Loie 🌱 retweeted
Ok no, it’s not a death sentence. But it could be. If the wrong decisions are made.
If Ethereum tries to compete with Tempo directly it will fail.
It’s going to ship faster, be quicker and have better distribution via Stripe’s integrations.
So if Ethereum tries to do normie payments and optimise the chain over time for it. Rekt. Tempo will simply make the trade offs and do the centralised regulatory capture games necessary to take payments. If it’s lucky.
Tempo itself will also be competing with a plethora of other corpo chains attempting to do the same. Google, other stable slop L1s, VISA, banks, central banks are all gonna have a bash.
It’s just a use case not meant for highly decentralised and permissionless architectures.
So Ethereum must go the other way. It needs to become the cypherpunk chain. It needs to be programmable money. Bitcoin adjacent. Strong immutability, permissionlessness and ultimately privacy.
There will be voices in the Ethereum world that want it to institutionalise. They will want to kill solo validators, go to sub-second slot times, play low latency games and concede to regulator demands. Ethereum simply cannot win on that frontier. It neither has the consensus, nor the bankroll for it.
Earlier in the year I gave a talk called FORK OFF at @protocol_berg in which I made the argument that we should think about forking away from the crypto stuff that is less value aligned. Not how I imagined it to happen, but effectively this is what this is.
The corpo-institutional technological trajectory is exiting Ethereum and finding its own trade off space to execute in. Good.
But, Ethereum must find its own space now. It needs to hit technological vectors that the centralised chains will not. Things like hard privacy tech, decentralised stablecoins, infofinance, DAOs, agentic systems, crowdfunding, permissionless DeFi. And fundamental freedom tools we haven’t even imagined yet. Serious cryptonative cypherpunk technologies.
It also has something that tempo will never have. Culture. Ethereum needs to go more subcultural and capture the mindshare of the artists, the revolutionary thinkers, the anti-corporate minded, the disaffected, the academics etc.
If it plays it right it will be basically the “Bitcoin but better” asset and without the security budget time-bomb.
Optimistically this might be the best thing that ever happens to Ethereum, but it must go its own way to win.
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Job hunters or anyone even entertaining convos with recruiters pleeease be careful! 🙏🙏
Loie 🌱 retweeted
First they came for Tiktok, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not twelve years old. Then they came for the Telegram, and I did not speak out—
Because I was using some other app or sth idk. Then they came for literally every other platform for dissent, and I did not speak out—
because bro how tf could i that's the entire point wake up wake up wa—
This event in Vancouver looks sick!
1 day conf on offline & local networks
Does Not Cloud Compute 💙☁️😇
Psst, we've launched registration for the 2024 edition: ournetworks.ca/#register
You can also find us on bsky and masto with our domain and organizer email address 🐛🦋
Lmao this is SO funny to me bc I just helped my friend who is both these women (nature wifey mom & doge rich) recover her lost dogecoin so fu if u think we can't be both 😘
Loie 🌱 retweeted
Shattered. Ashamed of the Dutch judicial system, blind and deaf to the true innovation and genius of Alexey & TC.
As crypto builders, we are all Alexey. We keep fighting for him, his legacy and the cypherpunk values.
dlnews.com/articles/regulati…
Loie 🌱 retweeted
My preliminary thoughts on the Pertsev verdict in this thread. I'm sad for Alexey and angry that the money laundering laws in the Netherlands have such a low threshold for intent, essentially mere negligence.
Nothing in this ruling should prejudice or carry weight in Roman Storm's case in the SDNY. In America we have stricter intent standards for money laundering and stronger First Amendment and due process protections. I hope Alexey can fight this on appeal. Privacy is normal and inventing tools to help people protect their privacy is a basic right.
Some of this would be highly questionable under US constitutional law. Unlike in the SDNY case that focuses primarily on ongoing activities of the defendants the Dutch ruling seems to come straight out and say that you can be criminally responsible merely for inventing a cryptosystem. Note that I am not an expert in Dutch law and this is a machine generated transalation:
Loie 🌱 retweeted
people seem to like my scenecoin language so decided to canonize it...
The Scenecoin Opportunity
The memecoin opportunity is now well understood, but the emerging scenecoin opportunity less so. In both cases the token is the product, but how they derive their value and how you build them is meaningfully different.
Memecoins are cultural prediction markets. They get their value from the attention captured by the underlying meme, and buying one is a bet that the meme will grow in cultural relevance. See $WIF, $BODEN, $POPCAT, $BITCOIN.
Scenecoins are cultural memberships. They get their value from the desirability of the underlying scene, and buying one is a bet that the demand for participating in the scene will grow. See $DEGEN (farcaster believers), $ENJOY (onchain creators), $HIGHER (brand builders).
Memecoins have few external dependencies once they’ve reached consensus, scenecoins have many. They need active participation by members to make the scene increasingly valuable to be a part of. This is both a challenge and the opportunity.
The time, energy, and money people were committing to the $DEGEN scene created huge demand from projects to use it to bootstrap attention and distribution. They’ve been able to launch a top 10 chain (!!) on the back of this only 3 months after being created.
A similar opportunity exists across countless other scenes. Having a token bundling ownership, rewards (through tipping), reputation, and speculation fundamentally changes what they’re capable of.
