⭕RenderPockets⭕
442 posts
@renderPockets
⭕Render Accelerationist⭕ Film, TV + Game Artist I dabble in thinking occasionally
Facts. Only about 6% of the assets in the bitcoin ETFs have left (= 94% hanging tough), despite nasty 40% downturn and many being underwater. OGs on the other hand..
There have recently been some discussions on the ongoing role of L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of two facts: * L2s' progress to stage 2 (and, secondarily, on interop) has been far slower and more difficult than originally expected * L1 itself is scaling, fees are very low, and gaslimits are projected to increase greatly in 2026 Both of these facts, for their own separate reasons, mean that the original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path. First, let us recap the original vision. Ethereum needs to scale. The definition of "Ethereum scaling" is the existence of large quantities of block space that is backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum - that is, block space where, if you do things (including with ETH) inside that block space, your activities are guaranteed to be valid, uncensored, unreverted, untouched, as long as Ethereum itself functions. If you create a 10000 TPS EVM where its connection to L1 is mediated by a multisig bridge, then you are not scaling Ethereum. This vision no longer makes sense. L1 does not need L2s to be "branded shards", because L1 is itself scaling. And L2s are not able or willing to satisfy the properties that a true "branded shard" would require. I've even seen at least one explicitly saying that they may never want to go beyond stage 1, not just for technical reasons around ZK-EVM safety, but also because their customers' regulatory needs require them to have ultimate control. This may be doing the right thing for your customers. But it should be obvious that if you are doing this, then you are not "scaling Ethereum" in the sense meant by the rollup-centric roadmap. But that's fine! it's fine because Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on L1, with large planned increases to its gas limit this year and the years ahead. We should stop thinking about L2s as literally being "branded shards" of Ethereum, with the social status and responsibilities that this entails. Instead, we can think of L2s as being a full spectrum, which includes both chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum with various unique properties (eg. not just EVM), as well as a whole array of options at different levels of connection to Ethereum, that each person (or bot) is free to care about or not care about depending on their needs. What would I do today if I were an L2? * Identify a value add other than "scaling". Examples: (i) non-EVM specialized features/VMs around privacy, (ii) efficiency specialized around a particular application, (iii) truly extreme levels of scaling that even a greatly expanded L1 will not do, (iv) a totally different design for non-financial applications, eg. social, identity, AI, (v) ultra-low-latency and other sequencing properties, (vi) maybe built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution or other "non-computationally-verifiable" features * Be stage 1 at the minimum (otherwise you really are just a separate L1 with a bridge, and you should just call yourself that) if you're doing things with ETH or other ethereum-issued assets * Support maximum interoperability with Ethereum, though this will differ for each one (eg. what if you're not EVM, or even not financial?) From Ethereum's side, over the past few months I've become more convinced of the value of the native rollup precompile, particuarly once we have enshrined ZK-EVM proofs that we need anyway to scale L1. This is a precompile that verifies a ZK-EVM proof, and it's "part of Ethereum", so (i) it auto-upgrades along with Ethereum, and (ii) if the precompile has a bug, Ethereum will hard-fork to fix the bug. The native rollup precompile would make full, security-council-free, EVM verification accessible. We should spend much more time working out how to design it in such a way that if your L2 is "EVM plus other stuff", then the native rollup precompile would verify the EVM, and you only have to bring your own prover for the "other stuff" (eg. Stylus). This might involve a canonical way of exposing a lookup table between contract call inputs and outputs, and letting you provide your own values to the lookup table (that you would prove separately). This would make it easy to have safe, strong, trustless interoperability with Ethereum. It also enables synchronous composability (see: ethresear.ch/t/combining-pr… and ethresear.ch/t/synchronous-… ). And from there, it's each L2's choice exactly what they want to build. Don't just "extend L1", figure out something new to add. This of course means that some will add things that are trust-dependent, or backdoored, or otherwise insecure; this is unavoidable in a permissionless ecosystem where developers have freedom. Our job should make to make it clear to users what guarantees they have, and to build up the strongest Ethereum that we can.
