James S

crypto has now over-institutionalized when macro shifts, the coins that resist this will be the most exciting return to anarchy

Blockchains are needed only if you want decentralization. If you're operating on a blockchain and leaving the decentralization part out, then you're just using a very complex technology for no good reason. Whatever it is you want to achieve, it can be done with simpler tech.

Today, the Foundation’s Board released the EF Mandate. This document, which was first intended for EF members, reaffirms the promise of Ethereum, and the role of EF within this ecosystem.

if ethereum didn’t have a token that people wanted to go up the new ef mandate wouldn’t be controversial at all, it would unanimously be celebrated

this manifesto is so unhinged. it's not written by an organization that's finally growing up, quite the opposite, it looks like the org is stuck in their idealistic adolescence while completely ignoring the reality of what's needed to further the industry ethereum really needs to: - stop optimizing for cypherpunks, start building and caring for the remaining 99.9999% of the world population - stop the technical circular jerking on how the next EIP or cryptographic innovation is going to solve every problem that the ethereum design itself created to begin with, start listening to what real-world people, including institutions, are willing to pay for, then rethink the design of the platform - stop fostering a collective that's entirely driven by vibes with zero no shared goals or purpose, which leads to a ton of wasted resources and zero results - stop writing manifestos, start showing real change through actions

I am working on agentic systems now, and having access to truly private and permissionless compute, along with reliable independent infrastructure like Ethereum, will be very important. My message was that this is available for institutions, and that sooner or later large organizations will not have much choice and will need to adopt Ethereum’s guarantees to stay competitive. That is also where the store of value comes from. It is important to keep delivering censorship-resistant, privacy-oriented, secure, open-source solutions. The only part I am unhappy about is where the EF believes that it can move slowly. The world is not moving slowly. Defense is not about staying in place but about hectic preparation without losing a single second when the threat is imminent.

0/ This view is utopian, idealistic, and aligned with the cypherpunk mandate of the original crypto believers. It will also be incredibly toxic for real world asset issuers beyond the point of stablecoins.

EF, last year: Hey, we want to listen to you users to make Ethereum better. EF, now: Jk, we looked at the real world. We don't like building for it after all, we'll go back to building cypherpunk stuff only. This is the EF going back to its old ways, undoing the changes from last year. I have feared this would happen because Vitalik clearly wasn't in with his heart. But whatever they say about the "ecosystem" being able to take care of this, the fundamental problems remain: - there are very few voices in ACD caring about real world Ethereum usage - there is nobody doing Ethereum BD (everyone else who is doing this also has their own separate interests)

As someone who will be focused on user adoption post mandate, that’s not quite the right framing It’s just that the adoption the EF will be working on is for fully self-sovereign Ethereum, not Ethereum where one company can decide to blacklist you I have a wrote a blog post about this, but don't want to drop it the same day the 30 page mandate came out. The short version is that we need to make sure the self-sovereign layer (this includes the app layer) is strong. If it’s weak, then we’ve really done nothing new in the world because one company could blacklist you and you're essentially excluded from majority of the Ethereum ecosystem because there's not a strong fallback The EF exists to protect the exit layer across the stack, the path where you can use Ethereum end to end without relying on intermediaries

1/ The STRK20s Technical Paper is now live. It outlines the design, architecture, and core ideas behind STRK20s, a privacy capability for any ERC-20. If you’re bullish on privacy as crypto’s next major unlock, this paper is for you 🧵