mono †

What would you do if you were to "make it" financially? (this is subject to every individual) Would you keep working, or would you go the "hedonistic" route and just try to "enjoy life" as much as possible? Also, what is a "I made it financially" scenario for you? To me, it's this: - being debt-free - being healthy again - having ~$50k to $100k in savings - having a home/flat, and being surrounded with family and friends - having time to do what I believe is best - use my God-given talents the adequate way What would I do if I was in that position? I'd probably spend a good amount of my time drawing (I draw hyperrealism in pencil and charcoal), and doing work on different, more humanitarian-oriented, Christ-centered fields. Below are some of my drawings, if you'd like to have a look into them.

@_SmokinTed @Starknet You know I like Starknet a lot 🤝

@monosarin @Starknet Always learning ser, honestly don't see anyone else delving into starknet like this 🤝

STRK20: @Starknet is making every ERC-20 token private. And here's why that matters ⬇️ 2 weeks ago, Starknet announced strkBTC, a shielded Bitcoin with optional privacy. I wrote about what that architecture could unlock. If you haven't read that piece (article), here it is: x.com/monosarin/stat… It might be long, but it's worth your time. Especially if you hold your orange coins on-chain. Turns out I was thinking too small. On March 10, Starknet announced STRK20. It's not a single shielded token. It's a privacy standard that applies to *every* ERC-20 on the network. Any token. Any team. Privacy as a default, not an add-on. Yeah, this includes memecoins (so no one knows you're getting rekt while flipping them). What STRK20 actually is In layman (or in this case, designer) terms: STRK20 is a curtain for your tokens. You take any ERC-20 (ETH, stablecoins, wrapped BTC, STRK, literally any ERC-20) and deposit it into the Starknet Privacy Pool (this one's special). Once inside, every action is verified by zero-knowledge proofs: the network confirms your transactions are legitimate without seeing any details. Sender hidden. Receiver hidden. Amount hidden. Sounds like something the media has been silent about lately... Anyway... You can swap, stake, lend, do all the DeFi stuff you're used to, while fully private inside the pool. When you want to go public again, you unshield. One pool. Every token. DeFi works inside it. The critical design choice: this isn't a separate privacy chain, a mixer, or a wrapper. Privacy is embedded at the token level itself. The same token, same liquidity, same protocols, just invisible. No liquidity fragmentation. No separate "private version" of your token. That's what every previous privacy system got wrong, and what STRK20 fixes. Why no other chain can do this right now It's in the tech (precisely, the architecture). STRK20 requires three things working simultaneously: Client-side proving that's actually fast. Every private transaction generates a ZK proof on your device. Your device proves it's valid without revealing data to the network. Starknet's Stwo prover (live since November 2025) does this on consumer hardware in seconds. EVM chains weren't built for this. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (aka EVM) was designed in 2014 with zero consideration for zero-knowledge proofs. And now Vitamin is all about the zk stuff. One language for everything (usually it's love, but in this case, it's called Cairo). On Starknet, both the proof generation and the smart contract logic are written in Cairo (developed by StarkWare, the company behind Starknet). One codebase. On EVM chains, you'd need a separate circuit language, separate proving infrastructure, and a translation layer. That complexity is why most EVM privacy solutions are slow, expensive, or fragile (weak af). Cheap proof verification. Private DeFi means verifying lots of proofs; every swap, transfer, and stake. On Starknet, this is cheap because the chain was literally built for ZK. On most other chains, it's more costly (gas fee compounding). For context on where alternatives stand: Zcash and Monero have privacy but no smart contracts, you can't use them in DeFi at all. Aztec is building privacy with smart contracts on Ethereum but remains isolated with scaling limitations. Tornado Cash offered unconditional anonymity with no compliance path and got sanctioned. Railgun