FHEthereum

The State of CT ​ > Defi TVL 40% down from 2025 peak > RWA TVL at ATH ~$20B > Stablecoins MC at ATH > Tether + Circle eats 44%+ of on-chain fees (daily) > Vibes at ATL, nothing much is happening on-chain > Speculative yields dried out, no standout points system, no high fixed yields > Only seeing OpenClaw, Seedance 2.0, Privacy, and Peter Steinberger (founder of OpenClaw) on the timeline > X gradually killing CT biz (Infofi, claim-fee token launcher, agents/slops) > Peter saying he almost deleted OpenClaw because of crypto community ​ Broader adoption is happening while CT is leaving. ​ Literally nothing to do besides playing the long game here.

AI agents are coming on-chain. ERC-8004 is an early look at how identity and trust might work.

Consensus HK this year is pretty different from last year (+ sharing HK food gems below) - Consensus is usually filled with institutions, family offices, and projects wanting to raise. Discussions centered around RWAs, institutional adoption, regulations, and occasional interesting narratives. - Last year occasional interesting narrative was AI agent. But, this year it's Privacy and AI. - As payments, stablecoins, tokenized securities grew in adoption, compliance, security, privacy, and the implementation of AI on blockchain became the next things on the agenda. - Less degen AI agents vibes, more institutional adoption vibes this time around. Price down, fundamentals up, excitement depends on who you're talking to. (Personal Note — food gems below for those who're interested) Food & Restaurants Kam’s Roast Goose — long queue; get the char siu (takeout is fine) Yat Lok Lin Heung Lau — classic old-school dim sum Tim Ho Wan Sun Hing Dim Sum — great late-night dim sum One Dim Sum — more foreigner-friendly Australia Dairy Company Yee Shun Milk Company Mak’s Noodles — iconic shrimp wonton noodles Tsim Chai Kee — Michelin-recommended Kau Kee — legendary beef brisket noodles Keung Kee Hing Kee Restaurant — claypot rice Kwan Kee — claypot rice Oi Man Sang — anything stir-fried is good Lau Hing Kee — pan-fried buns Lau Haa — hotpot Tung Po — good for bigger groups Ho Lee Fook — slightly higher-end local delicacies Fuk Lam Moon Farm House Restaurant — Causeway Bay Jimmy’s Kitchen — classic HK institution 27 Kebab House — non-Cantonese food fix Desserts & Sweets Bakehouse — get the egg tarts Mammy Pancake Chau Kee — HK-style French toast Auntie Sweet Vision Bakery (Central) Messina Ice Cream Snack Baby Gelato Sundazed — matcha latte + soft-serve Healthworks — Central MTR; healthy dim sum + exotic herbal drinks (sea coconut). This is my personal fav on quick healthy food/drinks. Bars & Cocktails Bar Leone — Asia’s No.1; queue from ~4:30 PM COA — previously Asia’s No.1 Penicillin Zzura Maggie Choo’s — live music & vibes

All of sudden, x402 and ERC-8004 will start to get a ton more attention. No brainer as to why, but its very good that Ethereum has been working towards solutions for agentic commerce for awhile. People will be flying about agent-to-agent payments and what's to come. Reality is different. Its slower. Until we get actual micropayment functionality in-browser, the state of agentic micropayments is still in the distance. Likely late 2026, 2027, but who knows with these time frames. Halliday, NEAR, Allora, Chainlink, Virtuals, Bittensor Circle, and many others have been in front of this wave as well. This is a multi-year category with most progress coming later in the decade, but when it hits, its going to hit hard.

The observation so far is that - There are several privacy camps -- people who really believe in zk, people who believe in FHE, or in MPC or TEE. Each camp believes their combination of tech or their tech might be more scalable than another. - The goal of many privacy infra players is to get to “shared private state”. From user POV, we’ll be able to do things like we would on normal public L1s while staying anonymous and/or confidential. - Infra players compete to build scalable infrastructure that builders can build private applications on top off e.g. wallets, neobanks, prediction markets, spot/perp trading, money markets, etc. - Initial demand stems from builders wanting to keep some aspects of apps private (e.g. some apps might require KYC, users might prefer not to share their entire on-chain financial history and/or link that history to their identity) - Privacy/cryptography improves a lot as a technology but implementation to create a reliable privacy system remains quite early (for private transfers, that's already done but for more complex use cases, still early) - One aspect that's not being discussed enough is the role of privacy in mitigating targeted attacks in Defi like preventing Hyperliquid whales from getting their positions hunted, reducing MEV attacks for traders because order flow & positions are hidden. My early sense is that there's a real potential for private primitives/apps to spawn off of this wave of privacy infrastructure (private perps & private money markets might still be a bit further away though) Thoughts?

Privacy is so interesting because it gives blockchain the one crucial thing it's missing In the real world, private companies stay private, they don't need to disclose their P&L and BS to anyone (unless inquired by the government ofc). Even for public co, they only need to report their FS quarterly and annually. But if you look on-chain, everything is public. Individuals and companies are all public for everyone to see. > Privacy 0.9 got cucked by everybody because it's easiest to use by scammers > Privacy 1.0 is so hard to use (you need to hold and transact with XMR or ZCASH and go onto their private chains) > On top of this, the only places you can buy the tokens are on a few CEXes (Binance, Bybit, OKX already delisted them) Privacy 2.0 is getting super interesting cuz instead of using XMR, ZCASH, you'll be able to use your stablecoins as medium of private payments... right on Ethereum So much better UI/UX as seen from Zama PoC on their current round (shield your USDT ➔ your stable is now encrypted & private). Can't wait to finally be able to try private spot/perps trading, private yield farming, and private lending/borrowing.