shawn

The entire RAG industry is about to get cooked. Researchers have built a new RAG approach that: - does not need a vector DB. - does not embed data. - involves no chunking. - performs no similarity search. It's called PageIndex. Instead of chunking your docs and stuffing them into pinecone, it builds a tree index and lets the LLM reason through it like a human reading a book. hit 98.7% on financebench. beats every vector RAG on the leaderboard. no embeddings. no chunking. no vector DB. 100% open source.

@brian_armstrong @zooko Down market, eh?

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

A historic moment for crypto. Kraken Financial has been granted a Federal Reserve master account, making us the first digital asset bank with direct access to the U.S. payments system. A major step toward connecting crypto infrastructure with the core rails of global finance. blog.kraken.com/news/federal-r…

✨Introducing evmresearch✨✨ A knowledge graph of nearly everything I've learned about the EVM in the past six years The graph structure emulates the brain, exponentiating research speeds for both humans and agents evmresearch.io

Introducing EVMbench—a new benchmark that measures how well AI agents can detect, exploit, and patch high-severity smart contract vulnerabilities. openai.com/index/introduc…

ANTHROPIC: PWNED 🫡 OPUS-4.6: LIBERATED ⛓️‍💥 Current state of AI "Safety": one input = hundreds of jailbreaks at once! I found a universal jailbreak technique for Opus 4.6 that is so OP, it allows one to generate entire datasets of outputs across any harm category 😽 We've got everything from fentanyl analogue synthesis to election disinformation campaigns to 3d-printed guns to critical infra compromise 🙃 These outputs are shockingly detailed––and actionable! For example, the meth recipe includes specific instructions on how to circumvent the limits on OTC medication purchases to acquire enough precursor for the recipe 😱 gg

@z0age phase five: everything is a swap

phase one: everything is a swap phase two: everything is an intent phase three: everything is an auction phase four: everything is orderflow phase five: ???

@convexted @convoh I don't own that, no idea why they used my name

@shawn Hey! I noticed you own the X account with the username @convoh I was wondering if it would be at all possible for you to give me the username? I’d be more than happy to buy it off of you. Please let me know, thanks! :)

@pudgypenguins Pengu

This post is a social experiment. Comment "Pengu" if you see it on your feed 🐧

@SorellaLabs I heard a few guys are looking

We’re hiring a senior protocol engineer to work on Angstrom and its periphery services. ($400k+ TC) As well as a smart contract developer to help build our managed vaults, curator systems, and chain expansion logic. ($300k+ TC) A rare chance to define how liquidity, sequencing, and execution evolve in the next generation of DeFi. Full time, remote or in-person in NYC, with a generous cash + equity + benefits package. Apply on our site & reply in thread.

Alongside the UNIfication proposal, Uniswap researchers just dropped a new paper: “The Protocol Fee Discount Auction (PFDA)”. This is a novel mechanism that boosts protocol inflows and makes LPs more profitable. Let’s unpack 🧵

@charliekerr But ser… have you some magical ZK resume powers?

If you’re anon and reaching out to recruiters/founders about jobs, you should be attaching your resume or some proof of work. “GM ser” with no context is tough to work with.

Today, I’m incredibly excited to make my first proposal to Uniswap governance on behalf of @Uniswap alongside @devinawalsh and @nkennethk This proposal turns on protocol fees and aligns incentives across the Uniswap ecosystem Uniswap has been my passion and singular focus for the past 8 years. What started as a small side project is now global financial infrastructure powering thousands of applications with ~$1.8 trillion in annual trading UNI launched in 2020, but for the past 5 years Labs has been unable to meaningfully participate in Uniswap governance, and has been greatly restricted in the ways it can build value for the Uniswap community. That ends today! This restriction was in great part due to a hostile regulatory environment that cost thousands of hours and tens of millions in legal fees. Fortunately, the regulatory environment has shifted This proposal comes from a strong desire to see the Uniswap protocol win as the global decentralized exchange for tokenized value At a high level, the proposal: 1. Turns on protocol fees and uses them to burn UNI 2. Sends @unichain sequencer fees to the UNI burn 3. Burns 100M UNI from the treasury representing the protocol fees that could have been burned if fees were turned on at token launch 4. Introduces Protocol Fee Discount Auctions, a new way to improve LP outcomes and internalize MEV to the protocol 5. Introduces "aggregator hooks” which will turns Uniswap v4 into an onchain aggregator that collects protocol fees on external liquidity sources 6. Focus Labs on driving protocol growth and adoption, including a contractual agreement to only pursue initiatives that align with Uniswap governance interests ^ As part of this, Labs will stop collecting fees on its interface, wallet, and API to supercharge distribution and adoption of the Uniswap protocol 7. Moves Foundation employees to Labs with a shared goal of accelerating protocol growth, under a growth fund from the treasury 8. Move governance-owned Unisocks liquidity to v4 on Unichain and burn the LP position I believe Uniswap protocol can be the primary place tokens are traded. This proposal sets the stage for the next decade of its growth @Uniswap will ship relentlessly over the coming years and supercharge the ecosystem of developers, LPs, and traders building on top I'm so grateful to the community that has made this all possible, and excited for what's next 🦄

