Please consider this as a work of hard science fiction. I had written present tense prose (from 2025’s perspective), but had to rework this post to add in some future tense (i.e. 2021 perspective) for context so it has turned out to be a total mess! So, it’s a terrible work of fiction, but certainly more informative than it was before. — Ethereum is the global settlement layer. Or more technically, the global security and data availability layer. There’s a flourishing ecosystem of external ex...

Please consider this as a work of hard science fiction. I had written present tense prose (from 2025’s perspective), but had to rework this post to add in some future tense (i.e. 2021 perspective) for context so it has turned out to be a total mess! So, it’s a terrible work of fiction, but certainly more informative than it was before. — Ethereum is the global settlement layer. Or more technically, the global security and data availability layer. There’s a flourishing ecosystem of external ex...

I understand there’s a lot of in-depth research around this, and almost all proof-of-stake L1s are fundamentally designed around the assumption that staking issuance is net neutral. It does seem to make sense once you consider base L1 assets as analogous to equities or currencies, but I believe L1 assets are a completely new breed that’s a combination of currency, equity, store-of-value, speculative asset, economic bandwidth and defence budget. As such, I believe we need heuristics rather tha...

I understand there’s a lot of in-depth research around this, and almost all proof-of-stake L1s are fundamentally designed around the assumption that staking issuance is net neutral. It does seem to make sense once you consider base L1 assets as analogous to equities or currencies, but I believe L1 assets are a completely new breed that’s a combination of currency, equity, store-of-value, speculative asset, economic bandwidth and defence budget. As such, I believe we need heuristics rather tha...

For far too long, the narrative has been dominated by short-term solutions with unsustainable designs. It’s never too late to fight back and define what makes this industry sustainable and worthwhile. I have written mostly about rollups, and mostly in 2021 - but you’d have caught the subtext being social, economic, and technical sustainability. While the catastrophic failure of the Terra blockchain (aside from UST meltdown) was an extreme case, the cold hard reality is that almost all L1s tod...

For far too long, the narrative has been dominated by short-term solutions with unsustainable designs. It’s never too late to fight back and define what makes this industry sustainable and worthwhile. I have written mostly about rollups, and mostly in 2021 - but you’d have caught the subtext being social, economic, and technical sustainability. While the catastrophic failure of the Terra blockchain (aside from UST meltdown) was an extreme case, the cold hard reality is that almost all L1s tod...

I have expressed regret multiple times this year for helping propagate the “modular blockchain” meme. There are two significant problems with this: firstly, “modular” is a pretty generic term that has been used by multiple projects to define very different things. The bigger blunder on my part was not talking about socioeconomic fragmentation enough, which led to many misunderstanding “modular blockchains” as meaning different projects should do different things. I have covered these on Twitt...

I have expressed regret multiple times this year for helping propagate the “modular blockchain” meme. There are two significant problems with this: firstly, “modular” is a pretty generic term that has been used by multiple projects to define very different things. The bigger blunder on my part was not talking about socioeconomic fragmentation enough, which led to many misunderstanding “modular blockchains” as meaning different projects should do different things. I have covered these on Twitt...

This is my opinion how Vitalik’s contradictions are healthy and necessary, and how they can be reconciled. I relate with Vitalik’s contradictions, which is why I can write a quick blog post without thinking about it:Contradiction between my desire to see Ethereum become a more Bitcoin-like system emphasizing long-term stability and stability, including culturally, and my realization that getting there requires quite a lot of active coordinated short-term change.To attain long-term stability, ...

This is my opinion how Vitalik’s contradictions are healthy and necessary, and how they can be reconciled. I relate with Vitalik’s contradictions, which is why I can write a quick blog post without thinking about it:Contradiction between my desire to see Ethereum become a more Bitcoin-like system emphasizing long-term stability and stability, including culturally, and my realization that getting there requires quite a lot of active coordinated short-term change.To attain long-term stability, ...