sianliu.crypto

Creator x Trader x Investor

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

Self-taught Product Manager with a CS background, passionate about DeFi and building products. Hardcore Bankless member since 2021, 3 years in DeFi and 13 hackathons as a Product Owner. Seeking an entry level PM role in DeFi. My DMs are open.

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@samczsun What are you referring to?

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@gitcoin 🙋‍♂️

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@nook_savings What's the roadmap for the Android version?

[Bankless @Bankless]

What's behind Ethereum's HUGE week? 📈

- Tom Lee (@fundstrat) wants 5% of Ether Supply
- Joe Lubin's $SBET to buy $5b more ETH
- Biggest ETF inflows on record
-@BlackRock filing for ETH Staking ETF

AND Congress delivering on the GENIUS Act ⚖️

@leolanza explains 👇

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@bankless @the_defi_report @JustDeauIt 👀

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@Web3zy @bankless 🚀

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@gitcoin Healthcare related dapps working towards improving patient outcomes whoever they are.

[Bankless @Bankless]

ZKP2P is quietly solving one of crypto’s biggest vulnerabilities: onboarding that still relies on leaky Web2 infrastructure.

In the wake of a 16B credential cloud breach, its private, trust-minimized on/off-ramp is more relevant than ever — especially with v2 now live.

Here’s what it solves and how it works. 👇

~~ Analysis by @davewardonline ~~

Crypto payments still face key friction points for onboarding:

➢ High Fees: Moonpay charges up to 4.5%, and Transak $1 + 3.5%

➢ Cumbersome KYC: Different levels, tied to user accounts

➢ Limited Asset Support: Only a subset of onchain assets

➢ Inconsistent Availability: Coinbase works smoothly, but not everywhere

@zkp2p matches buyers (onramping) with sellers (offramping), fixing this. In V1, sellers locked $USDC in escrow. Buyers sent fiat via Venmo, generated a payment proof, and unlocked funds.

What’s New in V2

V2 keeps the buyer/seller core but now uses zkTLS — a method for moving data from Web2 to Web3 without exposing private details — to match offchain and onchain parties.

Users can now on/off ramp any ERC20 across Base, Polygon, Ethereum, and Solana, with new payment proof types (API, receipt, email confirmation).

It also adds "offchain relayers" that differ by service: the default ZKP2P relayer abstracts gas and wallet signing, while others may add KYC or specialize in certain regions or providers.

The result: a more flexible, developer-ready protocol that builds on V1’s foundation.

If I must prove receipt, how private is ZKP2P?

ZKP2P doesn’t hide payments — it proves they happened without exposing personal data.

Instead of KYC, users generate cryptographic proofs locally showing that a payment occurred and that they own the account — including only what’s needed (transaction ID, date, amount, etc.). Nothing is stored; all data lives in the browser and disappears after.

This works through PeerAuth, a browser extension that uses zkTLS to pull info from Web2 payment apps (Venmo, Wise) and generate proofs, revealing only what's necessary.

Everything is open source, and network activity can be inspected to confirm no leaks.

How to Onramp via ZKP2P

1️⃣ Visit zkp2p (dot) xyz & Connect Wallet — Use “Log In” in the top-right corner, then go to the Buy tab.

2️⃣ Start Your Order — Choose currency and payment method, pick an offer, then start and sign the order.

3️⃣ Install PeerAuth — Prompted after starting your first order. Click “Add to Chrome.” (While installing an extension in crypto usually feels risky, the doxxed founders and Ethereum Foundation support for ZKP2P make me more comfortable doing so.)

4️⃣ Make Payment — Follow payment instructions (QR code or manual), then click “I have completed payment.”

5️⃣ Verify & Receive $USDC — Log into your payment app, PeerAuth fetches details, select the correct transaction, click Verify, wait ~30s, then complete the order and receive funds.

Support is available via their docs and Telegram.

If you want to sell on ZKP2P, follow their guide to get started.

---

ZKP2P is faster and cheaper than most onramps. Fees stay low (sometimes zero for small amounts), though they can creep up with size, easily solved by splitting into smaller orders.

I’ve had $5 transactions where I paid the exact rate, onboarding USD with Venmo for zero cost — genuinely impressive. Still, ZKP2P isn’t yet as cheap or convenient as Coinbase for Base users in supported areas.

Even so, usage keeps climbing as the protocol moves toward delivering the kind of seamless, private crypto payments the space has promised for years.

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@bankless Learned something new. Thanks.

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@JackInabinet Just putting it out there.

If Bankless needs another analyst, I'm ready to turn spreadsheets into stories and data into digestible takes.