Nerdy tokenomics post... Venice released an experimental token design for accessing AI compute back in Sept, called DIEM Staking DIEM grants access to any AI model on Venice for free (1 DIEM = $1 of renewing daily credits): it makes the marginal cost of compute free. At first, it was API access only (no web), and only a few open-source models. In Oct-Nov we allowed its use on the Venice web app (no longer API only), and then started adding all the leading external AI models to Venice. Today, users can access Claude Open 4.5, Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro, GPT 5, etc from Venice. This is both convenient (all the models in one interface), but also provides additional privacy (pseudonymity vis-a-vis Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, etc). These models are unequivocally the best in their respective categories. Meanwhile Venice's userbase (both app and API) has continued growing. And now we're seeing the tokenomics of DIEM start to play out... seven consecutive weeks of green candles amid a sideways or down broader market. Why is it happening? Imaging paying $100 to get $1 every day of AI credit. No brainer... especially because you can sell the DIEM back when done. So people bought at $100 to use it and price of DIEM rose At $200 it's still a no brainer, so price kept rising. Today it hit $300. What's $1/day worth as an asset? Here's the mechanical part... as DIEM is bought and staked for AI compute, the rising price incentivizes VVV holders to mint more of it. DIEM can only be created ("minted") from VVV, but as DIEM supply rises, the "mint rate" also rises, meaning it takes more VVV to mint 1 DIEM. This occurs along an algorithmic exponential curve. Minting DIEM locks the VVV in an amount according to the mint rate. It can only be unlocked by repaying same qty of DIEM at any later date. This destroys the DIEM and releases the VVV. DIEM's utility is flowing it toward usage and price is rising. This means increasing amounts of VVV are getting locked away (today over 6.3m VVV is locked, nearly 10% of total supply). The more useful AI consumers find DIEM, the higher they'll bid for its scarce supply, which raises price, and locks further VVV on an exponential curve. Equilibrium is eventually found when opportunity cost of capital paid for DIEM is no longer lower than marginal utility of the AI compute it can obtain. Someone should happily pay $100 for $1/day but prob shouldn't pay $10k for the same... as the NPV of the yield of $10k should be higher than just paying $1/day of cash for credits. Once that DIEM price is found, the amount of VVV locked also finds equilibrium. As VVV is locked for this purpose, a portion of emissions flows to Venice, compensating for the costs of the AI compute its providing for free. Venice can control something called the "Target Supply" of DIEM, raising it up or down, which changes the mint rate which affects (but doesn't control) supply. If costs become too onerous to Venice, it reduces Target Supply, and it disincentives further minting, bringing equilibrium of supply back down at any given DIEM price. We have no idea where these equilibria will or should be, but we know they exist. Perhaps you'll find this set of mechanisms interesting, and I hope they'll inspire other experiments. I wonder how long until sophisticated AI agents truly dive into the exploration of tokenomics as a vast design space... perhaps they already are? Perhaps they were involved in DIEM's design? venice.ai/blog/introduci… $DIEM $VVV @AskVenice
“Ethereum was not created to make finance efficient or apps convenient. It was created to set people free” This was an important - and controversial - line from the Trustless Manifesto ( trustlessness.eth.limo ), and it is worth revisiting it and better understanding what it means. “efficient” and “convenient” have the connotation of improving the average case, in situations where it’s already pretty good. Efficiency is about telling the world's best engineers to put their souls into reducing latency from 473 ms to 368ms, or increasing yields from 4.5% APY to 5.3% APY. Convenience is about people making one click instead of three, and reducing signup times from 1 min to 20 sec. These things can be good to do. But we must do them under the understanding that we will never be as good at this game as the Silicon Valley corporate players. And so the primary underlying game that Ethereum plays must be a different game. What is the game? Resilience. Resilience is the game where it’s not about 4.5% APY vs 5.3% APY - rather, it’s about minimizing the chance that you get -100% APY. Resilience is the game where if you become politically unpopular and get deplatformed, or if a the developers of your application go bankrupt or disappear, or if Cloudflare goes down, or if an internet cyberwar breaks out, your 2000ms latency continues to be 2000ms. Resilience is the game where anyone, anywhere in the world will be able to access the network and be a first-class participant. Resilience is sovereignty. Not sovereignty in the sense of lobbying to become a UN member state and shaking hands at Davos in two weeks, but sovereignty in the sense that people talk about "digital sovereignty" or "food sovereignty" - aggressively reducing your vulnerabilities to external dependencies that can be taken away from you on a whim. This is the sense in which the world computer can be sovereign, and in doing so make its users also sovereign. This baseline is what enables interdependence as equals, and not as vassals of corporate overlords thousands of kilometers away. This is the game that Ethereum is suited to win, and it delivers a type of value that, in our increasingly unstable world, a lot of people are going to need. The fundamental DNA of web2 consumer tech is not suited to resilience. The fundamental DNA of _finance_ often spends considerable effort on resilience, but it is a very partial form of resilience, good at solving for some types of risks but not others. Blockspace is abundant. Decentralized, permissionless and resilient blockspace is not. Ethereum must first and foremost be decentralized, permissionless and resilient block space - and then make that abundant.
The removal of Maduro will lower oil prices, which is good for America and very bad for Russia. A weaker Russian economy will increase the probability that the war in Ukraine ends sooner and on more favorable terms for Ukraine. And Putin will be sleeping in his safe room from this point going forward.
