Marc

Introducing SubQ - a major breakthrough in LLM intelligence. It is the first model built on a fully sub-quadratic sparse-attention architecture (SSA), And the first frontier model with a 12 million token context window which is: - 52x faster than FlashAttention at 1MM tokens - Less than 5% the cost of Opus Transformer-based LLMs waste compute by processing every possible relationship between words (standard attention). Only a small fraction actually matter. @subquadratic finds and focuses only on the ones that do. That's nearly 1,000x less compute and a new way for LLMs to scale.

@brian_armstrong Besides their hefty fees and poor customer support, this is the last you needed to stop using Coinbase.

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future. Why now Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both. First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth. Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day. All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core. What this means To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice? - Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles. - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs. To those who are affected I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done. All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information. To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements. Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters. How we move forward To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together: Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it. The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission. Brian

Facts.

🥶🧊

Not cool pants @AnthropicAI

I always wondered how @Shazam works. If you are on the same boat, this is for you: perthirtysix.com/how-the-heck-d…

this argument lands better for "why designers matter in an AI age" than simply saying "taste"

Introducing Privacy Boost: onchain privacy SDK for enterprise. The first privacy offering for @Optimism. Now live on OP Mainnet. Enterprises need regulatory-friendly privacy.

Something structural is happening in crypto perps the DEX/CEX perp ratio went from 6.3% to 18.7% in 2025. tripled in one year @HyperliquidX alone is now 18% of @binance perps volume. it was 2% in october 2024 $2.95T in 2025 with 11 employees. 2x coinbase, 12x robinhood binance's perps volume is down 24% over the past 12 months. hyperliquid's is up 75%

@claudeai Not again.

Cooks are gonna cook.

it has arrived

Good read newsletter.eng-leadership.com/p/code-review-… @gregorojstersek

Just finished reading this blog on agent harnesses. Man, it’s one of the clearest, most practical takes I’ve seen why they’re here to stay and why memory isn’t some optional plugin.

Someone just dropped an open source alternative to Claude Managed Agents. Install the CLI, create an agent, assign a task. It automatically shows up on the board like any other team member. It works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw and OpenCode.. 100% Open Source.

you'll need to explicitly prompt Claude Code to use it, but the Monitor Tool is super powerful e.g. "start my dev server and use the MonitorTool to observe for errors"

solana validator costs just dropped 98% from $60k/year to $1k/year through the VAT system. minimum profitable stake went from 4,850 SOL to 450 SOL. jito, marinade, and lido control ~40% of staked SOL charging 5-9% service fees. anyone with 450 SOL ($37k) can now capture full 6-8% staking yield minus $1k costs instead of paying those fees. liquid staking on solana is about to hit a fee compression wall it cannot survive in current form. 8-12 weeks into the new economics and validator count still at 2,400. if it doesn't break 5,000 by Q3 the bottleneck was never cost, it was technical complexity. that answer matters more than SOL price

LLM hallucinations are a massive roadblock to enterprise adoption of AI. Swift, UBS, Euroclear, & 20+ major organizations advanced a solution to the $58B+ annual corporate actions problem by leveraging Chainlink to reduce AI hallucination risk. LINK everything.

Don’t be exit liquidity for Trump’s cartel: They deposited $484M of $WLFI tokens to borrow USDC. Those loans will likely never be repaid. Instead, when Trump leaves office, or even after the midterms if Republicans lose, $WLFI will dump, and Dolomite will be stuck with BAD DEBT. As a result, USDC lending rates are at 13.5%. But even that APY isn’t worth the risk of not being able to withdraw your deposit. Everyone knows this. No surprise Dolomite's $DOLO trades at just $15M market cap because it's a turkey getting ready for Thanksgiving.

Can relate