Consider this my informal application via social media.

[sianliu.eth @sianjon]

The Airdrop Economy

1/15 The Airdrop Economy: How Crypto Projects Bootstrap Communities & Solve the Cold Start Problem 🧵

[Bankless @Bankless]

NEED TO KNOW:
- Sam Altman is Bringing World's Orbs to the U.S. The eyeball-scanning proof-of-humanity startup is setting up shop stateside.

- Ripple Reportedly Offered $5B to Acquire Circle. Circle rejected the bid as too low, but Ripple is reportedly still interested in an acquisition.

- Coinbase Delists of MOVE Following CoinDesk Report. A report from CoinDesk that Move had signed deals with a market maker to pump token prices and dump on retail is having swift consequences.

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@gitcoin I'll be there!

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

Sometimes the way to get into the mind of a genius is through another genius. Nice writeup @JackInabinet

[Bankless @Bankless]

🖥️ Vitalik's Virtual Machine Proposal

@VitalikButerin has big plans for Ethereum

Today, we’re exploring how abandoning the EVM and switching to RISC-V could help Ethereum regain its crown as crypto’s leading smart contract platform 👇

~~ Analysis by @JackInabinet ~~

With Ethereum gas prices reaching historic lows after falling to mere fractions of a “gwei” for computation fees, L1 transactions can currently be completed for pennies. As a result, many onchain users have started questioning why they ever left the L1 in the first place. With $ETH price simultaneously underperforming relative to the monolithic competition, doubts are looming larger than ever about the viability of a “rollup-centric” roadmap.

In recent days, Ethereum leadership has started voicing support for a strategic pivot that would refocus development efforts back towards L1. Piggybacking on the momentum, over the weekend, Vitalik proposed a radical solution to make base layer scalability a reality: abandoning the EVM!

❓ What is Vitalik Proposing?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants to increase transaction speeds and lower costs on the Ethereum L1 by replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V, thereby changing the virtual machine language used to write smart contracts.

Although a total redesign of Ethereum’s smart contract logic is no doubt radical, according to Buterin’s blog post in the Ethereum Magicians forum, these changes would address existing L1 scalability issues by eliminating unnecessary computation, all while retaining backwards compatibility with legacy EVM programs.

Vitalik’s proposal echoes Justin Drake’s “Beam Chain” vision for simplifying Ethereum’s consensus, and just as Beam Chain seeks to streamline $ETH consensus, a RISC-V execution layer would simplify and scale execution, potentially resulting in 100x efficiency gains.

🦾 What is RISC-V?

RISC-V (pronounced “risk five”) is an open-source “reduced instruction set computer” (RISC) architecture that can serve as a modular blueprint for building virtual machines.

Somewhat like the Linux operating system of computer hardware, RISC-V has already been integrated by numerous top-tier chip manufacturing companies, including @intel and @Arm, as their programming backbone of choice for CPUs.

When used in the context of a blockchain-based virtual machine, RISC-V is positioned as enjoying many advantages over the EVM, such as:

• Better performance for zero-knowledge proving
• Superior support from existing code compilers and tooling
• Generic backend that can support alternative coding languages, like Solana's Rust and Sui's MOVE

✈️ Why Abandon the EVM?

The EVM has served Ethereum dutifully since the network’s inception, but it has become a cumbersome bottleneck to recent scaling ambitions. Before the L1 can be future-proofed with zero-knowledge proofs, a complete overhaul may be necessary…

Many in-production ZK-EVMs – like @0xPolygon Miden, @SuccinctLabs SP1, @RiscZero RISC0 – already compile EVM bytecode down to RISC-V under the hood; giving developers direct access to the standard would yield dividends by further reducing proving times and enhancing coding language flexibility.

Additionally, removing deeply ingrained EVM technical debt, like the smart contract deletion “SELFDESTRUCT” functionality, may require switching to a new virtual machine.

Implementing a ZK-ready backend appears to be the best solution to simplify Ethereum’s execution layer, and when coupled with the ability to support more coding languages, the switch to RISC-V stands to be a paradigm shift that establishes Ethereum as a clear leader in next-generation blockchain technology.

[BCard 🏴💳🐰 @getbcard]

A lot of good can happen when we work together ✊

[sianliu.crypto @0xSianLiu]

@bankless Building for the onchain summer buildathon Nouns Unplugged track

[Bankless @Bankless]

What Is $NOUNS?

