Yonatan Sompolinsky

sovereignty as a service

The coordination and effort required to synchronize a complex upgrade across a truly decentralized network are a real challenge, and success is never a given. A good moment for a toast to all non-trivial life accomplishments

I hope everyone is ready for smarter Kaspa

@ztipme when you say "mathematically governed" in (1) it seems you are comfortable restricting this property to the 21M supply. This is a good and practical approach, worth explicating

As someone who has allocated a sustantial portion of his networth into Zcash, because I consider it strongly superior to Bitcoin, what I expect from the protocol is: 1- To be mathematically governed. The code is god. 21 million zec, fixed forever. 2- To be holder governed. 1 ZEC is 1 vote for code upgrades. 3- To be the leader as an anonymous SoV with Zk proofs, quantum and, if possible and a little less important than the rest, be fast and cheap as the fiat financial system. From point 3, if we get far ahead as an anonymous Store of value, we will be ok. If it gets quantum proof, we'll dominate not only as the swiss vault in the digital world, but also as a general SoV, compiting directly with gold market cap as the potential competitor. But to achieve this, we should avoid dramas. We should all contribute with our best intentions for the protocol. Everyone is welcome to build. Everyone is welcome to advance the code to achieve 3 to the fullest. We don't need dramas. The market decides the best value. The community decides the best implementations. @zooko @BarrySilbert @mert @balajis @ebfull @naval @zkDragon (I tag those with good takes on Zcash)

since many (~4) asked me about the zcash bug - - - earlier this year I had this convo with a zcash core dev: zk: it's weird that kaspa is pruning past records me: why does it need to keep 'em? zk: the whole point of ledgers is to prove correctness of all state transitions me: the whole point of ledgers is to provide focal points for the consensus state zk: the whole point... me: hmm then why did you come work in zcash? you know the Sprout->Sapling counterfeiting bug zk: Turnstile guarantees that the counterfeit could have been very limited me: true but you still cannot prove or even reason about correct state transitions besides the total supply cap zk: that's actually a good point ---- the most hardcore cryptography coin is shifting away from correctness proofs to practical-enough proofs. I believe this is a step in the right+practical direction, yet the paradigm shift should not go unnoticed - -cryptography is giving way to consensus. if you came to zcash for cryptographic integrity, reconsider. there are many good reasons to root for zcash prospering. zcash is serving a more important role than bitcoin, whose utility for the original mission is by now blurry. cryptographic integrity is/should not be one of those reasons. ---- BTW the bug should definitely have been exploited. I don't know the personal values of Taylor Hornby, and I shouldn't be required to make the effort to learn them. I only know that if I found such an exploit, it wouldn't take me more than a few minutes to tempt myself into printing a longint amount of ZEC and deciding later what to do with it. I wouldn't necessarily use it to exit the pool immediately and corrupt the supply, I'd wait to see if some portion of the broken pool does not seem to migrate on time (probably lost funds), in which case I would not think twice before claiming the funds myself. you could argue that no harm done, and you might be right, but then again you are here -- in zcash / in crypto -- for its consensus dynamics, the ability to coordinate interests and convictions across different trust zones around some shared asset; not for some pristine mathematical integrity.

@TrustlessState @buddyponderosa @ryanberckmans Sanctimony tech

@buddyponderosa @ryanberckmans unfortunately you cannot separate ETH price performance from its leadership

It's tradition for David to leave and rejoin Ethereum every so often. We've had him for ~13 months this time. I like him and love his show. On CT he's a seasonal bellwether. When he again starts saying nice things about ETH, max lev long and buckle up. For now, we build and grow

@Kasdaghopesfwo @VJCrypto_ @michaelsuttonil @KaspaSilver I'm all for shifting focus from marveling at the tech to realistic usage vectors, this is a long overdue shift in the discussion +1

"User-friendly and works now usually beats theoretical superiority until the superior thing actually works better." Took this quote from grok when trying to gather all my thoughts together on the future path for kaspa:native . I am going to just brain dump to see if someone can find what I am missing or just agree with my take on things. Lost focus on building one thing like vprogs was inevitable to happen. There is no way to stop the fragmentation of devs, funding, and efforts going all over. This is because the nature of this market is free and users want to operate for profit. No one wants to lose. All in focus on cores desires for smart contract like programability is high risk high reward when Kaspa does not have forever to just be on the sideline trying to attract users with "hey look whats coming." What is a bit unfortunate is seeing core shift away from trying to market Kaspa as being money to solely view Kaspa as this MoE powerhouse to allow you to do many things. I get the shift but the problem is the "many things" are simply not many. I could be wrong for this feeling but this is simply what I am getting. Kaspa has a narrative crisis that is for sure but I think the biggest mistake is to try and leave the money narrative all together. I simply point this out cause I fear I am seeing signs of abandonment of this all together. Giving humanity a better Money IS the biggest market. This is the biggest way I can onboard any noob into crypto with Kaspa. The % of people not in crypto is greater than the % of people in it and it seems efforts are being made to try and steal users from everywhere else that are already here and hope it happens. I think Kaspa main efforts should be focused on no coiners. This means developing to give these users a way to live on a Kaspa standard. This also means making apps to easily utilize Kaspa and especially bring native stablecoins to it. Kaspa for ultimate storage, stabecoins for living day to day while still living on the Kaspa network at all times. Hopefully Toccata ships and we get this moving along quickly. When it comes to L2s and bringing basically all ETH offers to a wonderful base layer like Kaspa I repeat what I stated above. User-friendly and works now usually beats theoretical superiority until the superior thing actually works better. Kaspa is money and its the first time money will be programmable to scale at internet speeds while keeping true to Bitcoin level properties of security and decentralization. This keeps users self-sovereign and truly rids the reliance of the middle man.

