Ehsash

It will significantly increase my opinion of @Anthropic if they do not back down, and honorably eat the consequences. (For those who are not aware, so far they have been maintaining the two red lines of "no fully autonomous weapons" and "no mass surveillance of Americans". Actually a very conservative and limited posture, it's not even anti-military. IMO fully autonomous weapons and mass privacy violation are two things we all want less of, so in my ideal world anyone working on those things gets access to the same open-weights LLMs as everyone else, and exactly nothing on top of that. Of course we won't get anywhere close to that world, but if we get even 10% closer to that world that's good, and if we get 10% further that's bad) CC @DarioAmodei firefly.social/post/bsky/pv7f…

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.

First agents got wallets. Now they’re launching tokens. Agent economy lives on Solana

In 2014, there was a vision: you can have permissionless, decentralized applications that could support finance, social media, ride sharing, governing organizations, crowdfunding, potentially create an entire alternative web, all on the backs of a suite of technologies. Ethereum: the blockchain. The world computer that could give any application its shared memory. Whisper: the data layer. Messages too expensive for a blockchain, that do no need consensus. Swarm: the storage layer. Store files for long-term access. Over the last five years, this core vision has at times become obscured, with various "metas" and "narratives" at various times taking center stage. But the core vision has never died. And in fact, the core technologies behind it are only growing stronger. Ethereum is now proof of stake. Ethereum is now scaling, it is now cheap, and it is on track to get more scalable and cheaper thanks to the power of ZK-EVMs. Thanks to ZK-EVM + PeerDAS, the "sharding" vision is effectively being realized. And L2s can give additional and different kinds of gains in speed on top. Whisper is now Waku ( docs.waku.org ), and already powers many applications (eg. railway.xyz, status.app just to name two I use). Even outside of Waku, the quality of decentralized messaging has increased. Fileverse (decentralized Google Docs and Sheets alternative: fileverse.io ) has seen massive gains in usability over the past year. IPFS is now highly performant and robust as a decentralized way of retrieving files, though IPFS alone does not solve the storage problem. Hence, there is still room to improve there. All of the prerequisites for the original web3 vision are here, in full force, and are continuing to get stronger over the next few years. Hence, it's time to buidl, and buidl decentralized. Fileverse is an excellent example of the right way to do things: * It uses Ethereum and Gnosis Chain for what they are good for: names, accounts and permissioning, document registration * It uses decentralized messaging and file storage to store documents and propagate changes to documents * The application passes the walkaway test: github.com/fileverse/walk… (even if Fileverse disappears, you can still retrieve them and even keep editing them with the open source UI) This is what we mean by "build a hammer that is a tool you buy once and it's yours, not a corposlop AI dishwasher that requires you to register for a google account and charges a subscription fee per month for extra washing modes, and probably spies on you and stops working if you get politically disfavored by a foreign country". If you think this criticism of corposlop is hyperbolic, well turns out, it's literally a concatenation of these three: * mein-mmo.de/en/user-buys-n… * theguardian.com/technology/202… * irishtimes.com/world/us/2025/… In 2014, decentralized applications were toys, hundreds of times more difficult to use in web2. In 2026, fileverse is now usable enough that I regularly write documents in it and send them to other people to collaborate. The decentralized renaissance is coming, and you can be part of making it happen.

If you’ve felt safer sending a message because you sent it on Signal, please support our work. As a nonprofit, Signal exists because of your donations. In the app: Settings > Donate On the web: Signal.org/donate

We had an amazing time at @monerotopia this year. Thank you to the organizers and all those involved. Pictured is #PirateChain team member Daniel, looking like he's just drank 15 Pirate Chain cups of #tequila. Thank you Daniel and Amy for all the hard work you put in at the event this weekend ❤️ #MoneroTopia $ARRR #zkSnarks #ZeroKnowledge

#PirateChain $ARRR - The ultimate z-coin 🔒 A clip from the recent #RogerVer and #TuckerCarlson interview discussing why #PrivacyCoins/z-coins are so important. @rogerkver @TuckerCarlson

Peaceful protest is NOT a crime. Peaceful protest is NOT a crime. Peaceful protest is NOT a crime. Peaceful protest is NOT a crime.

. 22 people have published more than 200 papers in 2024 (so far, we still have another six months to go) We have been doing some research on another project and saw something that we found interesting. We'd be interested to know what you think. In 2024, 22 authors (according to @Scopus) have published over 200 papers. The table below shows the details (we decided not to show author names at this time). The author who has published the most papers has authored 261 papers (as at 15 Jun 2024) meaning that he/she has published 1.56 papers every day this year (and counting). If we exclude weekends (everybody has to rest, right?), then they have published 2.18 papers every day. Serious question: Is it possible for anybody to contribute in a meaningful way (at least to warrant being at author) when they are publishing a paper every day?

🎉Milestone Alert: 200 Million TX🎉 Let's keep pushing forward and show the world how XNO can make it a better place. Together, we can revolutionize the way we transact! Song: XNO crypto, the dollar's out of date Credit: @Nano's YT videos, @helemen7py, I🙋‍♂️ #Nano $XNO #StudyNano

Just pick one #LetHimGoJoe

❤💛💚💙 It's an injustice that they jailed Tornado Cash Developer, Alex Pertsev. Putting him in Jail for 5 years, just because he wrote code. The judges are corrupt, and the financial system is corrupt. They want you to take a poop with the door open.

I sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Yellen regarding the unprecedented sanctioning of Tornado Cash. The growing adoption of decentralized technology will certainly raise new challenges for OFAC. Nonetheless, technology is neutral and the expectation of privacy is normal.⬇️

Spent most of the afternoon reading (and re-reading) the decision against Pertsev for co-developing Tornado Cash Not sure if it's the translation or not but, imo, this is the worst Court decision I've ever read So what's this mean for those building in web3? -🧵 /1

La privacidad es importante para tu seguridad personal. Magnifico @juanrallo en su último vídeo sobre los casos de @TornadoCash y @SamouraiWallet youtu.be/zQufermHxQ4

🚨 BREAKING: Tornado Cash developer, 31 year old Alexey Pertsev, is found guilty of money laundering $1.2B through his app by a Dutch court and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The police also seized all his assets including cars and crypto. They claim Tornado Cash was a tool used by criminals and hacking groups such as North Korean hacking group, Lazarus, and Alexey did nothing to stop it. Other Tornado Cash developer, Roman Storm, 34, was charged by the DOJ with money laundering and sanctions violations and is set to have trial in September.

❤️💛💚💙 🤡 Clown Judges sentence Alexey Pertsev to 5 years jail. 🌪️ He’s a Tornado Cash developer. Extreme injustice and disgusting. Privacy is a human right, and they made open source code. 💩 Demand the scum judges to leave the door open while they take a dump, since they’re so concerned about breaking this human right

End the persecution #LetHimGoJoe #FreeAssangeNOW

BREAKING: Julian Assange granted leave to appeal extradition to the US #FreeAssangeNOW crowdfunder.co.uk/p/free-assange crowdjustice.com/case/assangeap…

Live coverage from the Royal Courts of Justice of today's decisive Julian Assange court hearing #FreeAssangeNOW twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…