A 101 explainer:

My (@WPeaster's) favorite NFT project? Nouns

It’s a decentralized collective, a grassroots brand, a software movement, & an open public art series wrapped in one

They’re also a big backer of public goods & privacy efforts in crypto; it’s a tribe I love & have long planned to join

To join today though, the going rate for a Noun is currently ~5-6 ETH, & that’s a nice chunk of gwei to pay all at once

That’s why I’m stoked about the possibility of $NOUNS, an ERC-20 token being considered by the Nouns community that you could stack up over time until ready to redeem for a full NFT & your spot in @nounsdao

Let’s break down what we know about the tentative token so far

What Is $NOUNS Token?

First introduced in March 2024 by the Verbs dev team within Nouns DAO, $NOUNS is a proposed fungible token designed to make Nouns ownership more accessible and to grow the Nouns brand

The big idea? Foster wider participation around Nouns, which in turn would lead to more Nounish supporters and Nounish projects, and thus the DAO’s flywheel turning ‘round and ‘round

How Would $NOUNS Work?

If approved by the collective, $NOUNS would be tailored to the peculiarities of the Nouns. The Verbs team has planned the main pillars as follows:

🪙 Minting and Redeeming: Any Noun can deposit their Noun NFT into the fungible token contract and receive one million $NOUNS tokens. Conversely, anyone holding 1M $NOUNS can redeem them for a Noun NFT by sending the tokens and the Noun ID to the contract.

🔁 ERC-20 Compatibility: The $NOUNS token will have standard ERC-20 functionalities, including transfers and balance readings. The token's ticker is NOUNS, and it has 18 decimals.

✅ DAO Governance: The token's contract, initially assigned to the Verbs multi-sig account, will be upgradeable by the Nouns to allow for future improvements and feature additions.

🍴 Fork Mechanism Integration: The $NOUNS token will integrate with the DAO's novel Fork mechanism, ensuring that $NOUNS in the treasury are treated similarly to Nouns NFTs during any future forks.

; there’s Bridging and Deployment: Initially deployed on Ethereum mainnet, $NOUNS will be bridgeable to L2 networks like Optimism, Base, and Zora for broader accessibility.

What Are the $NOUNS Use Cases?

First and foremost, the Nouns themselves can use $NOUNS to incentivize engagement around its ecosystem. Think $NOUNS distributions to reward onchain proposal creators, https://t.co/5MnKTsVAGx participants, Nouns protocol frontend devs, Nouns Farcaster client builders, etc.

For people who are huge fans of Nouns like myself, there’s also a savings utility, as you could steadily accumulate $NOUNS tokens to save up for a full Noun NFT redemption. In other words, gradually work your way into the collective on your own schedule without needing to pay the full price upfront.

Lastly, there’s a speculation angle. Investors who want to gain exposure to the value of Nouns without owning an NFT could buy and trade $NOUNS, provide liquidity and earn fees on decentralized exchanges like @Uniswap, and so forth.

Will $NOUNS Launch Soon?

Currently, the $NOUNS token is in governance limbo, as a recent proposal to audit the planned implementation was voted down in Nouns DAO.

Reasons cited by “Against” voters included doubts over pressing forward on a token that may not ultimately be needed, the reigning hostile crypto regulatory environment, a desire for more studies and community discussion on the token’s spec, and more.

However, this doesn’t mean $NOUNS is at a dead end. More research and more favorable regulatory tailwinds could put it on a path toward launching in the next year or so if governance warms up around it.

At the end of the day, there’s clearly considerable interest around a fungible token in the collective. Nouns DAO recently approved funding 14 ETH for the development of $⌐◧-◧, an alternative fractional ERC-20 token concept that would offer direct voting power and associated fractional NFTs.

“I’m FOR competing versions of what fungible Nouns might look like,” the Nounder Seneca has noted. “At a reasonable cost, it makes sense to support [another] well intentioned effort to explore the form factor.”

That said, in time both $NOUNS and $⌐◧-◧, along with other Nounish tokens, may come to live side by side in the Nouns ecosystem. Skeptics in the DAO are the main hurdle here for now—and that’s a good thing, there’s no need to rush work like this—yet, of course, skeptics won't necessarily prove to be an everlasting obstacle.

The concerns may eventually be allayed, but only time will tell how the arc and pace of any such thawing would pan out. In the meantime, be sure to keep an eye on Nouns governance and resources like Nounsletter to track any updates around a Nouns token. I’m personally watching the developments and debates here with great interest!

[Bankless @Bankless]

Never bet against $ETH

[a16z Frontier @a16zfrontier]

This conversation covers the origin story of @Optimism, the path to scaling, and unique ways of working together through challenges.

Featuring @jinglejamOP, @karl_dot_tech, & @jasonrosenthal at CSX London.

https://t.co/lwUFTVOdno