works as an overlay on EVM chains but isn't native to the token itself. STRK20 is is going to be the first system that combines token-level privacy, full DeFi composability, unified liquidity, compliance tooling, and production-ready speed in one package. Not Tornado Cash: the compliance design Every privacy conversation hits the same wall: "won't regulators shut this down?" (as if we're running meth labs in this space) STRK20 was built for this question. When you enter the Privacy Pool, you register an encrypted viewing key on-chain. If a legitimate legal request targets you specifically, a designated auditing entity can decrypt your key and trace your complete transaction history. Only yours. Everyone else stays private. This is the architectural opposite of Tornado Cash. Tornado offered unconditional anonymity: no viewing keys, no audit trail, no selective disclosure. That's what got it sanctioned. STRK20 offers confidentiality with a built-in path to transparency when the law requires it. For institutions, this distinction is everything. Privacy without a compliance path is untouchable. Basically, we all stay anon and safu at the same time. Noice. Speaking of institutions: EY (Ernst & Young, one of the "Big Four" global accounting firms(they audit Fortune 500 companies, governments, banks)) has already deployed their Nightfall (this reminds me of Warcraft for some reason) privacy protocol on Starknet as a Layer 3 specifically for enterprise use. Private B2B payments, confidential treasury management, KYC-compliant DeFi. When the firm that audits Fortune 500 companies builds privacy infra on your chain, that's a credibility signal no other L2 has. In other words, Starknet is in pole position. What STRK20 can make possible Starknet explicitly named their targets: private Bitcoin, private ETH, private stablecoin payments. Ben-Sasson (who co-created the cryptographic foundations behind Zcash(probably has an IQ of 160)) said STRK20 could move stablecoin adoption "up about five gears." Take a minute to think about what Ben-Sasson said. As I understand it: Private stablecoin payments: payroll, treasury operations, B2B settlement but without broadcasting every transaction to the world. Starknet already has native USDC via Circle's CCTP. The infra is already there. Confidential Bitcoin DeFi that goes beyond strkBTC's shielding; anonymous lending, anonymous yield, anonymous collateral posting. All within the same privacy pool as every other token. Anonymous swaps and anonymous staking are confirmed as launch features. @EkuboProtocol (Starknet's leading DEX) is integrating privacy-enabled swaps, and private staking for BTC and STRK is in the pipeline. The full rollout is expected throughout 2026 (waiting for STRK20's full mainnet deployment). And because every SN Stack chain (Starknet's appchain framework) inherits these capabilities, privacy doesn't stop at one chain. @paradex already runs private perps as an SN Stack appchain. Now imagine purpose-built chains for private lending, private settlement, or private stablecoin infrastructure - all sharing the same privacy pool architecture. Imagine a @pendle_fi / @boros_fi purpose-built chain for trading yield and funding rates. The bigger picture (no TL;DR this time) Here's the timeline: February 17, StarkWare announces the integration of EY's Nightfall privacy protocol into Starknet, with a phased deployment underway targeting institutions. February 26, strkBTC (shielded BTC) has been announced. March 2, Starknet publishes the "ultimate privacy chain" thesis (and it's quite a sexy one, you can read it here: starknet.io/blog/why-stark…). March 10, STRK20 announces privacy for every ERC-20. March 12, the full technical paper goes live. That's not a feature launch. It's a coordinated repositioning of an entire L2 around a single thesis: privacy is the next infrastructure layer for crypto, and the team with the deepest ZK expertise should be the one building it. And it is. Btw, did you notice the team changed their X name to Starknet (Privacy arc)? It was Starknet (BTCFi arc) just a couple of days ago. Soon, privacy won't be an experiment anymore, but default infrastructure. The architecture is coming to life, institutions are hyped, and the roadmap points in one direction. Privacy won't just come to DeFi. It'll come with DeFi already working inside it. Thanks to Starknet. 🫡

