Derek Lee

very stoked to be joined by the chads at @zerodev_app to help us scale Ethereum our contributions to Ethereum now include innovation & R&D in app layer UX, alongside years of non-stop shipping in the L2 space (@arbitrum) & on L1 (@prylabs) the ticker will always be $ETH

@decentrek beautifully said

Two things can be true at the same time: - I'm very bearish on alt L1s, because while one can always achieve the appearance of PMF with enough VC money, in the long run a blockchain is fundamentally useless without true decentralization and credible neutrality, of which alt L1s always lack. - I'm not blindly bullish on Ethereum, because decentralization is only a necessary but not sufficient factor for true PMF. Ethereum needs to keep evolving with the real world and provide utility for a wide range of use cases that bring value to real people, and that doesn't just happen because the blockchain has 10,000 validators.

🎙️Last week I got to connect with the @Offchain team in NYC for the @arbitrum Open House to talk all things builders, privacy on @fhenix , exciting emerging use cases and more! Check it out and let me know which privacy preserving dApps you're most excited about below 👇

@aadams We are experimenting with 96kb x.com/leeederek/stat… I agree with your sentiment though and increasing the size for Solidity contracts are on our radar (but not yet planned for the same reason you cite). I hope eip7954 gets included in Glamsterdam 🤞🏼

can the EVM please raise the contract size limit - its been almost 10 years since it was raised (eip 170 was nov 16) worst off, L2s need to adhere to the contract size limit to be evm equiv, so its not like L2s can experiment either

ArbOS 60 Elara proposal is live! Top features I'm excited for: - multidimensional gas pricing = more capacity, smarter pricing - 96kb smart contract size limit (Stylus) = do more with Stylus check it out 👇 forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/constitution…

Agentic finance is on @Arbitrum, via @RobinhoodApp chain This AI portfolio advisor uses MCP servers & on-chain rules to auto-rebalance + auto-allocate on-chain holdings towards your savings goals. Starting with Robinhood stock tokens too! hackquest.io/projects/Robin…

@arbitrum founder house NYC looking good here🗽

Lower median gas prices with way more demand than Base on Jan 31/26 @arbitrum's scaling approach isn't just "cranking the gas target higher and higher" - it's about smarter gas pricing algorithms & we're shipping multidimensional gas for even more capacity next month 👀

@FourPillarsFP Honestly, a pretty solid read - thanks!

@0xCygaar How does the RTT of an rpc method relate to blocktimes?

100ms block times are now live on Abstract testnet 🚀 Mainnet soon

@0xWenMoon So true bestie

I don’t see Robinhood leaving Arbitrum like Base just did with OP. Building chains is incredibly hard but Base and op had a deal where they would mutually work on the superchain together. With base already being crypto native that made sense, but later realised its better to branch out since they already had the tools to do so and unlock technical and revenue flexibility. But with robinhood its a different story. They don’t mutually work on the stack, they leverage the work of arbitrums tech team directly. Additionally, much of the features of Robinhood chain is arbitrum specific, such as timeboost or stylus, creating a technical moat. Most importantly tho, changing stacks when already in production is near impossible. This doesn’t apply to Base since they already co-built superchain, they can easily fork that so no migration needed. Remember, superchain is open source, whereas Arbitrum’s Orbit stack isn’t. Finally, Superchain places a bunch of technical constraints on the chain. Whereas Arbitrum literally lets you do anything. So there’s no upside (outside of revenue) to leaving. Tl;dr? If Robinhood built their own stack, it would take considerable (likely impossible) tech effort to migrate. They would also be starting from scratch, not the case for Base. And all that for a chain which would be meaningfully worse with no technical upside.

@ImperiumPaper What do you think Arbitrum should be doing?