Sure tho I consider based apps a natural extension and usage of (what you called pure) covenants: if you impl covenants seriously rather than thru op_cat workarounds, you unlock their programmability potential by extending the txn commitment scheme to allow the covenants to govern based logic. This extension is straightforward, requires no research / theoretical novelty, and is highly useful even if it's the end form of programmability on the layer (ie no further syncompo/vprogs solutions ever develop). --- @KaspaSilver There's nothing wrong with implementing an EVM L2 as an interim solution, but this requires an interim agenda. If in contrast a project aims to become the main gateway for builders on our money network, then our hard-fought efforts - and the prices we paid - for decentralized fairlaunch go to waste. Such a takeover is far from inevitable, and fwiw I know of no other crypto project that had to cope with independent L2 attempts that early in its growth efforts (to be clear I never attribute to malice that!). To spell it out further: If an L2 has an interim agenda, or at least focuses on its own bizdev rather than general builder devrel -- ie, it uses L2 tech as a enabler rather than as an value prop -- then the risk of fragmentation is restricted to liquidity and standards, which is tolerable and solvable down the road. I wouldnt endorse it but I would get it, and I'd respect those who dont give an f about my endorsement

a bit more context: besides pure covenants, based zk apps were obviously also a focus point in the development of toccata, but no special effort was made towards vprogs. ie we introduced opseqcommit, zk opcodes, kip21, canonical bridging pocs etc. but these focus on standalone based apps, without the crucial syncompo hard-to-achieve-by-definition property. this choice and focus shows inherent pragmatism in how kas rnd operates, optimizing for the faster feedback loop path

The upcoming upgrade was chosen without regards to vprogs, and no meaningful effort was made to optimize it for vprogs (definitely nothing delaying Tocatta by more than a few days). Tocatta is a principled implementation of bitcoin-originating covenants which, if ever implemented in bitcoin, would use the op_cat workaround. It is the default method to introduce programmability into a thin verification-oriented L1 to preserve its decentralized lean value prop. vprogs are outside core’s focus precisely because we are optimizing for usability over theoretical superiority. I hope this helps you and grok update your premise. (BTW counterexample to your claim about inevitability of fragmentation: Solana)

I don't mean to say vprogs is the only focus of core but that cores focus to bring DeFi smart contract like capabilities to Kaspa is via the vprogs path which can take much time before anything materializes for a user to use whereas the L2s we are seeing are shipping products users can use now. I think this is a better explanation of my "core is focusing on vprogs" statement. A more direct answer is the most current upgrade coming to Kaspa is a foundational step for vprogs to exist on Kaspa with all future upgrades building on top of it so that vprogs can be completed.

@eliottmea @BankQuote "pulls" liquidity or RFQs? I'm highly skeptic one can prove manipulation (then justify slashing) just based on quotes. more likely to hit an impossibility due to manipulations being indistinguishabe from white noise + network latency. any chance u reached a formal model/claim?

Kaspa’s oracle research appears to be splitting into two distinct primitives: binary outcome oracles, where Sutton and Yonni are exploring consensus-linked resolution for event truth, and price oracles, where Eliott is working on the much harder market-structure problem of liquidity, latency, venue reliability, and manipulation-resistant price discovery. Both belong to the oracle domain, but they solve different classes of truth. One answers whether an event occurred. The other tries to quantify a live market state under adversarial conditions.

@parker2017 @coinathlete @kaspadotnews @Krok13236 Neat and authentic, props! Consider adding to your one liners "kaspa dagknight is ww111 resistant"

Primarily inspired by @coinathlete’s work with @kaspadotnews + @Krok13236, and others doing real Kaspa education, here’s a small contribution from me: kaspaexplained.com I made it mostly for myself, but I hope it helps others too. The problem that pushed me: every time I ask LLMs for info on Kaspa, they either pull random hype-site slop or flatten everything into a basic kaspa.org-level recap. That is not enough if we want outsiders, and even those of us already inside the community, to understand Kaspa more clearly. No shade to @Kaspa_Commons, @kaspaunchained, core contributors, or anyone already doing real work. Love ya. I know everyone is busy. I’m not an expert either, just trying to organize what I’ve learned from people who understand this much deeper than I do. This is a first step toward a cleaner, more level-headed public reference that Google and LLMs can hopefully start picking up over time. Open experiment. Better public sources = better answers. Visit it, tear it up, tell me what sucks, and tell me how to make it better.

