George

In the 19th century a $5 dollar note from a Tennessee bank used to worth only $4 dollars in New York. A peg that we take for granted nowadays is such an exciting piece of financial engineering.

@luigidemeo @AvaLabs Thank you for all your support. I'm glad I had the chance to cross paths with you. You really fast-tracked our journey with Avalanche! Wishing you all the best in what's to come!

Some personal news* - After nearly 5 years, I’ve made the decision to step down from my role as Chief Strategy Officer of @AvaLabs. This comes after a lengthy period of conversations and reflection. Officially, and for the past several months, I’ve been transitioning out of my responsibilities and preparing for a new chapter. Since joining in early 2021, just months after Avalanche's mainnet launch, when our team was a lean group of ~20 people, @avax has been my home, my passion, and a defining part of my career. We've delivered countless upgrades, scaled a network attracting billions in capital across more than 80 chains, brought major banks, asset managers, and enterprises onchain, powered gaming ecosystems, and fostered a vibrant community. I'm proud of what we've built together and the role I was able to play in it. I will forever be grateful to all the people at Ava Labs and the broader Avalanche ecosystem but in particular @el33th4xor, @John1wu, @kevinsekniqi and @JohnNahas84 for the opportunities to grow both personally and professionally. It's a rare privilege to contribute to such a talented team driven by an ambitious mission. As for Avalanche, I remain a believer in the technology, the opportunity, and many of my colleagues. I’ll continue observing, building, advising where valuable, and supporting from the sidelines. I plan to complete my non-operating term as one of the Board Directors for the Avalanche Foundation, which concludes in a few months. As for what’s next, for now I'm pausing to recharge. I’ll be catching up on precious family time (including with our third child, now six months old) and investing in myself a bit. I have and will continue having conversations about where I’m best positioned to contribute to this industry, perhaps as a founder or in another role. I remain as optimistic as ever that blockchains will transform the internet and I intend to contribute my energy towards that future. Stay tuned! -Luigi

The sterility of modernity can be truly fascinating sometimes, especially when it was foretold 150 years ago.

It’s only impossible until someone does it :) people nowadays forget to be creative..

@robbiepetersen_ the new frontier is bringing more real-world adoption on-chain. BD + being able to lock exclusive deals that flow tradfi capital on-chain for the next few years will probably be key to replicate similar network effects

I continue to hold the belief that the only moat for blockchains are the tokens themselves In a world where the most-used apps across every chain are indistinguishable (spot DEXs, perps DEXs, money markets) users don't have a relationship with apps – they have a relationship with tokens I don't use Ethereum because I like Uniswap or Aave. I use Ethereum simply because I want to trade tokens that are tradable on Ethereum. And as soon as there are tokens that I want to trade on Solana or BSC, I'll use Solana or BSC. It's that simple In other words, on-chain activity is principally governed by tokens This is the only framework that perfectly explains the entire arc of blockchain market share: - How does Ethereum mainnet still do ~20% of all spot volume despite being slow and expensive? It was the original chain where tokens were issued and intuitively this has some inertia - How did BSC gain 60% market share in 2021? It fostered an ecosystem of tokens people wanted to farm and trade - How did Solana get up to 70% market share this cycle? It established itself as the canonical chain where memecoins are issued Interestingly, the fact that CEX volumes consistently trump DEX volumes is yet another supporting data point. CEXs provide an abstracted UX for simply trading tokens irrespective of chain This is not to reduce blockchains to merely infrastructure for trading and speculation (although this is neither good nor bad in my view). I remain confident that non-speculative use cases will eventually prevail (stablecoin payment volumes are already eating into speculative volumes) However, ignoring what ultimately drives user behavior today – and downstream of this – what is the true source of defensibility for blockchains results in a flawed mental model Blockchains are asset ledgers. Intuitively, the moat is being the asset ledger where everyone wants to issue their assets

