I’ll begin by saying - obviously, there’s good in crypto. Indeed, I have written over 150 blog posts over the last 3 years about them (and plenty more with previous pseudonyms), and making the best of crypto and related tech. But none of that matters right now - things have swung too far away to the bad side. Over the years, crypto has declined int

Yes, yes, you have heard me rant and rave about strict global consensus and how it’s the only unique property of blockchains. But I have not talked much in the way of alternatives, because I consciously avoid talking about infra. Infra obsession and consumed the crypto space, to the point everything else is neglected. However, it occurs to me that

Farcaster user @berghans asks, “I was wondering if you have any articles which go a bit more in depth into your usage of the terms subjectivity/objectivity? Cheers!”. Well, now, you do! As you might expect, how you define objectivity or subjectivity is… yes, you guessed is… subjective. But in the context of blockchains, we can be more precise. The

Strict global consensus is the only unique property enabled by public blockchains, but it has several drawbacks, so you should only leverage it if it’s essential for your application. It’s centralized: You’re relying on either a plutocracy and/or a corporatocracy for strict global consensus. Indeed, you need a fallback to make that acceptable, bu

I put “decentralized stack” in quotes because many of Vitalik’s suggestions are in reality significantly more centralized than the “Traditional stack”. The most egregious example is “DAOs”, for example. Almost all DAOs today are dystopian plutocracies where a handful of whales and VCs control everything. Even the ones trying to break free are light

In October 2021, I wrote a speculative post about the “transaction quality trilemma”. Since then, pretty much all chains have implemented a minimum fee in the $0.01-$0.50 range, but there are still some holdouts like Immutable X, Solana or Arbitrum Nova which gives us data. As you know, I don’t talk about scaling and infra anymore, and the stuff I

Let’s start with a simple database on your PC - only you can edit it. You want everyone to participate it instead, so you make it peer-to-peer. Of course, it ends up as a total mess, with people deleting what others have written. So, you make it append-only, so you cannot edit what has been before. But it’s still a complete mess. Now, you restrict

I came across a tweet by Hayden Adams. I was going to say, chains are servers with just one superpower - strict global consensus, but hey, I’ve already written about that. So, instead, let’s examine Hayden’s claims. First, let’s address the tweet being quoted, that “i cannot think of something that makes less fucking sense than a million rollups” -

It’s actually simple and obvious, but I’ll spell it out - Crypto has found a vast majority of its product-market fit by $ value from being alternative or speculative store-of-value. This is why BTC is still dominant, 15 years in. ETH has also found monetary properties circa 2020. Both combined command over 75% of the market excluding stablecoins, a

In a previous post about how tokenholder DAOs can move beyond plutocracy, I noted how something like OP Collective’s Citizen House has potential. However, it is faced with a stiff challenge - how does one onboard citizens? The problem is, of course, what makes a “citizen” is a highly subjective matter, and subjective matters need significant human