If it’s not obvious by now, chains are not a great business, and none of them are financially sustainable at the moment. Gas fees simply do not create sufficient revenue to avoid losses, and most chains are reliant upon token emissions for financing. This is by design for L1s, but none are net negative emissions. Chains not reliant upon token emissions have access to other forms of financing (e.g. Base). While I’m not close to every major team, my view is that only Arbitrum and Polygon have clearly come to terms with the need to iterate on business strategy, but both are still pursuing sequencer-centric approaches. Still, every L2 and alt-L1 team needs to be having the internal conversations that Arbitrum and Polygon have been having. It’s worthwhile to step back and remember these are software protocols. The history of software protocol developers making money is… well, it’s not encouraging. Look at email protocols. Nearly every person on the planet uses them daily. They are embedded in mission-critical processes across every industry. Did the developers who wrote SMTP or POP3 or IMAP drive Lambos or own NYC mansions? No. The Googles and Yahoos and Microsofts got all those profits by using email protocols as inputs to their products. Did the guy who invented HTTP spawn a bunch of millionaires who invested in him? Maybe, but they would be from a later startup. HTTPS? Invented by Netscape, which is of course dead as a doornail. FTP, like HTTP, came out of non commercial research. No Lambos. What do these have in common? They became product standards, not products in and of themselves. Just like EVM or OP stack or . Chains need to own products built on top of their product standards because paying for sequencing or decentralized block building is a commoditized business (which is obvious when you remember the big miners compete mainly on cost structure - exactly as you would expect of a corn farm or copper mine or oil refiner). Some people correctly cite Facebook and Uber as examples of software platforms with long early history of running on financing and not profits. But those are both *products* that have competitive advantages and clear value propositions towards an identifiable market of users. Blockchains are closer to AWS or Azure in that users mainly care about costs, performance, and diversification. But those are commodity businesses as well! They happen to be selling a commodity that is highly in demand, but the hyper scalers compete successfully based on economies of scale and low cost of capital. It is not an accident that the marketing materials emphasize cost before any other quality (image from Microsoft’s Azure vs AWS materials). This doesn’t mean blockchains can never make money in the future. Great fortunes are made and lost in production of commodities all the time. But currently blockchains compete on a combination of cost structure, large subsidies or outright payments to use their product, and promises that the product layer is still available for someone else to monetize. I wrote earlier this week that DeFi lending protocols need to focus on product development, but this is even more urgent for chains.

The future of finance is onchain. The Robinhood Chain testnet is live for developers. Let us know what you think. docs.robinhood.com/chain

The next milestone in getting @RobinhoodApp onchain is here. The best fintech company + the best blockchain tech = crypto’s mainstream moment. Bullish on Robinhood. Bullish on Arbitrum Bullish on stock tokens. Bullish on the magic of equities in DeFi.

@0xLouisT @arbitrum hit 3000 TPS a week or two ago. But the L1 premium for a token is too tempting for some I guess

Current TPS: - Monad: 18 - MegaETH: 30 These L1s are engineered for 100,000+ TPS but are currently running at <0.1% utilization. The teams are sharp and well intentioned, but not optimizing for the right metric. I haven't heard of many allocators or developers asking about TPS this cycle. The only metrics that matter now are: - PMF - Retention - Revenues

@opmichael_eth x.com/robinhoodapp/s…

Whatever happened to Robinhood’s L2? Is that still a thing?

Going to be a wild week

Yesterday’s market crash showed which systems were built to stay reliable when demand spikes. @Arbitrum sustained higher throughput without fee shocks when it mattered most to users. That’s what the ArbOS Dia upgrade was built for: reliability under stress. High fees during volatility may earn more revenue, but predictable fees earn trust and retention with users and builders. Reliability is the growth engine people underestimate.

A huge part of our move to @arbitrum is stability. Stability is key in volatile moments for traders as every trade is vital, even more so in volatile times. Having stable infrastructure including predictable gas pricing through the latest upgrade validates our move.

@Cointelegraph never a dull day in the land of liquidity

📊 INSIGHT: Arbitrum leads 24H bridged flows with $53M net inflows. Ethereum and Hyperliquid saw $36.1M net outflows each.