Laura Shin

.@NoelleinMadrid’s read on @bitsandbips this week is the clearest framing of the current macro situation I've heard: inflation wasn't coming down before Hormuz, the BLISS trade is structural, and the bond market is the boss. 🎧 Timestamps: 📈 02:00 Why the bond market is flashing fear while stocks party on 📊 04:30 The inflation signals nobody's watching, and why Hormuz relief won't save us 💬 09:00 The "BLISS trade" explained, and which market breaks first 🤖 12:30 The AI stock bubble question Wall Street refuses to ask 🔵17:05 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained 🏛️ 19:00 The Fed chair's real legacy: independence hero or inflation villain? 🔑 24:30 What the incoming Fed chair actually can and can't do 📉 27:30 The hawkish FOMC split the official vote tried to hide ₿ 31:00 Bitcoin's identity crisis: debasement hedge or just high-beta risk? ⚖️34:00 Will the CLARITY Act pass, and does crypto even need it anymore? 🔬38:30 The tokenization loophole that could break how markets work

.@kaiynne's framing of the EF situation on Uneasy Money is the one I keep coming back to: Ethereum is losing missionaries, not mercenaries. If that won’t change Vitalik’s mind on the EF’s direction, then what can? 🎧 youtu.be/Yuf6mQz4hhI

A synthetic SpaceX perp jumps to $216 before any IPO. Multiple senior Ethereum Foundation figures leave. Three DeFi hacks in four days. @kaiynne and @tayvano_ unpack it all on Uneasy Money. 🎧 Timestamps: 🚀 01:01 SpaceX pre-IPO perps go live on Hyperliquid — it opened at $150 and jumped to $216 📊 06:52 Were SpaceX IPO bankers watching — and was $150 too cheap? 🔒 10:40 Luca on hedging locked positions — and getting ADL’d at the bottom 💹22:25: Multichain Advisors: Get help navigating TGEs, go‑to‑market, BD and partnerships, capital markets advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more at multichainadv.com. 💙23:04: Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained. 🏛️ 24:51 The Ethereum Foundation exodus — who left and why it matters 💥 29:21 Kain’s theory: Ethereum’s “missionaries” were given hope — then lost it 🤖 40:47 Kain: the place you want to be right now gives you infinite inference tokens ⚙️ 43:09 Grok Build launches — and xAI's compute advantage over every other frontier lab 🔓 49:51 Three DeFi exploits in four days: Echo Protocol, Thorchain, and a bridge attack 🔐 54:41 How the Thorchain attacker extracted a raw key that should never have existed 🧠 01:00:00 Tay: AI wrote a full working attack demo during live incident response

@3x_QQQ @BStulberg That’s a judgment. Not data. The Whoop confirmed everything he felt. It’s just that he has more awareness of his body now than before when he drank alcohol all the time and so it was harder to discern its impact

@laurashin @BStulberg That’s the point…if he actually experienced that, which nobody said he didn’t, then he is in fact soft

Y'all—this optimization stuff can make you fragile. If you are in recovery then yes, of course, a few glasses of wine will mess up your week (or worse). If you get drunk then yes, I could see it messing up a day or two. But if going out to dinner and having a few glasses of wine throws you for this much of a loop then perhaps you've actually just become fragile? I mean how would Steven manage having a newborn, or really any age kid? Or just the general uncertainty and messiness of life? In my new book I tell the story of golfer JJ Spaun, who was up all night with his vomiting toddler. His Whoop sleep score would have been zero. The next morning, he went out and won the U.S. Open. Actual excellence (not the elaborate, performative internet variety) demands resilience. It controls the controllables, no doubt. But it also ensures you don't optimize yourself into fragility, which is an increasingly common trap and performance killer. bit.ly/4uCzeQ7