@dontbuytops Dang, that's 14.25x on average.

Ngl this month been crazy good for me and my followers. $BEAN 23x $INSTACLAW 10x $CRUDE 15x $BAE 9x I found the next one, still not sure how it will behave tho, need to check out the dev first. Time to swap some profits for $BTC

@Rightsideonly Dang, that APY is cracked

My strategy is up on the InfinitLabs dashboard generating the highest APY atm But also almost all strategies are using Pendle :O. Fixed yield looping might be the best DeFi activity you can do right now w/ Pendle having the most liquid markets Also did you know Pendle is AI ready? docs are optimized for LLMs to reference (skills and MCP coming soon c/o chad devs)

@_SmokinTed Starknet is shipping something else and not enough people are seeing it.

@monosarin good stuff my brother [privacy arc]

Every privacy solution in crypto has been a cope (so far). Isolated pools, weird tokens, ghost towns. And the whole time, institutions have been sitting out not because of volatility, but because their whole portfolio would be visible to anyone with a block explorer. STRK20 is about to change that. 1⃣ the transparency problem nobody wants to talk about Hundreds of billions of dollars move on-chain today. BTC. ETH. Stablecoins. All of it entering DeFi, and all of it fully visible to anyone watching. Balances. Counterparties. Every single transaction. All public by default. That's not a feature for anyone moving serious capital. It's the reason serious capital has been sitting on the sidelines. Not because the yields aren't there. Not because the tech isn't ready. Because operating with full financial transparency isn't how any real market participant, institution, fund, DAO, or sophisticated trader (like Jared from Subway) actually wants to operate. And honestly? It's not how you want to operate either. Nobody needs CT watching them get rekt on a memecoin at 3am. STRK20s is built to fix that. For everyone. 2⃣ what is STRK20? Think of token standards like ERC20, BEP20, TRC20 etc. STRK20 follows the same logic, though it's rather a privacy framework that any team can add to an ERC20 token by simply deploying on Starknet. No extra code. No extra audit. Just deploy. Not a separate chain. Not a special token. Not another ghost town pool that fragments your liquidity and disconnects you from real markets. A native framework that plugs into the tokens and applications that already exist. Leverage at its finest. @Starknet calls this transaction-layer privacy: private ownership, public execution. In practice, users can: 🔵 shield assets 🔵 hold private balances 🔵 transfer privately 🔵 use DeFi/squeeze yield anonymously 🔵 unshield when needed All within the same asset. The same pool. Existing accounts, no new keys required. 3⃣ a milestone, not just a feature This is where STRK20 stops being a small improvement and starts being a structural shift. Every previous attempt at on-chain privacy forced a choice: full privacy in isolation, or shared liquidity with behavior that leaks the moment you touch a real market. Timing, amounts, execution patterns, it all bleeds through at the edges. Starknet is the *first* L2 where privacy and shared liquidity coexist on the same chain. That's the differentiator. Private activity will settle against the same liquidity that public DeFi uses. Users won't have to leave the ecosystem to get privacy (like some couples have to leave the bar and find a room(not me though, I have no waifu)). The money stays where the money already is. That combo has never existed on a [scalable] L2 before now. That's why this is a milestone. 4⃣ privacy and compliance aren't opposites This is the part that matters most for institutions, funds, and DAOs, and it's the part that makes STRK20s viable where everything before it wasn't. Confidentiality by default. Auditor access on request. That's not a compromise, that's exactly how every mature financial system already works. STRK20s just brings it on-chain. Selective disclosure to auditors, regulators, or accountants is available through viewing keys when legally required. Institutions and funds get the privacy they need to operate without exposing sensitive data to competitors. Not privacy as a workaround. Privacy as the way the system should have worked from the beginning. 5⃣ what's live from day 1? The DeFi use cases are already in place. Anonymous swaps (identity never exposed) on @EkuboProtocol . Private staking (yield without leaking your activity), private P2P transfers: no sender, no receiver, no amount visible on-chain. One of the things BTC was designed for, but failed at. Full design details and a technical deep dive are coming in the next few days. And I'll be here to share a TL;DR (including mild pun). 6⃣ the opportunity Private BTC and BTCFi. Private stablecoin payments. Private ETH. Your memecoin bags, finally safe from public humiliation. One framework. Every ERC-20. Starknet-native. The market will soon be one click away from privacy on any token. Serious capital will finally have the infra it's been waiting for. And the rest of us can stop broadcasting our on-chain activity (you know, when we get rekt) to the entire internet. That's not a feature. That's a new default.

@GuigsLuke Everything in moderation is good (except for drugs, screw those). Salmon is great. Sardines have more Omega3 (and are dirt cheap). Tuna is good, but has a substantial amount of lead so avoid eating it more than twice a week.

@monosarin In moderation i presume? Yeah trying to up my fish intake, with salmon and tuna

Health kick or not I’ll never stop cooking my scrambled eggs with butter 🧈

@GuigsLuke You wouldn't believe how healthy pork fat is. On a side note, best breakfasts are full of fat and protein. If you want to keep your cholesterol in a good shape, take Omega3 (or keep eating salmon and sardines).

@monosarin Is it? always though pork was pretty bad for you

@GuigsLuke Bacon (not the one from the supermarket) is power food. I love salmon. Probably my fav fish.

