Ken Smith

MEGA TGE APRIL 30, 2026

Rocket Pool has not been impacted by the recent Kelp rsETH incident. rETH continues to be fully backed by staked ETH and has no LayerZero bridging exposure.

Just got back from @EthCC in Cannes. Not gonna talk about tech. This thread is about the real sentiment on the ground - what builders, VCs, and market makers are actually saying right now. It's not pretty. But you need to hear it. 🧵

@steipete @fxnction heh got my anthropic account banned last night I had my agent running a Ralph loop against claude code to build a stripped down openclaw knockoff that invoked 'claude -p' code as its harness I genuinely don't know which part of that above statement triggered the ban 🥲

We’ve added @Aztec to L2BEAT and assigned it Stage 1. Aztec is not your regular Stage 1 rollup. It is already a bastion of censorship resistance, with all the tough consequences. How? 👇

Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of the quantum stack. The results are shocking. I expect a narrative shift and a further R&D boost toward post-quantum cryptography. The first paper is by Google Quantum AI. They tackle the (logical) Shor algorithm, tailoring it to crack Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures. The algorithm runs on ~1K logical qubits for the 256-bit elliptic curve secp256k1. Due to the low circuit depth, a fast superconducting computer would recover private keys in minutes. I'm grateful to have joined as a late paper co-author, in large part for the chance to interact with experts and the alpha gleaned from internal discussions. The second paper is by a stealthy startup called Oratomic, with ex-Google and prominent Caltech faculty. Their starting point is Google's improvements to the logical quantum circuit. They then apply improvements at the physical layer, with tricks specific to neutral atom quantum computers. The result estimates that 26,000 atomic qubits are sufficient to break 256-bit elliptic curve signatures. This would be roughly a 40x improvement in physical qubit count over previous state-of-the-art. On the flip side, a single Shor run would take ~10 days due to the relatively slow speed of neutral atoms. Below are my key takeaways. As a disclaimer, I am not a quantum expert. Time is needed for the results to be properly vetted. Based on my interactions with the team, I have faith the Google Quantum AI results are conservative. The Oratomic paper is much harder for me to assess, especially because of the use of more exotic qLDPC codes. I will take it with a grain of salt until the dust settles. → q-day: My confidence in q-day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key. While a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC) before 2030 still feels unlikely, now is undoubtedly the time to start preparing. → censorship: The Google paper uses a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof to demonstrate the algorithm's existence without leaking actual optimisations. From now on, assume state-of-the-art algorithms will be censored. There may be self-censorship for moral or commercial reasons, or because of government pressure. A blackout in academic publications would be a tell-tale sign. → cracking time: A superconducting quantum computer, the type Google is building, could crack keys in minutes. This is because the optimised quantum circuit is just 100M Toffoli gates, which is surprisingly shallow. (Toffoli gates are hard because they require production of so-called "magic states".) Toffoli gates would consume ~10 microseconds on a superconducting platform, totalling ~1,000 sec of Shor runtime. → latency optimisations: Two latency optimisations bring key cracking time to single-digit minutes. The first parallelises computation across quantum devices. The second involves feeding the pubkey to the quantum computer mid-flight, after a generic setup phase. → fast- and slow-clock: At first approximation there are two families of quantum computers. The fast-clock flavour, which includes superconducting and photonic architectures, runs at roughly 100 kHz. The slow-clock flavour, which includes trapped ion and neutral atom architectures, runs roughly 1,000x slower (~100 Hz, or ~1 week to crack a single key). → qubit count: The size-optimised variant of the algorithm runs on 1,200 logical qubits. On a superconducting computer with surface code error correction that's roughly 500K physical qubits, a 400:1 physical-to-logical ratio. The surface code is conservative, assuming only four-way nearest-neighbour grid connectivity. It was demonstrated last year by Google on a real quantum computer. → future gains: Low-hanging fruit is still being picked, with at least one of the Google optimisations resulting from a surprisingly simple observation. Interestingly, AI was not (yet!) tasked to find optimisations. This was also the first time authors such as Craig Gidney attacked elliptic curves (as opposed to RSA). Shor logical qubit count could plausibly go under 1K soonish. → error correction: The physical-to-logical ratio for superconducting computers could go under 100:1. For superconducting computers that would be mean ~100K physical qubits for a CRQC, two orders of magnitude away from state of the art. Neutral atoms quantum computers are amenable to error correcting codes other than the surface code. While much slower to run, they can bring down the physical to logical qubit ratio closer to 10:1. → Bitcoin PoW: Commercially-viable Bitcoin PoW via Grover's algorithm is not happening any time soon. We're talking decades, possibly centuries away. This observation should help focus the discussion on ECDSA and Schnorr. (Side note: as unofficial Bitcoin security researcher, I still believe Bitcoin PoW is cooked due to the dwindling security budget.) → team quality: The folks at Google Quantum AI are the real deal. Craig Gidney (@CraigGidney) is arguably the world's top quantum circuit optimisooor. Just last year he squeezed 10x out of Shor for RSA, bringing the physical qubit count down from 10M to 1M. Special thanks to the Google team for patiently answering all my newb questions with detailed, fact-based answers. I was expecting some hype, but found none.