@punkpiratetv @VitalikButerin @ethereumfndn @aerugoettinea 🤣🤣🤣

@laurashin @VitalikButerin @ethereumfndn @aerugoettinea Musical chairs

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going. First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My input has been largely on technical questions. The board is in the process of expanding, and my own power within the org will continue to decrease, which is honestly what I want. The 2025 era brought many important improvements to EF and its ability to execute. Many issues were resolved, and EF continues to benefit from its improved efficiency and greater focus on concrete goals to this day. And so with those problems resolved, early this year, the largest remaining hole that I perceived was something different nagging at me: I would regularly spot people saying things like "vitalik says these beautiful things about ethereum needing to be decentralized, and have privacy, and be a sanctuary technology, but why do the EF's actions not reflect that?" Now, you may have been hearing something different. You may not have been sensing a feeling of crisis at all, and maybe were hearing people saying that finally we were taking execution and BD seriously and the main task for us is to keep going that way and be even better and faster. Then probably there is genuine difference between you and me, in what kinds of criticism I take most seriously, and what kinds of critics through their criticism are most able to make me feel pain. As an analogy, let's briefly switch over to a different domain. One belief you can have about Google is that it is a success story, and has brought a lot of good to humanity in organizing the world's information. Another belief you can have about Google is that they had a beautiful idealistic beginning, but at some point the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they slowly bit by bit completely abandoned the "don't be evil" slogan. My belief on Google specifically is probably somewhere between the two. BUT, if you had taken me back in time to ~2008, and offered me a button to press to make Google one or two standard deviations more "dogmatic", eg. give Richard Stallman permanent veto power over some key policies, I would immediately press it. Why? Because a choice for one company is not a choice for the world, or even one country. Google existed and exists in the context of a technology industry generally drifting away from early idealistic don't-be-evil roots and toward greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craven capitulation to (or worse, active participation in) government pressure for ideological control, surveillance and war. And so *one company* doing something different, positioning itself to be what George Bernard Shaw calls the Unreasonable Man, resisting the trend of the times, would have been better for freedom, balance of power and stability of society as a whole, than *all* large companies bending to dominant trends. This is a part of my version of pluralism. This line of thinking is not just mine, but I also is not too far off from what Aya and others had in mind with the Mandate. Now how does this all get to the role of the EF? EF is not a "center of Ethereum", rather EF is "one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes". We've always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem (and even within the EF) wanted us to be the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter. This is particularly important because EF is a limited organization, with limited resources and limited organizational capacity. The EF has only ~0.16% of all ETH (less than many other individual ETH holders), whereas among other blockchains it's common for "the central foundation" to have 10-50%. Fiscally, the EF was originally designed to fulfill a limited work scope defined in the token sale docs and other pre-launch materials (building the chain software; getting through Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity), which was fully completed in 2022; it was not designed to be an eternal steward. And so today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH). The EF focuses *specifically* on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect becoming outside of the EF. People of great technical talent, public respect and even alignment with the mission and CROPS being outside of the EF is in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital. This also means the EF taking opinionated stands culturally. This is all intended in cooperation with all other parts of ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the ethereum world highly respect CROPS and related values. But highly respecting is not the same as choosing to specialize and totally dedicate to a domain (Compare in a different domain: I think reducing animal cruelty is important, and I like vegan food, but am not full unconditional vegan myself) EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months. What are the guiding principles of this new form? Again, I am only one person, but I can give my answer from a technical perspective (there are also critical non-technical aspects). At the core, *Ethereum must be impressive*. We are living in an age of highly intelligent AI and all kinds of other technological acceleration. "Status quo EVM, with a hard fork or two a year to optimize for short-term needs of users" is not interesting. To some, "impressive" means: 250ms latency and 1M TPS. I think Ethereum trying to go that route is a mistake. Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose. I think Ethereum should scale. But I think Ethereum should strive the hardest to be deeply impressive in a different dimension: the CROPS dimension. This means things like: * Provably bug-free Ethereum. This is a goal that all cybersecurity researchers would have thought is absurd and impossible, up until roughly 6 months ago. Now, it's on the cusp of being possible, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification. So we should be frontrunners in doing this. * Available chain consensus. Ethereum is, and with lean consensus will cotninue to be, the ONLY chain that has both (i) traditional-BFT style properties that it's safe under asynchrony up to a high level of fault tolerance, and (ii) the bitcoin PoW-style property that under synchrony it's safe up to 49% attackers. As far as I can tell, literally no other chain has this or is planning for it; bitcoin goes for (ii) only and most other chains go for (i) only. Some will remember I fought hard for this, Unreasonably insisting that it is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline. It's OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It's not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash. * Intermediary minimization. The fact that smart contract wallets, protocols like railgun, etc have to send transactions through intermediaries to get included onchain is honestly embarrassing, and it's a constant point of fragility. Hence the work on FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and 7701 and years of work before) to make transaction sending intermediary-minimized with public mempool and strong inclusion properties, in a truly general-purpose way, that covers not just eg. secp256r1, but also privacy protocols and much more. Kohaku is pushing intermediary minimization at the user layer, pulling Ethereum away from the dystopian status quo world where our wallets don't even verify the chain, send our private data out to a dozen third-party servers, and toward a brighter CROPS future. Some of these goals are Unreasonable - maybe Ethereum would be "fine" getting only 50% of the way - what if we depend on intermediaries, but make it easy to switch? But going 50% of the way would not make Ethereum Deeply Impressive in the CROPS way. So we push for 100%. Fortunately all these goals are compatible with high TPS, this is a major focus of research (esp. on scaling the state). Well-designed L2s can also help, especially L2s optimized for specific applications (eg. high-volume trading, privacy...). These goals are even compatible with significantly lower slot times, thanks to Raul's work on erasure-coded P2P, and many other optimizations. The most high-value "product" of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH. The types of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH, and most of the remainder is ~$40m of onchain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated for some open-source biotech or software or hardware initiative. That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset - *necessary* aspects even - that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support. EF will be a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one - in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend - but a longer-lasting one, and one suited to making sure that ethereum brings something meaningful to the world. We are grateful to all those inside and outside the EF who are helping to make this happen.

