@andrewchen Honestly who cares about the difference though?
Just make something your users want. Don’t force AI because of your anxiety.
English
SocialFi Panda
1.1K posts
how to tell the difference between AI-native products versus when AI is bolted on after the fact...
fake AI products:
- main AI feature is an AI button with sparkle icons
- chat pane where you can ask LLM questions
- no memory/personalization beyond one chat
- users try it once and go back to using the app the "normal" way
- AI is optional not essential to the product working
AI native products:
- you can spend $100 or $1000 via tokens as you use the product
- it gets substantially better every 6 months as base models improve
- core workflow is impossible without AI, not just enhanced by it
- creates behavior change when users try it
what else should be on this list?
English
@theprivacycash The stablecoin supercycle must have privacy.
English
Someone needs to create a prediction market on wen Privacy Cash USDC pool breaks $1M TVL.
Bigger TVL. More privacy.
Wen 1,000,000 USDC?
English
Private send limit increased: 5 → 10 recipients.
Privacy, easier than ever.
English
Among many other things, in retrospect it’ll be obvious that 2026 was the year Vitalik started founder mode.
I have high hope that eventually things will turn around for Ethereum and maybe this is the year.
vitalik.eth@VitalikButerin
There have recently been some discussions on the ongoing role of L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of two facts: * L2s' progress to stage 2 (and, secondarily, on interop) has been far slower and more difficult than originally expected * L1 itself is scaling, fees are very low, and gaslimits are projected to increase greatly in 2026 Both of these facts, for their own separate reasons, mean that the original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path. First, let us recap the original vision. Ethereum needs to scale. The definition of "Ethereum scaling" is the existence of large quantities of block space that is backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum - that is, block space where, if you do things (including with ETH) inside that block space, your activities are guaranteed to be valid, uncensored, unreverted, untouched, as long as Ethereum itself functions. If you create a 10000 TPS EVM where its connection to L1 is mediated by a multisig bridge, then you are not scaling Ethereum. This vision no longer makes sense. L1 does not need L2s to be "branded shards", because L1 is itself scaling. And L2s are not able or willing to satisfy the properties that a true "branded shard" would require. I've even seen at least one explicitly saying that they may never want to go beyond stage 1, not just for technical reasons around ZK-EVM safety, but also because their customers' regulatory needs require them to have ultimate control. This may be doing the right thing for your customers. But it should be obvious that if you are doing this, then you are not "scaling Ethereum" in the sense meant by the rollup-centric roadmap. But that's fine! it's fine because Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on L1, with large planned increases to its gas limit this year and the years ahead. We should stop thinking about L2s as literally being "branded shards" of Ethereum, with the social status and responsibilities that this entails. Instead, we can think of L2s as being a full spectrum, which includes both chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum with various unique properties (eg. not just EVM), as well as a whole array of options at different levels of connection to Ethereum, that each person (or bot) is free to care about or not care about depending on their needs. What would I do today if I were an L2? * Identify a value add other than "scaling". Examples: (i) non-EVM specialized features/VMs around privacy, (ii) efficiency specialized around a particular application, (iii) truly extreme levels of scaling that even a greatly expanded L1 will not do, (iv) a totally different design for non-financial applications, eg. social, identity, AI, (v) ultra-low-latency and other sequencing properties, (vi) maybe built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution or other "non-computationally-verifiable" features * Be stage 1 at the minimum (otherwise you really are just a separate L1 with a bridge, and you should just call yourself that) if you're doing things with ETH or other ethereum-issued assets * Support maximum interoperability with Ethereum, though this will differ for each one (eg. what if you're not EVM, or even not financial?) From Ethereum's side, over the past few months I've become more convinced of the value of the native rollup precompile, particuarly once we have enshrined ZK-EVM proofs that we need anyway to scale L1. This is a precompile that verifies a ZK-EVM proof, and it's "part of Ethereum", so (i) it auto-upgrades along with Ethereum, and (ii) if the precompile has a bug, Ethereum will hard-fork to fix the bug. The native rollup precompile would make full, security-council-free, EVM verification accessible. We should spend much more time working out how to design it in such a way that if your L2 is "EVM plus other stuff", then the native rollup precompile would verify the EVM, and you only have to bring your own prover for the "other stuff" (eg. Stylus). This might involve a canonical way of exposing a lookup table between contract call inputs and outputs, and letting you provide your own values to the lookup table (that you would prove separately). This would make it easy to have safe, strong, trustless interoperability with Ethereum. It also enables synchronous composability (see: ethresear.ch/t/combining-pr… and ethresear.ch/t/synchronous-… ). And from there, it's each L2's choice exactly what they want to build. Don't just "extend L1", figure out something new to add. This of course means that some will add things that are trust-dependent, or backdoored, or otherwise insecure; this is unavoidable in a permissionless ecosystem where developers have freedom. Our job should make to make it clear to users what guarantees they have, and to build up the strongest Ethereum that we can.
English
Last month, Privacy Cash:
✅ $66M+ monthly volume
✅ Launched private swaps
✅ Launched private liquid staking ($2M+ peak stORE)
✅ Launched multisend
✅ Hosted a privacy hackathon track
✅ Reduced 50% API calls, fixed tx latency
✅ Secured TBA partnerships 👀
Privacy/acc
English
@theprivacycash That's good tips. Need to follow good opsecs when using privacy pools for even better privacy.
English
Common Tips to Improve Your Privacy When Using Privacy Pools
✅ Privacy is money at rest. Deposit more than you need right now and leave funds in the pool over time.
✅ Avoid 1:1 timing and amounts. Never withdraw the same amount immediately after depositing.
✅ Stick to common denominations. Use popular amounts (e.g. 10 SOL, 100 USDC) to blend into the crowd.