The @festival_web3 2026 event is closing today! We want to highlight the #kaspa dev contributions as key parts of the ecosystem! From core @michaelsuttonil @OriNewman @coderofstuff_ @Max143672, @asaefstroem, d-stack, along with @kaspa_kef grantees @hus_qy @IzioDev @FreshAir08. Working closely with exchanges and wallets @supertypo_kas @lAmeR_1377 Thank you for your work! Oh almost forgot @hashdag the goat (face not in the picture)

@nic_carter This is a very interesting use case of real-time decentralization, ie the ability to sample the honest majority in real time - - miners running a decentralized chancery (I suppose using SLMs) to govern stablecoin transfers (x.com/i/status/20269…)

The solution to Circle refusing to freeze funds for anything other than a court order is not to carve out a bunch of exceptions, it’s to create a Chancery court that moves at the speed of the internet

Appreciate you taking the time to read and flesh out the coordination markets thesis for everyone, myself included. Learning from these nuances. @hus_qy @Radical_Ed_Bad One linguistic note - the word hints at an attempt to "altruise" human nature, whereas better connotes acting together in self-interest without assuming trust, but yes assuming shared missions/goals; hence the term coordination games from competitive game theory

@hus_qy competition and combating will not be enhanced more than the type of cooperation you're describing. Human nature does not change by the introduction of new tools, I believe. The new tool by itself, even if very potent and revolutionary, is not enough to do that en-mass.

I just got back from my Easter trip visiting family, and one of the first things I made time for was listening to Yonatan’s Oxford Union speech. I think he absolutely nailed it: youtube.com/watch?v=VIZGKo… If there is one thing we can learn from our progress in AI, it is that intelligent behavior emerges when many components explore degrees of freedom and converge, through distributed constraint resolution, into coherent and stable patterns. The modern world has connected an enormous number of people and given us unimaginable freedom, but it still lacks a credible way to enforce shared constraints. The result is a crisis of responsibility at every scale of society: from cyberbullying to former superpowers chasing old glory through war, to leaders blaming the weakest members of society for national decline, or even killing their own citizens to preserve power. At the same time, our capacity to inflict harm on one another has become increasingly asymmetric. Small actors can now create disproportionately large disruptions, and conflicts no longer remain local. They send shockwaves through the emerging superorganism we call humanity. The age in which we could dominate one another and still produce a stable world is coming to an end. The only serious path forward is collaboration. People may feel pessimistic about the future, but I think we are approaching an inflection point. Even the old superpowers are beginning to learn this lesson the hard way. The American Dream of "I can make it" is gradually giving way to the realization that individual prosperity depends on collective wellbeing, and that we can build far larger and more meaningful things when we share a common dream. That is why I am excited about DLTs, and Kaspa in particular. Not because I see them as safe havens for hiding wealth from corrupt governments in some dystopian future, or because I want people to get rich by selling to later participants. But because I believe DLTs can offer a superior foundation for large-scale human coordination: one that is more neutral and reliable than traditional models based on force and mutual deterrence. In that world, wealth is not the goal in itself, but a byproduct of coordinating around shared missions, empowering people to contribute, and aligning incentives toward common outcomes. The future is not about building better products. It is about building better protocols: systems that allow human beings to coordinate meaningfully at larger scales than ever before. For the first time in human history, we have the tools to build institutions that are not bound to territory, yet can still provide structural coherence without having to fight wars to establish their legitimacy. What we need now is a group of people bold enough to take that mission seriously.

@IOHK_Charles @CryptoCrewHQ @IOHKCharless +100

@CryptoCrewHQ @IOHKCharless @hashdag Why do you people insist on provoking a fight or conflict where there is none? I see dozens of tweets every month from Kaspa community members using my words and attacking Cardano. What is the point of this? How does it benefit you at all? There was no conflict here

Is $ADA actually "Sound Money" or is it just founder cope? @IOHKCharless claims ADA is the biggest threat to $BTC but the data tells a very different story Time to break down the full 2-minute clip blowing up on X right now. 🧵👇 #Cardano #Kaspa #Bitcoin

@Grayscale @realvijayk arigato gozaimasu! if Kaspa army showed up here, think how they'll show up when you provide a KAS digital asset.. by mid june Kaspa OP_CAT++ Bitcoin. worth the attention _/\_

@realvijayk @hashdag Kaspa army really showed up here. Followed @hashdag ✅

who should we be following in crypto right now? we'll follow the most mentioned accounts ⬇️

@OriNewman didn’t know that but still offended you’d think I wouldn’t know that

Not sure if intended or not, but it's pretty cool that @hashdag's blog domain name is the chemical symbol for silver.

@zkDragon @Vladcostea Cool, are these considered part of Tachyon? What TPS and block times are you targeting?

@hashdag @Vladcostea Were solving the scalability challenge with complimentary techniques! Namely changing the payment protocol, and PIR for retrieving your notes. This removes shielded sync, which is the primary TPS blocker

This year, Zcash will most likely solve the trilemma of security, decentralization & scalability Tachyon will be a game changer Privacy that scales is the holy grail of cypherpunks Now the challenging part is UX and adoption: getting normal everyday people to use the most empowering tech in their daily lives