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niklas.eth retweeted
Now that ZKEVMs are at alpha stage (production-quality performance, remaining work is safety) and PeerDAS is live on mainnet, it's time to talk more about what this combination means for Ethereum.
These are not minor improvements; they are shifting Ethereum into being a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network.
To see why, let's look at the two major types of p2p network so far:
BitTorrent (2000): huge total bandwidth, highly decentralized, no consensus
Bitcoin (2009): highly decentralized, consensus, but low bandwidth - because it’s not “distributed” in the sense of work being split up, it’s *replicated*
Now, Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVMs (expect small portions of the network using it in 2026), we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth
The trilemma has been solved - not on paper, but with live running code, of which one half (data availability sampling) is *on mainnet today*, and the other half (ZK-EVMs) is *production-quality on performance today* - safety is what remains.
This was a 10-year journey (see the first commit of my original post on DAS here: github.com/ethereum/research… , and ZK-EVM attempts started in ~2020), but it's finally here.
Over the next ~4 years, expect to see the full extent of this vision roll out:
* In 2026, large non-ZKEVM-dependent gas limit increases due to BALs and ePBS, and we'll see the first opportunities to run a ZKEVM node
* In 2026-28, gas repricings, changes to state structure, exec payload going into blobs, and other adjustments to make higher gas limits safe
* In 2027-30, large further gas limit increases, as ZKEVM becomes the primary way to validate blocks on the network
A third piece of this is distributed block building.
A long-term ideal holy grail is to get to a future where the full block is *never* constituted in one single place. This will not be necessary for a long time, but IMO it is worth striving for us at least have the capability to do that.
Even before that point, we want the meaningful authority in block building to be as distributed as possible. This can be done either in-protocol (eg. maybe we figure out how to expand FOCIL to make it a primary channel for txs), or out-of-protocol with distributed builder marketplaces. This reduces risk of centralized interference with real-time transaction inclusion, AND it creates a better environment for geographical fairness.
Onward.
niklas.eth retweeted
In early 2021, I was working as a contemporary art specialist at Christie's. I agreed to feature an "NFT" as the first lot of my online auction, mostly because I thought it would be funny. That NFT wound up selling for 69 million dollars.
niklas.eth retweeted
Shopify will enable USDC (Stablecoins on @Base) in Checkout via Shopify Payments and Shop Pay. Early access starts today, roll out throughout the year.
We think that stablecoins are a natural way to transact on the Internet and worked with coinbase to develop the commerce payment protocol smart contract that powers this work
niklas.eth retweeted
tl;dr: news organizations are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement, and the judge is giving those organizations access to all private ChatGPT chats to prove their case.
Good example of how you can't trust people. Only math.
OpenAI is now required by court order to preserve all ChatGPT logs including "temporary chats" and API requests that would have been deleted
if I understand this correctly, it means data retention policies for apps that use OpenAI API simply cannot be honored
ALT Before the order was in place mid-May, OpenAI only retained "chat history" for users of ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro who did not opt out of data retention. But now, OpenAI has been forced to preserve chat history even when users "elect to not retain particular conversations by manually deleting specific conversations or by starting a 'Temporary Chat,' which disappears once closed," OpenAI said. Previously, users could also request to "delete their OpenAI accounts entirely, including all prior conversation history," which was then purged within 30 days. While OpenAI rejects claims that ordinary users use ChatGPT to access news articles, the company noted that including OpenAI's business customers in the order made "even less sense," since API conversation data "is subject to standard retention policies." That means API customers couldn’t delete all their searches based on their customers' activity, which is the supposed basis for requiring OpenAI to retain sensitive data.
niklas.eth retweeted
The ETHBTC ratio did not go down because of ”The Merge”
The ETHBTC ratio collapsed because:
- societal value rotation out of "feminized wef soyboys in unicorn t-shirts" into "bronze age mindset" broadly
- ethereum always occupied a vertical more prone to competition
- l2s confused the ETH asset value capture narrative and caused network fragmentation
- eth does not have a saylor buyer
- bitcoin and gold are maturing into wartime assets whereas the peacetime asset ETH struggles
- ETH also struggles to even look nerdy/smart/futuristic compared to AI which is the new hot ball of money for that investor type
- ethereum also stagnated into a depressingly small number of defi primitives relative to what past expectations were
*Not* the Merge.
niklas.eth retweeted
CRO is no different from a scam
Your team just reissued 70B CRO a week ago that was previously burned “forever” in 2021 (70% total supply) and went against the community wishes as you control majority of the supply.
