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Gm everyone! I started writing this newsletter introduction at least three times. It’s been a bumpy week in crypto. It all started when the President of Argentina launched a memecoin with a dodgy character that nobody knows—when he could have consulted with half of the country, some of the most talented developers in crypto.
Here’s the thing: we Argentinians are used to crisis. We get knocked down every week, only to get back up as if nothing happened, and keep building. I didn’t know this was a superpower I’d acquired just by being born and raised in chaos until I noticed that people in more stable countries dealt with crises differently. Some become paralyzed, some get sloppy, and the cracks in apparent stability begin to show.
Flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness, resilience—these are all silver linings one acquires when things are constantly out of control. I can’t even begin to explain how useful they’ve been to me throughout my life. And they aren’t only my silver linings; crypto is an industry built by outliers who felt out of place and needed to build better systems because they understood that the ones they grew up with were broken (study Stani and Vitalik!).
Ironically, the systems we’re building are getting warped and are also bound to crises. Yesterday, less than a week after Milei and his pump-and-dump cronies made their mess, Bybit was hacked for $1.6 billion by the Lazarus Group, a collective of North Korean hackers. I know what you’re thinking: there’s something about heads of state with weird hairstyles and crypto. Jokes aside, this big crisis had us all stop whatever we were doing to check on friends, businesses, and projects—and then get back to work. Bybit managed the situation in a masterful way, and while funds were not safu, they were able to serve their customers almost without any hitches. Flexibility, adaptability, resourcefulness, and resilience show up again, this time in the form of an industry that’s ready for any challenge, no matter how devastating it feels at first.
There are new insights coming from these months of memecoins, rug pulls, and heads of state with weird hairstyle choices: the crypto community is calling for a return to tech-first approaches, clear roadmaps, and investing in and believing in things that matter.
On that front, and in the midst of yesterday’s chaos, Lens was busy publishing the proposal that marks the road toward mainnet. For context, Lens Chain needs to be voted into ZKsync’s Elastic Network, as the chain will have state applied from genesis. What does that mean? We are migrating the 645K+ profiles and 31 million publications of Lens v2 to Lens v3 on Lens Chain. This means that upon mainnet launch, you’ll already be on the Lens Chain, with all your connections and publications intact—without needing to do anything. An in-depth post on the migration will be published soon. Making an announcement on a Friday evening after a cool $1.6 billion hack, like Lens did, was interesting and risky—but it’s further testament to the resilience of the space: we’re not going to stop building, not even for a couple of hours.
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And now, the onchain digest for this week. Interestingly, many Lens frens have been reflecting on the state of crypto. I want to highlight them all:
Paul (post_polar)’s reflection on how memecoins affect Ethereum
The Labyrinth of Digital Conformity (also on memecoins and nihilism) by Dotsbit
Another Paul brilliant reflection: the economics of Bitcoin and Ethereum shape their cultures
I also want to give a big shoutout to ETH Daily that helps us all be on the loop even during the busiest of days, with unbiased information!
And for a respite, I dove into Tiny’s sculptural process
The Queen of Lens and Fries, Jessy is heading to Denver to talk about her experience on crypto socials - if you’re around to cheer for her!
Lenscan by Daoleno now features very cute Lens Testnet charts
Nothing to reveal yet, they’re heads down, but Bonsai, Hey and Orb are COOKING and I just wanted to let you know
Dayana is also in Denver (when is she not right in the middle of Crypto) with her travel compassion Lenny, trying to beat the entirety of the Lens Running Club
That’s it for now. Hoping for a quiet rest of the weekend for all!