Mathieu Baudet

Milestone alert!! Today we launched a new iteration of the @linera_io testnet, packed with new features and performance optimization. And also, to show case the microchain approach to horizontal scaling, we coded an on-chain puzzle game based on Conway's Game of Life!

@linera_io Oh boy the website is now down for most browsers due to a false report to "Google Safe Browsing". Thanks for you patience!

It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months: not gradually and over time in the "progress as usual" way, but specifically this last December. There are a number of asterisks but imo coding agents basically didn’t work before December and basically work since - the models have significantly higher quality, long-term coherence and tenacity and they can power through large and long tasks, well past enough that it is extremely disruptive to the default programming workflow. Just to give an example, over the weekend I was building a local video analysis dashboard for the cameras of my home so I wrote: “Here is the local IP and username/password of my DGX Spark. Log in, set up ssh keys, set up vLLM, download and bench Qwen3-VL, set up a server endpoint to inference videos, a basic web ui dashboard, test everything, set it up with systemd, record memory notes for yourself and write up a markdown report for me”. The agent went off for ~30 minutes, ran into multiple issues, researched solutions online, resolved them one by one, wrote the code, tested it, debugged it, set up the services, and came back with the report and it was just done. I didn’t touch anything. All of this could easily have been a weekend project just 3 months ago but today it’s something you kick off and forget about for 30 minutes. As a result, programming is becoming unrecognizable. You’re not typing computer code into an editor like the way things were since computers were invented, that era is over. You're spinning up AI agents, giving them tasks *in English* and managing and reviewing their work in parallel. The biggest prize is in figuring out how you can keep ascending the layers of abstraction to set up long-running orchestrator Claws with all of the right tools, memory and instructions that productively manage multiple parallel Code instances for you. The leverage achievable via top tier "agentic engineering" feels very high right now. It’s not perfect, it needs high-level direction, judgement, taste, oversight, iteration and hints and ideas. It works a lot better in some scenarios than others (e.g. especially for tasks that are well-specified and where you can verify/test functionality). The key is to build intuition to decompose the task just right to hand off the parts that work and help out around the edges. But imo, this is nowhere near "business as usual" time in software.

@DeCharge wait to go!

What’s NEW for DeCharge? We’re no longer just deploying chargers. We’re aggregating demand. > CPOs onboarded every week. > Retail and fleets plugged in. > Selective high yield deployments. Network effects are starting to compound! ⚡️

1/ Some Simple Economics of AGI—🔥🧵 Right now, there is a low-grade panic running through the economy. Everyone is asking the same anxious question: what exactly is AI going to automate, and what will be left for us?

@nicbstme very interesting read

My wife calls me, panicked. The call is from her number, and her voice is unmistakable- that’s my wife. ‘Babe, our son is hurt. He got in a bike wreck. I’m at the emergency room but they won’t take our insurance and I need cash to get him help. Please send me 3000 dollars as soon as you can, he’s really not doing well.’ Me- ‘Wow, that’s scary. Tell me our passphrase and then I’ll send the money.’ Her (it) - ‘What? What passphrase? This is your wife, our son is hurt. Send the money now!!’ Me- ‘I’ll call you back. I don’t believe that this is my wife. If it is, I’m sorry, but we discussed this.’ The number? Spoofed. Easy to do and there’s no way to tell if a phone number is being spoofed aside from hanging up and calling back to confirm. The voice? AI generated. Easily done. A few seconds of audio is all it takes to create a realistic audio deepfake. What can you do? 1) Create a family safe word or passphrase. Ours is definitely not ‘Keep Going’ although we considered it. Discuss the passphrase far away from phones or any recording device. This is as analog as possible. Don’t forget that the trigger for the passphrase is just as important as the phrase itself. So instead of asking ‘what’s the safe word?’ have a separate triggering question. For example, you could say ‘I’m eating banana cream pie’ and this would trigger your spouse to respond ‘purple velvet pillows’ if that’s the safe word. Make it fun, silly, and easy to remember. And DON’T WRITE IT DOWN. 2) Cognitive security is an essential skill in 2026. Assume every image and video you see online is fake until proven otherwise. Expect scams and spammers, and be pleasantly surprised when it’s not. 3) Figure out a backup communication option with people who you absolutely need to be able to reach. Don’t just rely on a phone number for communication. Have redundant, ideally encrypted methods of communication with family. What did I miss? I think (hope) Nikita is wrong on the timeframe- agentic bots like Claude bot are impressive but not quite ready to flood the phone lines in just 90 days. But I think it’s going to be a huge problem by the end of the year. I already get dozens of increasingly realistic spam calls and texts daily- it’s only going to get more annoying. Have a plan to keep your family and your finances safe!