@drakefjustin x.com/i/grok/share/8…

Come to @EthCC next week and find Ethstaker at the Staking Stage on April 1! - Where: at the EthCC main venue in the Hepburn room - RSVP here to keep track and remind of attendance: se.ro/events/staking… (note: an EthCC event ticket is required to access) We are excited about the entire lineup of talks! To highlight: - @drakefjustin Staking Strawmap - @terencechain ePBS: What EthStakers Need to Know - @jih2nn FOCIL: Past, Present and Future - @jdetychey Issuance: The Cost of Inaction - @yorickdowne Home staking behind CGNAT, LATAM, Asia-Pacific, and everywhere - @ladislaus0x Validating with an zkAttester client - @vdWijden L1/L2 Scaling Roadmap - @d_gusakov 0x02 for home stakers and CSM - @nextblock_eth The State of Staking in 2026 - Leobago from @miga_labs The first 100 days of Fusaka and the future of PeerDAS - @CPerezz19 VOPS / Partial Stateless nodes - Luca from @SerenitaIO When Clients Disagree: Picking a Side Safely - a talk from @Block_Shane of Sigma Prime - a fun Staking Trivia game from @L_Nakaghini and @jwmeyer Go to the agenda to see everything + times: ethcc.io/ethcc-9/agenda… See you there!

Smart Node now supports @Commit_Boost as of v1.19.3. Commit-boost is open-source software that is fully compatible with MEV-Boost protocol, but comes with new features and allows node operators to opt in to commitment systems eg preconfimations.

@poapxyz So many memories.. collecting POAPs brought a lot of joy in my life.

POAP is going into maintenance mode as of March 16th. Existing issuers will continue to have access to POAP platform tools as usual, but new issuers will no longer be able to access the platform. Read more about what's happening 👇

Hey @OpenAIDevs will you consider adding CORS to chatgpt.com/backend-api/co…? I'd love to make "Login with OpenAI" frontend-only apps where users bring their own inference. Right now you can only do this by proxying the requests over a backend server with the token.

Thanks for the shout-out @poojaranjan19 I loved our chat about transforming EIPs into mythic cards ✨

The “Big Banks”—the very institutions that have held a monopoly and screwed their customers for years, offering near-zero yields on retail Money Market Accounts while crushing low-balance accounts with exorbitant fees—are now doing everything they can to block the Crypto industry from offering real benefits, perks, and rewards on their platforms. They are the greatest hypocrites and are in mass panic given they know they are losing the digital finance race! @worldlibertyfi

Liquid staking with $rETH allows you to tap a range of onchain lending markets. A new option from @term_labs is fixed-rate lending using $rETH as collateral. The most decentralised LST is at home in DeFi.

This is incredible! @Rocket_Pool just published their open-source AI agent 🦞 skills that let you interact with the entire Rocket Pool protocol via natural language. Liquid staking, node operations, governance, rewards, network stats ~54 contracts across 6 skill bundles, ready to drop into any OpenClaw agent. Mainnet + Hoodi testnet supported. The future of DeFi is talking to your staking protocol. github.com/rocket-pool/sk…

The most liquidation resilient LST is rETH. It had the smallest depeg out of any major LST and was the fastest to return to peg. Now it’s trading at a minor premium as demand ramps up. The hottest token on the block, brought to you by @Rocket_Pool

This is why @Rocket_Pool is awesome. No KYC, no hoops to jump through, just a new node operator getting to run 2 entire validators to support Ethereum with a bond of 8 ETH. Rocket Pool empowers the little guy to have a voice. Rocket Pool is cypherpunkmaxxing.

Fucking brilliant !

New Rocket Pool dashboard by Steely saturn-1.net

Free alETH. 3 Envelopes. Denver, CO. To celebrate the upcoming launch of Alchemix v3, we're hiding 3 physical envelopes around the city, each unlocking 1 alETH. Not attending @EthereumDenver? One alETH also goes to a random person who interacts with this post. Details 👇