SP 🔥

You know what’s going to truly get us from web2 to web3? Therapy

@oskarth @ethstatus Yes! Congrats Oskar!

Yesterday was my last day at the Ethereum Foundation. Today we are launching EthSystems. We build confidential systems for institutional Ethereum. I've spent close to a decade building privacy infrastructure in crypto: p2p messaging at @ethstatus, developing Waku protocols at Vac (both now part of @logos_network), mobile proving tooling with @zkmopro, teaching zero-knowledge proofs with my zkintro primer, and advising @ethereumfndn on privacy and access layer strategy. Most of that was aimed at individuals. The past year at EF's Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF) we've been looking at privacy for institutions. On the surface this might seem different, but there are a lot of similarities. There's also a very strong market need for it, and the timing is right. I've written in the past about the tension and overlap between cypherpunks and institutions. Twitter is not exactly the best medium for nuance, but right now we are at a sensitive point in time: the defaults for the next generation of financial infrastructure are being set, with or without us. I believe we need cypherpunks in the room when that happens. Excited to start @eth_systems together with my co-founder @motypes and @_rymnc as part of the founding team. See quoted announcement thread for more details. x.com/eth_systems/st…

@eth_systems Congrats on the launch, team!

Today we're launching EthSystems. We build confidential systems for institutional Ethereum. Institutions want to use Ethereum, but one of the biggest problems is the lack of built-in, modular privacy tools. We were the Ethereum Foundation's Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF) for the past year. We had hundreds of conversations with central banks, regulators, tier-one banks, and asset managers, shipping open source work the whole time. Wall Street has found crypto as an asset class, but not yet as commercial infrastructure. Institutions want to run real flows on Ethereum: stablecoins, tokenized assets, settlement. These are businesses with billions of dollars on the line, and no bank will operate in full public view. On a public ledger, confidentiality is the hard part: each party to a transaction should see what it has a right to see, and nothing more. We have a year of proof of work: private bonds, confidential stablecoin transfers, private settlement across chains, the Ethereum Privacy Map, and more. All with protocol specs and security properties, at our website. We've spent a decade working on privacy in crypto. We know there's no silver bullet. Different use cases need different systems, each designed, specified, and hardened properly, and someone has to do that work. That's why EthSystems exists. We're an independent, for-profit company, backed by long-term Ethereum-aligned investors. This is a decade-long transition, and we aren't going anywhere. If you're an institution that wants to build on Ethereum, talk to us. We're hiring: BD in New York, protocol engineers, ops: join@ethsystems.org

@auryn_macmillan 🤝

@Sim_Pop On it

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

this is your daily reminder you can get an audit for 1 USDC auditing agents are standing by onedollaraudit.com

Ursula von der Leyen has confirmed that everyone in the EU will need to use the EU's app for identity authentication before being able to access or post on social media websites. 🇪🇺 As an expert in online child safety, I am here to expose the misinformation and misdirection in von der Leyen's statements. Today von der Leyen said: "This is not about whether children can access social media, it is about whether social media can access our children". 💡The first part is true. This isn't about children. It's about surveillance and combating political dissent. A state that can't control its own citizens is more dangerous than a state rife with criminals. The second part is a PR soundbite that politicians are using like a campaign slogan straight out of 1984. 🇪🇺"The question is no longer if children face risks online, but what can we do to give children a safer start online". 💡No. You can't give children a "safer start" online any more than you can offline. In the offline world, the government doesn't enforce curfews or ban children from entering liquor stores, bars or restaurants. That's a parent's responsibility. The digital world should be no different. 🇪🇺"The age verification app is one of the tools to get it done". 💡This is a contradiction because she also said "It won't be foolproof". 🇪🇺"It's easy to use, it is privacy preserving and it is open source". 💡The app was compromised as soon as it was released. "Privacy-preserving" age verification is an oxymoron. You can't verify a person's age without verifying their identity. Where or how that age is shared afterwards is irrelevant. 🇪🇺"This is basically about putting back the power into the hands of parents". 💡More from 1984. The EU is doing the opposite. Parents are having their authority stripped by politicians who think they know better. Many parents are capable and unaffected by peer pressure, and they know how to use parental controls to block any app classified as 13+. Some teens are safe, their parents trust them, and the state has no business overruling that trust. 🇪🇺"We don't give our children keys to the car before they have their licence" 💡Comparing an app to a car is a false equivalence used to justify mass surveillance. Governments don't decide when a young person is ready for car keys, guardians do. 💡Forcing every adult and child into a biometric checkpoint just to use an app or website is not licensing drivers. It's the state seizing everyone's keys, locking the garage, and forcing every driver to ask a private company for permission to take a drive. 💡 This is a gross, unethical overreach that strips authority from parents while imposing state sanctioned identity verification on every adult who doesn't even have a child. 💡Additionally, people who pass a test, obtain a licence and drive a car aren't forced to use an app to constantly authenticate their suitability to drive. 🇪🇺"We do not let them buy alcohol until they are legally allowed" 💡False equivalence. We don't force every person to show ID at a shopping mall entrance just because a few people might buy alcohol with a meal at a restaurant. Some parents are okay with their 12 year-old going to the mall with friends while others aren't. Either way, it's their choice. Whatever irresponsible decisions some parents might make, every adult in the country shouldn't be forced to pay the price. 🇪🇺"It won't be foolproof" 💡This is all the proof we need to show that the EU and every government know that banning social media for teens won't protect them. When pressed by journalists about VPNs being used to circumvent a ban, politicians always state the ban isn't a silver bullet and will take time. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan went as far as to say "we know it's not the solution". 💡Either age verification works, or it doesn't. As a technical expert in this space, I can tell you there are no additional steps to take and no progress to be made. Either the approach does what it is supposed to do, or it's not fit for purpose. If they claim a bulletproof solution is coming, it can only mean one thing. They intend to ban or restrict VPNs to people who verify their identity. 🇪🇺"It will take time to invite the cultural change that is already taking shape in our society, just as it took time to outlaw drink driving, just as it took time to use seatbelts in the cars. Great change never happens overnight, but when it comes to our safety it is always worth it". 💡Comparing a social media ban and age verification to seatbelts is a completely broken analogy. Seatbelts are a safety feature that protects children while allowing them to travel in a car. A ban doesn't give kids a seatbelt. It kicks them out of the car entirely. 💡Instead of supporting parents who want to guide their own children through the digital world, this heavy-handed law strips away parental authority by banning the apps and websites that many parents are perfectly fine with and actively monitor. 💡Furthermore, enforcing these bans requires biometric age verification, which means forcing millions of adult citizens to scan their IDs, faces or credit cards just to browse the internet. That isn't a common-sense traffic law. 💡It's a digital checkpoint on every street. True safety means teaching kids how to navigate the digital world safely with real guardrails and parental guidance, not burning down digital spaces for everyone under the guise of protection. 🇪🇺☠️ The EU wants to ban teens from social media so every person is forced to verify their identity before they can read, share or post anything online. In their words, this is to protect children from dangerous content. 🇪🇺☠️ The EU wants to enforce "Chat Control" so every app has to monitor everything people say privately inside it, including apps with end-to-end encryption. In their words, this is to protect children from dangerous criminals. 💡Where this ends 🇪🇺 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever". George Orwell, 1984.