Unsure why Truth would chose a partnership with your exchange over Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, etc after this move by your team.
h/t Unchained Crypto for the data
niklas.eth retweeted
ngl i had a bad day yesterday. just seeing too many things which irk me and reveal the space has lost almost all of the soul and purpose it had back in foundational 2013-2017 era. even many of the newer leaders really seem like they don't care at all about those values anymore
i've always been more philosophically-aligned to crypto than anything else. you kind of had to be at least a little bit back in those days. sure, making money is nice, but never at any cost
a lot of what's happening now is creating significant negative externalities for crypto. some are obvious now, but some will only be evident in the future, creating persistent harm we will have to live with and try to absolve ourselves of over the course of years
all of that aside, on net, i remain optimistic the broader value proposition of permissionless, censorship-resistant economic activity and digital assets you can actually own. i do believe it can and will drive tremendous good for society and create new forms of gainful economic activity and culture
BUT we are at an inflection point- do we lean into this unique moment of receptive governments to create regulation which will allow for that kind of activity to scale and be driven across the planet? while simultaneously scaling gainful, permissionless economic activity outside of state and intermediary control? OR do we compete to see who can create the best, most degenerate casino on earth where there are no rules and the game only stops once you are liquidated or dead?
i'm sincerely hoping the former wins. if it does, it won't be by chance, but because we actively fought for it because we thought it was important
and it's good to fight for that future
gm ☕️
niklas.eth retweeted
Gensler's Legacy - Rust Belt 2.0 🧵
Trump takes a billion, Millei a few hundred million, obscure African Republics doubling their GDP with a memecoin
Some say "bring back regulation", but Warren-Gensler mob boss tactics actually created the crime supercycle
With no framework for onshore tokenized protocol equity - and worse, explicit extralegal targeting of anyone who tried to do so - the industry was reduced to a couple outlaws and a lot of memecoins
Promising projects like Facebook's Libra stablecoin executed on sight, replaced with Peanut the Squirrel
The best cryptonative companies like Arbitrum were strongarmed into offshoring core execution to offshore governance bureaucracies, not unlike the recent hollowing out of US manufacturing
When China owns all manufacturing capabilities, private equity firms run the show. And when Caymans DAOs own all token launches, professional extractors run the show
---
Then November 5 2024, Election Day, Trump wins. Gensler gone, Warren neutered. Crypto councils, strategic reserves, stablecoin legislation, Ross freed. American crypto is legal again, or so they say.
The next three months were the griftiest period I've ever experienced, Solana's memecoin euthanasia rollercoaster, parallels to Ethereum's 2018 ICO boom that took years to recover from. Except this time there wasn't even the semblance of a whitepaper or EOS-esque promised product. Just tweet ticker, send CA, billions of inflows
Nikita Bier described dropping a memecoin as "a liquidation of your brand equity". How much brand equity is there in the world that demands buyside liquidity? In this sense, the instant liquidation of thousands of personal brands at whatever market clearing price they can is on par with the biggest red candle perps liquidations we've seen
---
Why did this happen? American crypto is legal* again! The memecoiners should've looked at election results and pivoted their focus to building onshore tokenized protocol equity for the glorious golden bullrun.
But that's not how muscle memory works. Like a bodybuilder in a boxing gym, both buyside and sellside have optimized for one thing only - style over substance. The functional boxers put on their gloves, stepped in the ring, and got shot dead by the alleged referee. The good guys are mostly gone
So increased legal risk tolerance didn't magically shift people's focus from the bad approach to the good approach. It only increased the magnitude, not the type. Saylor replaced with Trump, Sisyphus replaced with Milei. Just like you can't destroy American manufacturing for decades then hope to undo it all with one big semiconductor subsidy, you can't destroy legitimate projects for years then hope to undo it all with one big legislation.
The Gensler-Warren mob did to crypto what private equity did to Rust Belt manufacturing. Destruction is easier than creation. The memecoin rollercoaster is their doing, for they attacked and destroyed many good actors while giving the green light to coins that gave nothing and promised nothing. Death to Libra, Life to Peanut. Base's centralized revenue preferred to Arbitrum's crowdowned treasury.
Gensler-Warren created the memecoin obsession by executing other industry verticals at gunpoint. Extralegal "regulation" was the cause, not the cure. Now the wildfire has reached escape velocity. Supply always adjusts to meet demand, memecoins have infinite creation elasticity, and so we can only wait for the buy-side to either lose all its money or adapt different tastes. Hopefully the latter
niklas.eth retweeted
You won’t like this, but Libra was exactly what we needed: a flawless execution of maximum extraction.
This game doesn’t end until every rotation rug is faster, more damaging and more efficient. Every buyer bled dry. No survivors, no relief rallies. Just pure, surgical devastation.
So many of you have said I sounded sad these days. Or mean. Or both. It’s because I’ve seen this shit before so many times goddamn it, I know exactly how it all ends. And you’re hurting the entire industry with this behaviour and set us back ages. This is billions and billions straight into pockets that will never roll any of it back into the ecosystem. This is all money that could have been going to projects that are at least trying. To artists. Or even just to your favourite crypto grifter for fuck’s sake, that will at least lose it all on hyperliquid or on some obscure defi app, or splurge on some expensive pfp to flex on the timeline. I swear even that is better than this shit.
This also regulatory attention that we REALLY don’t fucking need, not now after all the legitimizing that cost people blood sweat and tears.