✅ Add noise with swaps. Swap a portion of your balance into other tokens before withdrawing.
✅ Use pools with large anonymity sets. A pool with just one transaction per day offers no real privacy.
English
@lyronctk Money movement per year is way bigger than global GDP per year though.
Cross border payment alone is 9x global GDP, let alone other payments.
Kinda show you how large Stripe still can be.
English
For every $70 spent in the world, $1 is spent through Stripe. Wow.
Paul Graham@paulg
Stripe's new frontpage shows the scope of their ambition. A ticker for percent of global GDP! This is not a gimmick. Patrick and John have always thought in these terms.
English
@masonnystrom Would argue the same even for existing categories with new tech inflection point (mobile, AI)
youtu.be/3N3TnaViyjk
YouTube
English
This is why the idea of "founder market fit" is often much less important in companies that create or build in net new categories
Camila Russo@CamiRusso
Hayden Adams, mechanical engineer fired from Siemens -- created Uniswap Rune Christensen, biochemist founder of a recruiting firm -- created MakerDAO/Sky Stani Kulechov, law degree -- founded Aave Shayne Coplan, computer science dropout -- founded Polymarket None of the founders of DeFi's pillar protocols had any previous finance experience. (Bullish)
English
Just made private deposits and withdrawals ~3s faster.
Private swaps ~6s faster.
Privacy, accelerated. ⚡️
English
Build privacy-enabled apps on Solana with the Privacy Cash SDK.
Launch a new app, or integrate our SDK to bring privacy to your existing users.
Grand Prize: $3k
Best integration to existing app: $1.5k
Honorable Mentions: 3x $500
Solana@solana
Privacy Hack starts Jan 12 🔒 Build private payments, privacy tooling, or anything with privacy on Solana $70,000 in prizes across 3 tracks 👇
English
Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world.
We will grow into $1B TVL in 2 years at current growth rate.
Shield your Solana tokens. Join our privacy movement. To the billions.
English
WE ARE IN MAINNET! We just did the first confidential USDT transfer on Ethereum. Our team cooked really hard to ship in 2025 as promised. Full details next week!
Zama@zama
JUST IN: The Zama Protocol is on mainnet. We just completed the first confidential stablecoin (cUSDT) transfer on Ethereum.
English
This is a 9 month old company, even the founders haven't vested 💀
Manus@ManusAI
Manus is entering the next chapter: we’re joining forces with Meta to take general agents to the next level. Full story on our blog: manus.im/blog/manus-joi…
English
Another overnight success with ten years in the making.
Starting 2015, he founded and failed a bunch of apps. Biggest success only hits ~$1M ARR.
Eventually, he pivoted into Monica in 2023, found PMF and then eventually launched Manus.
Survive long enough & adapt to get lucky.
Red Xiao@Red_Xiao_
Today marks a moment I'll remember for the rest of my life. When we started Manus, few believed that general AI agents could work. We were told it was too early, too ambitious, too hard. But we kept building. Through the doubts, the setbacks, and the countless nights wondering if we were chasing the impossible. We weren't. This isn't just an acquisition. It's validation that the future we've been building toward is real, and it's arriving faster than anyone expected. But this is not the end. The era of AI that doesn't just talk, but acts, creates, and delivers, is only beginning. And now, we get to build it at a scale we never could have imagined. To everyone who believed in us before it was obvious: thank you. The best is yet to come.
English
I’d argue most of them won’t be very honest with you. There were a couple of apps I built that friends were actively using just because I built it.
The most famous example is SocialCam built by Michael Seibal. After the company got acquired, his friend Steve Huffman only told him then “thank god I don’t need to use it anymore now”.
Build for your friends is fine, but need a higher bar of honesty from you (does it scale to non-friends quickly).
English
u can never go wrong building for urself and ur friends.
u understand this group of ppl better than u understand anyone else. and u get the raw honesty from them that u can’t get anywhere else.
founders often worry that their and their friends’ problems r niche, but u’d be surprised often a solution for 5 people translates to a solution for 5 million.
Krish Shah@top_jeet_
Selling to your friends is the ultimate hack. If they buy and retain, your company might have legs. If not then you either have fake friends or a fake product. pmxliquid.
English
@Austen I remember Evan Spiegel said the same when turning down the Facebook $3B offer.
When you have found your life’s work, you won’t walk away for being acquired for 600x P/E.
English
10 hours later and I’m still wrapping my mind around turning down a $1.2 billion acquisition with $2m in revenue
Jack Zhang@awxjack
Stripe offered to acquire us for $1.2 billion when we had $2M in revenue. Today, we've raised $330M at an $8B valuation and reached $1B ARR. We could've died three times during this journey. This is the story I've never told anyone before:
English
English
Exactly 3 years ago, @ilmoi and I incorporated our first startup: Tensor Labs.
Our first product, the @tensor_hq NFT marketplace, quickly grew to 80% market share and surpassed $1B in GMV.
Our second product, @VECTORDOTFUN, did nearly $1B in GMV in <1 year since it launched last November.
Today, Coinbase is acquiring us and integrating the Vector tech into the Coinbase app.
We're excited to be joining THE crypto company of the world and building out DEX trading for all of Coinbase, starting with Solana.
Really proud of the entire Tensor team for executing flawlessly, and our investors for believing in us when it was just two guys in a Staples co-working office.
Onwards and upwards 🚀
Coinbase 🛡️@coinbase
We’re doubling down on @Solana. Coinbase is acquiring @VECTORDOTFUN, an onchain trading platform built on Solana, whose tech will plug directly into Coinbase to help better serve one of crypto’s most active ecosystems.
English
First product on the @FundlDotFun launchpad is launching tomorrow. 🐣
Buckle up mfers, we're bringing Kickstarter to @solana 🧵👇
English