@therealricoy @AvaLabs congrats on your choice @therealricoy

🔺 Super excited to announce that I’ve joined @AvaLabs as Director of External Media. Avalanche is a sleeping behemoth, and I’m going to help set off the alarm to awaken it. The opportunity for community, economic, and global awareness growth is enormous. Avalanche L1s take a unique approach to scaling, and that design philosophy makes it particularly suited to serve a blue ocean of new prospects from a different target audience than today’s average blockchain user, especially as we enter a modern and legitimized era of utility for cryptocurrency. Avalanche is best positioned to be the #1 enterprise blockchain solution because: - Risk-averse institutions and brands can insulate themselves from potential network spikes and congestion cascades caused by hot new token or app launches. Celebrity just launch a token? That’s not going to become a problem for your users. - If Nasdaq, Visa, and/or Nintendo wanted to move all their activity onchain, Avalanche could actually handle it TODAY. Can your favorite blockchain say the same? (Whatever you do, don’t ask Grok). Horizontal scaling = unlimited custom economies. - And if Nasdaq, Visa, and Nintendo did launch on Avalanche, they’d be able to launch their own L1s, giving them full control over their own sovereign network. Avalanche L1s let you make your own rules. Everything from custom fee structures (payable in your own native token or zero fees at all), privacy, compliance for those who need it (native KYC, freezes, clawbacks, public or permissioned validators and whitelists for SEC/OFAC screening, etc.), you name it. Launching a sovereign L1 is as quick, easy, and cheap. - On top of all that, you can also still build on the main chain, or, utilize interchain messaging to communicate with it. Many chains, that feel like one. In other words, all the benefits of launching your own blockchain, plus the blazing fast, cheap, decentralized, and secure L1. - Avalanche L1s are consensus independent, which means full sovereignty over block production rules, MEV priority, etc. - Avalanche also uses a leaderless consensus model, which avoids the centralized sequencer dilemma and potential regulatory risks of L2s, as well as the admittedly more resilient, but similarly flawed, predictable scheduled leaders/rotating sequencer issues of competing L1s, the targeting of which have directly resulted in many of their network issues (a non-starter for major institutions and brands who need predictable stability and reliability). - Avalanche L1s are VM agnostic by design. Want to build with tools from SVM? EVM? Move? ZK proofs? Hyperliquid? With your own L1, the choice is yours. Zero compromise. Unlimited customization. - EVM compatibility specifically also means that Avalanche can enjoy direct compatibility with Ethereum tools, apps, and developer talent, while also paying tribute by contributing to EVM adoption and development as they both grow in tandem. That also translates to a direct low-friction line to hundreds of apps and billions in liquidity. Professional enterprises like Toyota, FIFA, and Maplestory, already proving out the benefits of Avalanche for big brands in the real world today, and this is only the beginning. It was important to me that whatever I do next I genuinely believe in, and Avalanche fits the bill and then some. It’s a privilege to be able to contribute to a project like this at such a critical stage. Add that to the pleasure of reuniting and working with @__arielle__ who was imo the top of the top talent during my time at Solana, and this was a no-brainer. Looking forward to this next chapter. 🔺 Avalanche. Build something serious.

@EvaVlaar you meant Basel ;) same idea though

The totalitarian European Union needs to be abolished. I don’t believe in reforms. If your foundation is rotten - as is the case in Brussels - you can rebuild the house on top of it all you want but it will still crumble. The Tower of Babel needs to be destroyed.

@alpha_pls you should stay tuned to @masscurrencies . Still in stealth, but huge things coming there (insurance included)

$1M protection is huge. One of the biggest issues we've had in DeFi is insurance for deposits. The burden has been on the user, and now it looks as though AAVE have worked out the insurance in the background. Packaging this into a nice native mobile app makes DeFi extremely competitive with existing fintech apps. I see no reason why regular non-crypto people wouldn't onboard to this savings product. Higher yield, same risk as a bank account, accessible to everyone globally = DeFi wins

Kraken is literally holding our funds hostage for 16 months now. It's a substantial amount, coming from reputable VCs. Our account wasn't flagged or anything. I used to love the product, but this feels fraudulent at this point. The email conversations are getting ridiculous, it's possible they might have liquidity issues?

After a big week of @krakenfx listing, Our CTO has provided a strong high level vision on where our tech, company, and mindset is and will go heading into 2026. @Conste11ation

@GetPyra Congrats on the launch guys! 🎉

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Solve et coagula - anything less is just scratching the surface.

“People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.”

@HadickM Plasma is already doing unsecure credit for stablecoin settlements, surprised that people buy it tbh, but oh well ;D

Under and unsecured credit remains one of the largest unsolved problems in crypto and for the growth of stablecoin linked payments

@zebulgar He actually had it all laid out… youtu.be/cHuqhQmc4ok?si…

Thinking of that Steve Jobs quote today "The computer is the bicycle for the mind" Wonder how ashamed/furious he would be that Apple has just completely missed the entire AI-wave Despite having the perfect form factor via Siri Alas

@ivanmtzivanov haha, yeahh, you know how much I dig greek culture though

@0xrandomrandom In management we sliced it down in simpler more tangible terms in order to facilitate its execution > vision/mission/values/corp culture ... and also make it easier to explain - you know what Im talking about 😜 Also, egregores was too hard to pronounce !

Egregores are considered autonomous psychic entities that can have a life and influence of their own, beyond the sum of the individuals who created them. In management, it took me a few hard lessons to learn that the group spirit must be protected at all costs.

The only way to increase the abundance of an asset which is limited in supply is to create a whole new asset which acts as a substitute. If you wanted to suppress a price, this would be the play. It’s not liberation, it’s suppression.

Accounting is actually really fun. Really, I mean really.

Great team, cool product. Best of luck, guys!

ZK proofs have been somewhat theoretical (both in terms of use cases and security), it's interesting to see solutions on the market, which finally hit all the right notes. There will be a wave of ZK-proof powered tech in the next few years..