This is a fuckton of bad press. It’s your uncle being able to point his fat stupid finger at you and waving his head in disapproval. It’s the vest bros saying I told you so.
So yeah, fuck you.
You’re part of the problem by participating in these games. And fuck all you complacent fucks not calling them out for what they are as well.
If we get another major launch, I hope it’s even uglier.
No profits.
No cope narratives.
Just a marketwide funeral procession.
That’s the only way this bullshit dies for good.
niklas.eth retweeted
man this bull is WAY better than say Apr 2021 just after Beeple sold a JPEG for $69M (!) to some rando MetaKovan and then ETH went from $1,500 to $4,500 in a few weeks and people were paying $1k daily for OEs (yes OEs) from whoever on Nifty Gateway just before apes minted and Pak sold a bazillion cubes at Christie’s/NG but then things went sorta quiet until JPEG summer with some huge XCOPY sales and Damien Hirst having his staff paint lotsa $2k dot boards while good people like such as Visa corporation bought Punks for many hundreds of thousands of dollars and every Art Blocks mint was the next Ecumenopolis Eternal Fidenza Elevated Ringer Pump bottleneck supply crunch incoming with paper thin floors and then someone actually bought a CryptoSerg lol and two Plasma Bears from me for a few ETH each wtf sooo crazy but the MetaHero NFT Inhabitant planet dwellers were 5E and rising and the Founders Dao and Punks Comic #1 (the FIRST ONE!) were like 10E but why would you sell because it’s all going so much higher and besides Beanie says Tezos is trash at almost $9 but KRO don’t care he drops $125k for a jjjjjohn x/25 and CyberKongz hit 100E+ with banana cash 4 lyfe but anyway yeah so sorry bro tell me more about that absolutely diabolical cook you found on SOL in February of this disgustingly abundant year of our lord
niklas.eth retweeted
Lots of psy-ops and confusion on the timeline about EF. I want to add my voice and speak with clarity on what I feel is important and right
I am beholden to no protocol, grant, fund, foundation or any other entity and have simply held Eth for several years -- including through the Dao hack & fork, covid crash & I am not one prone to overreaction to any singular event or paper handing investments. I can speak candidly, and want to, because it's the right thing to do:
EF needs leadership change full stop. Josh & Aya should both be gone. I say that with no vitriol in my words, just unemotional analysis of many months leading to what I believe anyone (with no biases) seeing they are not competent operators for what the EF requires at this stage of Ethereums development
Danny Ryan would be an amazing replacement and the Eth community should both rally behind this happening and support him fully if he is able to come in as the ED to create a mandate of his own. If I have any credibility in your eyes, I ask you trust me on this and hope that we the community can be as lucky to get this outcome
Anything less than new leadership installed at the foundation is (imo) extremely bearish for Eth and personally I will exit between 70-100% of my Eth holdings and move this capital into other crypto assets where the ethos is aligned with what I believe make actual solid long-term investments
I've spoken to many in the foundation, many OGs, many other investors, and haven't said any of these words lightly and without deep thought. For anyone who is trying to make sense of what is going on and may not have had access to some of the contacts I've spoken to about this to reach this conclusion, the blunt truth is there is a culture of unaccountability at the foundation that is terminally ill and unrecoverable at this stage and we (the community) need to push for real change like I am describing
There's really not anything more to say than what I just wrote because either the communities voices are heard and change happens now or it doesn't, but I wanted write this out to make sure I did my part to push for what I know is best for Eth here. If this resonates with you, make your voice heard as well because it really is now or never 🫡
niklas.eth retweeted
calls for change in the EF are not one person
it's about pushing for an EF which ACTIVELY cares about Ethereum WINNING in a way which is consistent with Ethereum's open source values
an organization which is nimble and can react to one of the fastest moving, dynamic spaces on the planet- not bogged down by rule by committee with changes requiring months of private deliberation before even minute change are made
this means an organization which:
- visibly evangelizes the importance of decentralization in public blockchains
- publicly advocates for Ethereum and ETH in an effective manner, explaining their differentiated value proposition in a crowded market
- supports the most advanced technical development in the entire blockchain space at a industry-competitive space
- shows that it cares about the community and apps which Ethereum has today, alongside the one it is trying to grow for tomorrow
- honors calls for public transparency in its operation
- wants Ethereum to WIN because decentralization MUST WIN or this was all pointless
if EF cannot do these things, then IMO, it has no reason to exist and the community has no reason to support it
niklas.eth retweeted
Senator Lummis says she has been contacted by FDIC whisteblowers re OCP2.0, demands preservation of all materials incl those relating to Silvergate & Signature bank shutdowns, threatens criminal referrals if destruction of records is unearthed. Gloves are off.
niklas.eth retweeted
As terrible as OCP2.0 itself was, @FDICgov's abuse of FOIA Exemption 8 to cover it up has arguable been even worse. If we want government accountability, we need government transparency. As explained below, FDIC's redactions of its response to our FOIA request pursuant to Exemption 8 reflect blatant misrepresentations. 1/6