The 4D chess interpretation here is that US is about to crash oil prices This will put a lot of pressure on Russia and Iran And possibly on China too, as they were buying discounted oil from these 3 since all 3 were sanctioned by USA Bonus. Cheaper energy for AI for America
no crypto startup should feel pressured to do buybacks. in normal tech this would be insane. high growth startups should be reinvesting capital and preserving runway, not blowing it in the open market to placate a couple loud reply guys the popularity of buybacks - and in some sense, the expectation by the market that every revenue positive protocol will do them - is unequivocally bad for the crypto startup ecosystem. founders should be focused on their users, product, and team - not managing a perpetual twap buybacks are a symptom of a more fundamental malaise we find ourselves in as an industry. most tokens are worthless. the average app token is just a memecoin wearing a suit. it has “utility” but no ownership of anything meaningful token holders have finally grown wise to these schemes and now as a result demand buybacks. why be forced to trust the team to steward a protocol’s capital when they can just immediately return it to investors via buybacks? the shorter the lag between revenue in and buybacks out, the better this approach is fine for later stage teams. buybacks make sense for protocols like pump & hyperliquid that print money and may have no other productive place to park all that cash. but for your run of the mill crypto startup, buybacks are at best a distraction and at worse a waste of precious resources the pendulum is finally starting to swing away from buybacks, as evidenced by helium’s decision to pause part of their buyback programme. metadao will only accelerate this shift teams that launch ownership coins on metadao feel no pressure to do buybacks bc investors have actual ownership. this means ownership coin founders don’t need to virtue signal to their holders; instead they can focus on the important stuff - product, users, team buybacks are a pre futarchy phenomenon
@GosparDaniel @brownonthe63669 There is no transaction that exists which would confirm outside capital has entered to buy the token. Fact. What you are seeing are transactions swapping USDC for RENDER. The question you should ask is "Where did the USDC come from?"
SF and NYC will remain tech and finance capitals. Despite a few billionaires moving. Here’s why. For Austin to replace SF as the tech capital, it would need to capture the majority of US venture funding. In 2025, the Bay Area raised over $140 billion in VC. All of Texas raised roughly $12 billion. That’s a 12:1 ratio, and it got worse this year, not better. The gap accelerated in the wrong direction for Sacks’ thesis. The Bay Area’s share of US venture capital hit 45% in 2025, up from 31% historically. AI drove everything, and AI lives in San Francisco. The Bay Area alone captured $122 billion in AI funding in 2025, more than three-quarters of all US AI investment. OpenAI raised $40 billion in a single round in Q1. Anthropic expanded to 330,000 square feet downtown. xAI is headquartered there. At the close of 2025, OpenAI is valued at $500 billion and Anthropic at $183 billion. Those two companies alone captured 14% of all global venture investment this year. Both are in San Francisco. 49% of Big Tech engineers live in the Bay Area. That density compounds. Miami’s finance story is similar. Yes, Citadel moved. Yes, hedge funds like the tax arbitrage. But a few billionaires relocating their personal residences doesn’t move the infrastructure that makes a financial capital. Ken Griffin can run Citadel from Miami. He still needs prime brokers, counterparties, legal teams, and regulators who operate on New York time. JPMorgan alone manages $4.1 trillion from Park Avenue. Florida’s entire money management industry runs about $300 billion. That’s the gap. The billionaire moves make headlines because they’re individuals making individual choices. But financial systems aren’t networks of individuals. They’re networks of institutions. The reason Wall Street has been Wall Street for 200 years isn’t because bankers love the weather. It’s because when you need to close a $50 billion deal, everyone you need is within a 10-block radius. Same dynamic in tech. Elon moved Tesla’s HQ to Austin. Tesla’s AI and Autopilot teams are still in Palo Alto. The manufacturing went to Texas. The brains stayed in California. Will Miami and Austin grow? They’ve been growing for a decade. But Sacks is predicting replacement, not growth. And for that to happen, you’d need the entire ecosystem to relocate, not just the people who already made their money and want lower taxes. The founders building the next $100 billion companies aren’t optimizing for state income tax. They’re optimizing for talent, capital, and customers. All three are still concentrated exactly where they’ve been.
an update on HNT buybacks: the market doesn’t seem to care about projects buying their tokens back off the market, so we are going to stop wasting our money under the current conditions Helium + Mobile generated $3.4M in October alone and I’d rather we use that money to grow the business than pour it into a hole. we’re fully focused on growing @helium_mobile subscribers, the @helium network installed base, and growing carrier offload usage and will be directing all our $ in to those endeavors until morale improves data credits will continue to be burned for all carrier offload as always. thank you for your attention to this matter!
an update on HNT buybacks: the market doesn’t seem to care about projects buying their tokens back off the market, so we are going to stop wasting our money under the current conditions Helium + Mobile generated $3.4M in October alone and I’d rather we use that money to grow the business than pour it into a hole. we’re fully focused on growing @helium_mobile subscribers, the @helium network installed base, and growing carrier offload usage and will be directing all our $ in to those endeavors until morale improves data credits will continue to be burned for all carrier offload as always. thank you for your attention to this matter!
“Politicians raise taxes not because it’s needed, but because it gives them a bigger slush fund to enrich groups who will vote for them They fund luxury hotels for illegal immigrants, while working families can barely afford healthcare “