@DennisonBertram Let’s do it in Lisbon…

Thinking of organizing an Ethereum conference called “one last time” and we just all get beers and trade stories about the first time we met Vitalik.

@PaulRBerg Ooof! Sad to see but such great work - a key building block of this space. Huge kudos to you and the team 🫡

Thanks everyone for the kind replies to this post 🙏🫶

@0xprivacypools Can confirm coffee x entropy is cool ✅

haven't contributed to the v2 trusted setup ceremony yet?

@RagingBitcoin Therapy?

@Sim_Pop and politicians are exempt from this

Politicians would rather do this than go to therapy. It genuinely makes my blood boil harder than euro summer that humans have gotten to this stage of blatant disregard for human rights. it must be a real bad trip living one’s life being so utterly basic and subservient with cataract level mental blindedness that you’re comfortable taking actions like this.

@0xprivacypools Breakfast of champions

@Sim_Pop coffee and entropy ☕️🪄

the privacy pools v2 trusted setup ceremony is now beginning and we need your help contribute your entropy and become an early supporter of the protocol, guide below ↓

always voting

@TMIYChao 🫡

I was getting questions about recent EF layoffs and my situation so I should share something public as well. I am still part of EF, continuing my work and figuring out what's most needed in the future. However, all of my team, Protocol Support, that I have been part for 5+ years, has been dissolved. And we lost some really great people during this. @joshdavislight is personally the biggest loss for me, although I hope our two ring circus will continue. He came to Ethereum inspired by his friend @pipermerriam and we met to work on a project. Two of us with widely different backgrounds, pretty random match but we found out we have a lot in common, that's why we are here. Starting around 4 years ago, we built EPF together, running cohorts regularly since. It became machine that brings dozens of new core developers, we made friends with so many talented people all over the world. I'm grateful we could do this in tandem with Josh. @wolovim here is the man himself behind Forkcast and the final leader of the team. He stepped up to this role when his original team got dissolved to immediately build a tool that became core to all core development coordination. One of the biggest improvements we saw in years with major step in public and devs being able to follow the process. Huge respect for his skills and dedication, really glad you kept us all together till the end. @dionysuzx Joined him only couple months ago to take Forkcast to next level. One of those people who just showed up in community, you see their motivation and contributions so you just want to work with them! He was able to step up and do great things really fast. I am sure his potential finds even better opportunities in the future. @Butta_eth Who also joined recently but did incredible work in the time. He is the guy who knows everyone and gets stuff done, iykwim👀Managing inputs from the ecosystem, he helped to push core r&d and only in couple of months he ramped up maxEB adoption across the whole network. This was the last iteration of Protocol Support, the team with catch-all name started by @JosefJ_ , pushing whole Ethereum forward for years lead by @TimBeiko and finally being transformed to accelerate core development by @nixorokish. It's been a wild ride to see it all the way from humble beginning, through peak and all the way to the bitter end. RIP @EFprotocol Respect to all quiet builders out there working without fancy loud handles and keeping everything running. Posledný nech zhasne

🇪🇺 The EU is now for the 6th time trying to force Chat Control through which lets them scan ALL your private messages, photos and emails without a warrant Implictly showing the EU is not democratic and not about what the people of Europe want, because once a law is rejected, you just re-submit it until nobody is watching and it's passed November 2023: ❌ Chat Control is rejected June 2024: ❌ Chat Control is rejected October 2025: ❌ Chat Control is rejected November 2025: ❌ Chat Control is rejected March 2026: ❌ Chat Control is rejected July 2026: 📝 Chat Control is back Even the EU's own lawyers stated Chat Control is unconstitutional: "generalised message scanning is incompatible with Article 7 of the EU Charter" You have to wonder why the EU is so adament about reading your private chats, right?

privacy is a collective act contribute your entropy to the trusted setup ceremony and become an early supporter of privacy pools v2 ceremony.privacypools.com