@dabit3 The title is gold

The best way to learn how something works is to build it yourself. So I rebuilt OpenClaw from the ground up, starting from a 20-line Telegram bot and ending with a Mini Openclaw in 400 lines. I learned a lot and it was a lot of fun! Here's the tutorial so you can do it too:

🇨🇳 China’s online shopping portals use AI to fully generate the speech and picture … the model just stands there with a static face. The future is here and it is weird

great piece

Defending against prompt injections is no fun. Basically, bots potentially understand all human and computer languages, including small variations just made up by the attackers.

@hosseeb fair point

I don't know who needs to hear this, but anyone telling you that they're using AI to make a bunch of money daytrading is either 1) lying, or 2) the actual money they're making is from their AI newsletter signups (or X creator payouts). There *are* people making money using AI, but they're not writing viral articles explaining what they're doing. Because they're not stupid.

And it still uses the same X handle @CoqLang

All the talk about Moltbot being the worst project name in history is very unfair to the Rocq theorem prover --which kept its initial name for 20+ years before changing

What does the token actually do? This has been one of the most fundamental unanswered questions in DeFi since the beginning. Does the token control governance? Does it have any claim on the treasury? Does it receive protocol revenue via buybacks or dividends? Today, we launched Token Rights on DefiLlama. Token Rights gives you a clear, standardized view of what a token entitles holders to: revenue, treasury, governance, or none of the above. We’ve rolled this out across two dozen protocols, including additional context like historical governance discussions around token rights and whether teams raised equity separately from the token.

@AriannaSimpson Congratulations!

Some news! After 6 incredible years, I’m going to be transitioning out of a16z. I’m starting a fund of my own to do what I love most, which is investing in great founders as early as I can find them, with a broader aperture across the many verticals where great companies are being built today. I learned a huge amount during my time at a16z. @cdixon is widely known as a legendary investor and having the opportunity to work closely with him for the past 6 years has been an honor. I am extremely grateful for his mentorship, the opportunities he gave me here, and for the capital and responsibilities he entrusted me with. His frameworks will shape how I think about investments for the rest of my career. When I joined, the crypto vertical was 7 people (it’s now north of 80), and the firm, while already successful, was nowhere near the scale or scope it has today. At the time I thought the firm’s moves to dominate the industry had mostly unfolded, but I underestimated how much the lead could widen in a few short years. @bhorowitz and @pmarca have built an institution, and I am glad to have had the chance to play a small role on the team. I’m sure I’ll be looking back 6 years from now and see the firm in a position  that’s  hard to even imagine from today’s vantage point. Most of the best people I’ve worked with in my career to date have been at a16z – there are too many to name. I’m very grateful to have worked with so many incredible folks here, and I know that I am leaving the crypto team and the investing practice in extremely capable hands with @cdixon, @alive_eth, and @guywuolletjr. I’m also really going to miss working with @jasonrothenal and @eddylazzarin every day in Menlo Park — I’ve learned so much from both of them. I’m very proud of the work I did here, and most importantly, of the founders I had the privilege of working with. They are the reason why I love being an investor. Sometimes it takes dozens of meetings, but every time you find a star, it makes you fall in love with the job all over again. a16z’s passion for and commitment to founders and their companies is what made me love this job in particular. I’m excited to keep doing that in my next chapter — and if you’re building, I’d love to meet!

Says the man that spent a day trying new ones

MCP servers will be the next wave of supply-chain attacks

Let's do it!

I built an AI CRM in 18 hours and replaced HubSpot. Did most of it while watching football. Then had Claude help me write a blog post about it. Then had Claude help me write this thread about the blog post. The pipeline is sick, but I might need help. 🧵 Full write-up here and shorter TLDR below: @nick.c.ruzicka/built-an-ai-crm-in-18-hours-hubspot-was-moved-to-closed-lost-c78aee3cf63a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@nick.c.ruzick…