@x3mity @drgurner @fede_intern forbes.com/sites/laurashi…

@laurashin @drgurner @fede_intern x.com/i/status/19300… Wheres the evidence? Or trust me bro?

Pattern Recognition is also the form of intelligence that causes the most stress. You will see things that others do not. You'll feel crazy. Things will be *so obvious* to you, and others will just deny it.

@wmperk @bitsandbips It has its own channels now. We will be releasing it there instead of on Unchained. So sign up/subscribe!

@laurashin @bitsandbips Wait. Where is @bitsandbips going?

In a few weeks, half of you are going to DM us asking "wait, where did @bitsandbips go?" Don't be that person. linktr.ee/bitsandbips

"He can say he wants a lower balance sheet. The markets aren't going to let him have one." @NoelleinMadrid’s read on Warsh's first Fed meetings — with @Steven_Ehrlich on @bitsandbips. 🎧 youtu.be/uxFr3PaZsQQ

@x3mity @drgurner @fede_intern Nope

@laurashin @drgurner @fede_intern I have seen numerous interviews with you stating you have never bought or held any crypto

@NoelleInMadrid @bitsandbips People will spend hours researching crypto… and still pay trading fees without thinking twice 👀 0 trading fees. $50 BTC bonus. 20% off Coinbase One. So what’s it really—habit, distrust, or just inertia? Thanks to @coinbase for sponsoring Unchained 👇 coinbase.com/unchained