What will the sports fans, girlies, musicians, car enthusiasts, brooklyn elite go build? Don’t know, but we’re going to find out.
One of the best cultural analyses I've read in a while!!
Does Africa Need Its Own L2?
Easy answer: No. Developers can choose any sidechain, Alt-L1, L1, L2 or L3
Real answer: Yes, absolutely yes. It’s about the ecosystem.
I found myself pacing in a supermarket aisle thinking about this so someone can tell me why this is a bad idea.
First thought: what is a chain ? It comes down to two things for me, technology (like being able to push an invalid state root) and secondly, ecosystem. African developers have an abundance of tech choices. Optimistic, ZK, PoS, PoA heck even Plasma. What’s been sorely lacking in Africa is the ecosystem portion; where does a project go where they don’t have to educate the people they’re pitching. Celo has done amazing work in this regard but the messaging has been more “white savior” to me, it’s giving Bono builds an EVM but I digress. The Ethereum Foundation has been trying but they need to hire and empower more Africans who live and work in Africa so that internally they don’t have to fight for recognition. All other L2s have a bit of a long way to go.
Africa means business, we don’t need to “bank the unbanked”; let’s stop with the “1 dollar a day” tropes. McKinsey projects that the African Fintech sector is projected to be worth $230bn by 2025. Nigeria traded $50bn in stablecoins in the last two years. There are over 5200 startups in Fintech alone. A lot of African economies are experiencing growth in spite of the predatory IMF and EXIM banks.
From a population perspective, in the next 10 years, there’ll be more people in the US that are over 65 years than those who are under 18. Meanwhile, half of the global population growth from 2022 to 2050 will occur in sub-Saharan Africa. The region’s population is currently growing three times faster than the rest of the world, and by the end of the century, it will be home to a third of all people in the world, compared to only 14 percent in 2019. Populations can be an economic boon, see India and China.
Ok, so why an L2? I think why most L2s will fizzle out is that they lack a soul. They have no business existing outside of sophisticated pump and dump schemes. We know you, we see you, we’ll buy your tokens but who’s building to be around for 20 years? It’s not about just the technology. If your raison d’etre is the tech, then I’ve got bad news for you son. The tech is a means to an end. If your answer to “why use us” is technical, then you will be disrupted. You need a better reason to wake up in the morning.
So why this L2? I’ll start by saying what I think this isn’t, this shouldn’t be a “chain for Africa”, it’s a chain that supports Africans to build for the world. It’s an important nuance that I hope makes sense. How do we support the next 500 @njokuScript to build the next 100 @DescentDAO to build protocols for the next 100 @farcaster_xyz? You dig?
Other than founder support, there’s community and ecosystem building. For many of us, our online expressions are extensions of our identity. We have socials that represent our relationships and reputations. Apps that we use for finance, shopping, fashion, communication, security etc. Any deplatforming at any of these layers or applications may represent a significant impact on one’s quality of life. That is even more true in Africa; decentralization , permissionless-ness, censorship-resistance are not just ideals for Africa, they can be life or death. People are already turning to cryptography for some semblance of reliability, see Nigeria
So the immediate verticals are payments $230bn TAM per McKinsey; consumer applications of many forms that actually require provenance and verifiability; identity oracles that can give guarantees to protocols, and CEXs. Last and most importantly, culture. Africans and Africans in the diaspora have set the bar for culture for the last 100 years. We made the music you dance to, inspired the clothes you wear, shaped how you speak and not gotten much to show for it. It’s time for that value to be captured on-chain.
Loie 🌱 retweeted
People love the Zapatistas, love Rojava, love revolutionary Catalonia, love anarchist Manchuria, love cheran, love barbacha, love anarchist Ukraine, and hate everything they have had to do to actually institutionalize their power.
The parent company of Temu (PDD) has such aggressive non-compete clauses that most employees use pseudonyms at work to avoid being sued for taking new tech jobs AFTER they left the company
Here's an example from another Chinese company:
sixthtone.com/news/1009542
I'm always coming across more arguments for the "why" of pseudonymous work environments.
Here's a great post on the how!
teapawt.net/vedangvatsa/status/175…
The Pseudonymous Economy
The internet has always allowed for some anonymity, but Web3 pushes things further. In the Pseudonymous Economy, you're known by a persistent username or wallet address, not your real name. This unlocks powerful possibilities, fueled by key technologies:
• Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs): Unique digital usernames free from centralized control.
• Soulbound Tokens (SBTs): Like verifiable badges of your skills, achievements, or participation, held in your digital wallet.
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs): Let you prove you qualify for something without revealing private details.
Why Does This Matter?
• No More Bias: Decisions are based on what you can do, not who you are in the real world.
• Global Opportunity: Talent anywhere can contribute without traditional employment hurdles.
• Freedom to Experiment: Reduced social risk fosters innovation and bold ideas.
• Privacy Matters: You control what personal information is shared
Use Cases
• Hiring: Find the best people based on proven skills (SBTs), not just resumes.
• Lending: Good reputation history could earn you loans unavailable in traditional finance.
• Fair Voting: Protect against manipulation in online governance of projects.
• Content Creators: Earn a following based on your work alone, not who you know.