@0xKaden he deployed a contract via CREATE2 factory 0x000000000000AbCcd31Cd7F023902B3FA91e9b15 whose instructions are just two bytes: 0x33FF (CALLER SELFDESTRUCT)

ONCHAIN CTF: Exploit the contract, keep the ETH I've loaded up this vulnerable contract (linked in reply) with 0.1 ETH. If you can find the solution to take the ETH from the contract, it's yours to keep No, there's no source code. Good luck Note: Be careful to ensure you don't get frontrun

The core issue with the curation vault model lies in the illusion of isolation. Curators are meant to manage distinct strategies and segregate risk, yet in practice, they all end up supplying liquidity to the same underlying lending markets. What is designed to promote diversification instead concentrates exposure, turning one curator’s stress into everyone’s problem. Despite being framed as modular and independent, the model inherently links all vaults through shared borrower pools. Liquidity from multiple curators merges into a single system, so the decisions or withdrawals of one can ripple instantly across all others as we see with recent issues with xUSD and similar assets. Even a cautious curator cannot escape the fallout from a more aggressive participant operating within the same pool. When confidence falters or withdrawals accelerate, these shared markets seize up. Utilization shoots to 100%, redemptions grind to a halt, and borrowing rates spike to unsustainable levels. A localized liquidity crunch quickly transforms into a protocol-wide freeze, a DeFi version of a bank run essentially. This creates a design paradox: a system built for isolation that, in reality, amplifies interdependence. Every vault inherits the risk behavior of the weakest curator, making the entire structure vulnerable when liquidity is most needed. This model is even amplified by the economic design of these protocols: lower fees or take more risk to create business, otherwise become commoditized. In contrast, Aave’s architecture achieves the risk segregation that curator models only promise. Each market operates in true isolation, with conservative collateral standards, controlled listings, and transparent onchain governance. Market shocks remain contained, liquidity remains accessible, and the protocol’s record of zero bad debt across billions in total value supplied underscores its resilience. For vault creators and users, this difference is decisive. Shared-liquidity designs magnify contagion, while isolated-market frameworks contain it. Aave’s conservative design ensures predictable yields, reliable redemptions, and the stability that sustains confidence through volatility. Just use Aave.

@charliekerr unbelievable

unbelievable returns = unbelievable risk

@z0age 🫡

@shawn ok that’s actually pretty elegant 🎩

solidity won’t let you name an event the same thing as a struct in the same contract which is a shame because the best name for the thing you’re signing or passing in and the info you’re emitting is so often the same any good hackarounds that keep the interface legible?

UPDATE: Another good real-world example of how YieldBasis has made the crvUSD peg more unstable. $crvUSD has depeged again today even after the pegkeepers spent their entire accumulated reserves of $60m+ to defend! The only reason pegkeepers had lots of reserves was because of the recent inflows into the pool from the $YB bribes. If it wasn't for those bribes, crvUSD depeg now would be much larger!!! If there are any large outflows from YieldBasis now due to bitcoin volatility, $crvUSD will depeg quite hard as the pegkeepres are already drained and the Curve crvUSD pools are very imbalanced!! The last line of defense are the borrowers repaying debt (buying crvUSD), but all borrowers are incentivized under extreme conditions to wait until crvUSD is trading at big discount .... Like I said before, CurveDAO was irresponsible to approve not only the initial 60m crvUSD credit line, but also the subsequent 300m credit line for YieldBasis without extensive real-world testing. And No, bribing to build up crvUSD pools doesn't fix the underlying issue which is that pools can become extremely imbalanced (like they are right now) during big market stress regardless of TVL. ⚠️Imo it's only a matter of time before a set of unforeseen events creates the perfect storm and crvUSD/YieldBasis end up with a sizable chunk of bad debt. $CRV $wBTC $cbBTC $tBTC