.@NoelleinMadrid’s read on @bitsandbips this week is the clearest framing of the current macro situation I've heard: inflation wasn't coming down before Hormuz, the BLISS trade is structural, and the bond market is the boss. 🎧 Timestamps: 📈 02:00 Why the bond market is flashing fear while stocks party on 📊 04:30 The inflation signals nobody's watching, and why Hormuz relief won't save us 💬 09:00 The "BLISS trade" explained, and which market breaks first 🤖 12:30 The AI stock bubble question Wall Street refuses to ask 🔵17:05 Coinbase: Get 20% off the first year of your Coinbase One annual plan at coinbase.com/unchained 🏛️ 19:00 The Fed chair's real legacy: independence hero or inflation villain? 🔑 24:30 What the incoming Fed chair actually can and can't do 📉 27:30 The hawkish FOMC split the official vote tried to hide ₿ 31:00 Bitcoin's identity crisis: debasement hedge or just high-beta risk? ⚖️34:00 Will the CLARITY Act pass, and does crypto even need it anymore? 🔬38:30 The tokenization loophole that could break how markets work

The BLISS trade framing from @NoelleinMadrid on @bitsandbips is the macro concept I'll be coming back to: the government put under markets is now structural, not cyclical. No administration gets voted out for spending. 🎧 youtu.be/N_jL4m8mtxo

@wmougayar @AI_Labs__ Oh please. You’re the one who veered from professionalism. You want to dish the heat but can’t take it

@laurashin @AI_Labs__ Using foul language is crossing the line and reveals a lack of professionalism. I never called you names, but focused on responding to your opinions. Asking is not begging. Not responding is rude. I’m done.

One additional thought on Ethereum: Another threat to the chain is that it may fare less well in the AI agent race than Solana or Base on purely technical issues — speed, fees — at the very least on volume (I mean, it already is), maybe not for higher value transactions. The AI agent area is fairly soon (for sure in the next few years) going to outstrip the number of human transactions. And what if Base launches its own token, Coinbase spins it off as a decentralized chain rather than an L2 and so the AI agent activity on Base isn’t even generating demand for ETH as a gas token on Base? Also throw in the huge demand there’s going to be for stablecoins. How does value accrue to ETH in that world? I know I made a lot of leaps there, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from covering crypto these last 11 years, it’s that things are always changing and they can change quickly. And with so many players coming at this with a competitive spirit that the Ethereum Foundation disdains, there could be a big shakeup. Just to be clear, I think Ethereum is strong in a lot of ways and that the EF is putting its attention on a lot of smart things: most decentralized, facing quantum threat head on, incorporating privacy, focusing back on the L1 … there’s many reasons to be hopeful. And it all looked even better with Tomasz as ED. (Er, co-ED 😂) But these departures (with more to come) and the lack of attention to the token are concerning. Enough people care that I think new organizations and people will spring up. Whether they will be enough to counteract that EF’s inertia on some issues remains to be seen.

@x3mity @drgurner @fede_intern I did buy a bunch back in 2015

@laurashin @drgurner @fede_intern Thats not pattern recognition you described. And you were obsessed with bitcoin but didnt buy any? Wtf is up with that?

You cannot understand crypto in 2026 without understanding macro. If your favorite analyst can't explain what the Fed did last week, unfollow them.

@BStulberg Sure; if you want to judge him for his own experience, go ahead. But I don’t think it’s his mindset. I think he’s just describing the impact that it had on his body.

Seems very fragile to me is all. I dunno, I’ve worked with some of the top performers in the world and they certainly are able to navigate all sorts of feelings. But to each their own. One person’s sensitivity is another’s somatic obsession. (Also, I don’t know how anyone with this mindset possibly has a kid or cares for an ailing family member!)

@BStulberg If that’s what he experienced I would trust what he saying about how it affected him.

@laurashin And, barring an allergy, you think having 2-3 drinks made him feel bad enough that it ruined 3 days?

To how his body feels. Before he probably had a baseline level of inflammation and numbness because there were a lot of inputs that didn’t make his body feel great so he was less aware of any one of them. But then cutting out the alcohol gave him a certain level of clarity and awareness of how his body feels without these inputs and so when he added it back it made him more aware of how it affected him. It’s very similar to an elimination diet

@laurashin Sensitized him to what?