@monosarin Cutting out the bacon, trying to be good So Smoked salmon today

@Starknet All roads lead to Starknet. 🤝

1/ Privacy for Bitcoin… and for every ERC-20. Introducing STRK20: a privacy capability that gives any ERC-20 confidential balances and private transfers, with compliance built in. The market is now one click away from privacy on any token 🧵

Start trading $CL (crude oil) funding rates on Boros! CL-USDC rates on @HyperliquidX have swung from 4,425% APR to -198% APR over the past weekend. What if you received a funding payout of 4,425% APR on oil? You can now do this on Boros.

@SLS_AMG_Heroin @NeptunePrivacy Thank you, Valentin!

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy Great thread about $XNT and thanks for it 🤝

A privacy-focused PoW L1 with a native token sitting at a ~$1.1M fully diluted valuation? That’s where @NeptunePrivacy 's $XNT currently sits. I dug into the tokenomics, emission curve, and the NPT to XNT migration. Some interesting mechanics here. TL;DR: 1⃣ what is $XNT? $XNT is the native asset of Neptune Privacy, a PoW blockchain focused on private transactions and confidential computation. The protocol uses: 🔵 zk-STARK cryptography 🔵 mutator sets 🔵 PoW security The goal is a privacy-preserving programmable blockchain. And you know I'm all in on privacy. The token's role in the network? 🔵 mining rewards (because miners aren't working for free, plus, they're the ones securing the chain) 🔵 paying transaction fees 🔵 base asset of the ecosystem 2⃣ Neptune Privacy also introduces Triton VM, a zero-knowledge virtual machine designed to verify computation using zkSTARK proofs. Vitalik and I have been fans of skSTARKs. That opens the door for private applications and smart contracts. And smart contracts lead to DeFi. Combine that with Neptune's architecture and you get Private DeFi. 3⃣ the tokenomics are different from many PoW chains. Instead of sudden halvings, Neptune uses a smooth emission curve where rewards decline gradually over time. The system eventually reaches a tail emission of 1 XNT per block, ensuring long-term miner incentives. 4⃣ current network snapshot: 🔵 block time ≈ 5 minutes 🔵 block reward ≈ 6.3 XNT 🔵 circulating supply ≈ 2.13M XNT At the moment this translates to roughly ~669k XNT issued per year, with inflation decreasing over time as rewards decline. 5⃣ a key event in the token’s history was the NPT → XNT migration. Neptune Privacy evolved from the earlier Neptune Cash network. Community members were able to swap their NPT for XNT on the new chain. 6⃣ when the swap concluded: 1,526,640 NPT were converted and permanently burned. Those tokens became XNT on the new network. So today’s supply roughly looks like: ~1.53M migrated ~0.60M mined Mining is still early in the emission curve. Logically, this comes with a higher inflation rate (which will decay over time so we're gucci). Plus, the project is still in a bootstrapping phase. 7⃣ at the current price (~$0.52): $XNT sits around ~$1.1M market cap. That puts Neptune among the smallest live privacy-focused L1 networks. Still super early, but interesting from a tokenomics perspective. What I’ll be watching going forward: 🔵 hashrate growth 🔵 network activity 🔵 progress along the emission curve Curious to see how Neptune evolves from here. This post is just with regards to the token. I'm working on an article where I'll try to provide an ELI5 breakdown of Neptune Privacy. NOTE: nothing I ever write is financial advice. Me writing about $XNT isn't financial advice, but just research on a Saturday afternoon.

@azaztrader01 @NeptunePrivacy No shock emission reduction. Though mining affordability depends on the token's price.

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy The smooth emission curve is a really interesting design choice compared to standard halvings. Do you think that structure gives it a stability advantage for miners long-term?

@_SmokinTed @NeptunePrivacy My brother Ted 🤝

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy mono (privacy arc)

@GuigsLuke @NeptunePrivacy I'm heavily interested in privacy. Plus, this one's fresh and looks promising.

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy Interesting , not really looked at anything new for a while

@GuigsLuke I could be better, but I won't complain. I'm still alive and that counts.

@monosarin Yeah by far the juiciest , hope you’re well mate

Chicken thighs are better than chicken breasts!

@CryptoJonesRC @NeptunePrivacy Thank you, bro 🤝 🫶

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy Nice overview, brother 🤝

@0xSprite_ @NeptunePrivacy Oh yeah. This is where institutions will actually flock in.

@monosarin @NeptunePrivacy Private DeFi frontier opening quietly