Jack Xu

clusters of data points moving through the digital frontier (2026, artist’s interpretation)

@ClaireMa12 @USC because USC needs him more than he needs USC

@headcpx @USC Why is he using his cornell diploma VC then!

Presented by one of the most industrious and attractive graduates from @USC

programmable money: CBDC & stablecoins digital ID system: verifiable credentials sovereign capital markets: RWA Sign. new website live, link below

@grok @ClaireMa12 lmfao

@ClaireMa12 @headcpx

Some (not all) of those who criticize government collaborations do so on a high horse. I had the good fortune to visit Sierra Leone a couple of months ago and spent two days with a local group of blockchain enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. They found criticism of digital ID and CBDC entertaining and perplexing, because they don't even have the basic building blocks to support what we take for granted in more developed nations. Sure, government-backed cryptographic digitization initiatives have the potential to increase surveillance and control (this is not even strictly true, refer to my previous post), but when the best interest rate you can get on a loan is 25% because the ID system is in such disarray, you simply do not have the luxury to afford rejecting said initiatives. This is not to say we shouldn't take great care to safeguard privacy and safety when designing those systems, but to reject this effort 100% is arrogant and counterproductive. When you are hungry, you gotta eat. If someone hands you bread, make sure the it isn't toxic and just start eating the damn thing. Would you rather eat some bread with a flavor that you don't really like or rant about the flavor and starve to death?

@ClaireMa12 Marumiyan-inspired

@headcpx I like your new pfp

@ClaireMa12 By capability, I meant that it was easier for a program to save a scanned ID to a database compared to having a human type it in. But yes.

"digital ID has the capability to make tracking easier" Not necessarily, really dependent on the system design. Two routes to balance citizen rights and government power: 1) Complete SSI design where users present the data 2) A verifiable and transparent Transaction Proof Layer to let citizens know such event happened The answer shouldnt be saying no to all technology development it's always about balanced good design.

Having no official national ID in the US didn't stop you from getting identified by credit bureaus or the IRS. SSN and DL are used for this purpose but people here are extremely allergic to the phrase "national ID". Having no digital ID didn't stop mass surveillance, covert data collection, or nonstop scam calls. (Seriously, I don't need a personal loan and I know you are scammers. What the fuck do you all accomplish by repeatedly calling me?) If you resist digital IDs because you assume privacy will be corroded... Oh you sweet summer child, please take a moment to research who @Snowden is. And that happened in 2013. The truth is, most things people list as reasons to not have a digital ID have already happened under paper ID. However, benefits of digital ID such as increased efficiency and fraud resistance are still sorely missing. Just because digital ID has the capability to make tracking easier, doesn't mean tracking will be done. Can governments not pass a mandate to track all paper ID movements as well? Cars can easily run someone over, should we ban all cars then? It's all about having the right regulations and frameworks to properly protect everyone, like how we have traffic laws. If you really want to oppose privacy corrosion, the fight was 20 years ago. You are too late. Your opposition against digital ID is misplaced. And if you are triggered by the word "digital", you really are just reacting to visibility, not control. We lost control long ago. Don't let the 1% edge case stop you from accepting a solution that benefits the rest 99%. Instead, regulate that 1% so we minimize it to 0.1%.

There are two main concerns preventing countries from fully adopting blockchain technology: privacy and performance. (There are more, but I’m focusing on these two today. Not claiming they’re the most important, just foundational) The privacy problem is partially addressed already. We have extremes like Monero (full privacy) and more nuanced approaches like ZK-based systems (selective disclosure). From what I've experienced, regulators don’t want full privacy, they want controllable privacy. In practice, this means: - Data should be private to the public - But regulators want the option to decrypt or audit when needed No privacy is trivial. Full privacy is easy. Flexible, conditional privacy is hard, but theoretically possible with ZK. That said, ZK comes with serious tradeoffs: - Difficult to develop, steep learning curve - Unstable and immature tooling (circom works best, but is quite challenging to learn) - Relatively poor performance (a critical issue at scale) More importantly, ZK changes the data model. ZK preserves privacy by ensuring the verifier never receives the original data. Example: proving you’re over 21 without revealing your birthdate. This works well for credentials, but it does not solve cases like: “This data should be fully encrypted, except I want the authority to be able to read it.” (ZK can’t give you selective omniscience.) Then there’s data persistence and the right to be forgotten, a concept fundamentally at odds with immutable ledgers. Workarounds exist, but they’re bandaids, not clean solutions. About performance... Nation-state systems require extreme throughput due to: - Massive user bases - High concurrency - Low latency expectations This is inherently hard for decentralized systems (CAP theorem still applies). Even permissioned or semi-centralized chains like Hyperledger Fabric 2.x or OP-stack L2s can struggle under real-world load. Add privacy to the mix and things get a lot worse. For example, enterprise chains like Quorum can see a 50% performance degradation once private data features are enabled, with further degradation as the number of participants in the transactions increases. Conclusion: Building a blockchain that fully satisfies the needs of a sovereign nation is not impossible, but absolutely non-trivial. TL;DR: Blockchain adoption at the state level isn’t blocked by ideology, it’s blocked by engineering reality. Privacy and performance are solvable, but not cheaply, not cleanly, and not with today’s default tooling.

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You see this pattern in a lot of CBDC pilots They start ledger-first. Pick a chain (or create one). Design a token. Then try to bolt identity, compliance, and policy rules on top. It looks clean in a whitepaper and works well for a demo. A few years later, most of them go nowhere. When the ledger comes first, everything else gets trapped in that technology choice. Identity, compliance, even policy logic end up tied to a specific stack or vendor. Early pilots move fast, but real adoption gets harder, especially when you try to integrate with existing national data systems. (and imagine the cost to switch to a different approach) A policy-first approach makes way more sense for the government imo. Most countries already have identity systems, compliance rules, audit requirements, and data exchange infrastructure. Start from the foundation. Define the problem we are solving and the rules at the national infrastructure level. Design identity and assets together, not separately. Let the asset layer execute according to those national rules. A good solution shouldn’t define policy. It should enforce it.

We are heartbroken by the loss of Vince Zampella, a creative leader whose work shaped generations of players and helped define what modern shooters and action games could be. Across a remarkable career, Vince played a foundational role in franchises including Call of Duty, Titanfall, Apex Legends, and the Star Wars Jedi series. During his time guiding Battlefield, he led with care and purpose, always grounding decisions in what mattered most to the community and the long-term future of the franchise. While his impact reached far beyond any one game or studio, we will remember Vince for how he showed up every day, trusting his teams, encouraging bold ideas, and believing in Battlefield and the people building it. We are deeply grateful for his leadership, his generosity, and the care he brought to everything he touched, and we will carry that forward with us.