why people are buying ETH, and how much for each reason. Unfortunately, I have zero programming skills and have no idea how to analyse on-chain data, but perhaps others can. Looking at you, Data Always! It i...

I haven’t written a blog post about DAOs since 2016 or 2017. Unlike my rants about blockchain scalability, this is a discipline I do have expertise and professional experience in, so I won’t play the “just an armchair hobbyist” card. DAOs aren’t useful in most scenarios - traditional models like cooperatives or public companies serve the goal of public ownership or “decentralized organizations” far better. However, there are some niches where DAOs do innovate - particularly when the organizat...

I haven’t written a blog post about DAOs since 2016 or 2017. Unlike my rants about blockchain scalability, this is a discipline I do have expertise and professional experience in, so I won’t play the “just an armchair hobbyist” card. DAOs aren’t useful in most scenarios - traditional models like cooperatives or public companies serve the goal of public ownership or “decentralized organizations” far better. However, there are some niches where DAOs do innovate - particularly when the organizat...

There seems to be a common misconception that Ethereum only scales via L2s. I may harbour some blame for that for writing aggressively about L2 rollups and not covering the L1 scaling roadmap enough, for which I apologise - here I’m attempting to fix that mistake now that L2s are well understood, accepted and adopted by the space. Arbitrum One, in particular, has arguably proven itself as the #2 smart contract chain after Ethereum L1 by economic activity. But first, an even worse version of t...

There seems to be a common misconception that Ethereum only scales via L2s. I may harbour some blame for that for writing aggressively about L2 rollups and not covering the L1 scaling roadmap enough, for which I apologise - here I’m attempting to fix that mistake now that L2s are well understood, accepted and adopted by the space. Arbitrum One, in particular, has arguably proven itself as the #2 smart contract chain after Ethereum L1 by economic activity. But first, an even worse version of t...

In a recent tweet thread, I showerthought about “premium execution layers”. Let’s take the thought experiment further… A premium execution layer is exclusively focused on high-value financial applications; target users: HNWIs, corporations, governments, high-value rollups etc. For this, the key design goals are:Economic security & sustainabilitySound money base assetTechnical securityStability (pref. ossified)ResilienceQuality auditing communityLindyAs Sylve points out, a lot of traditional f...

In a recent tweet thread, I showerthought about “premium execution layers”. Let’s take the thought experiment further… A premium execution layer is exclusively focused on high-value financial applications; target users: HNWIs, corporations, governments, high-value rollups etc. For this, the key design goals are:Economic security & sustainabilitySound money base assetTechnical securityStability (pref. ossified)ResilienceQuality auditing communityLindyAs Sylve points out, a lot of traditional f...