BlockChannel

An educational new media research group (+podcast) focused on the sociocultural/cryptoeconomic issues related to crypto. Storytelling the future. 🎙⛓

[arya (fka. arjun) 🏴 @arjunbhuptani]

We've made the difficult decision to wind down @EverclearOrg.

@LayneHaber @RHLSTHRM and I started Connext (later Everclear) in 2017 to help solve the painful UX holding Ethereum back from mainstream adoption.

Over the last 9 years, our team:
- Shipped the first production L2 (using state channels) in 2018.
- Contributed to the creation of the @MolochDAO, catalyzing renewed interest in DAOs.
- Pioneered the first intent-based bridge in 2020.
- Created the Chain Abstraction vision and demonstrated it's potential for staking/restaking protocols.
- Pushed forward ERC-7281 as a neutral, open standard for bridged tokens.
- Brought clearance to DeFi.
- Processed over $6B in network volume.

Throughout that time, we've also done our best to stay true to our principles and the crypto ethos; pushing for a higher bar of transparency and trust-minimization for ourselves and the space at large.

Even though this isn't the ending we ultimately wanted, I am *incredibly* proud of what our team has accomplished and grateful to those who have supported us all of these years ❤️

Longer post-mortem coming soon.

In the meantime, if you are a team that is hiring: we have a team of 10x operators who have executed ruthlessly through some of the harshest market conditions on shoestring budgets. Reach out!

[Everclear @EverclearOrg]

Today we’re sharing difficult news: we have made the decision to wind down Everclear (Foundation / Labs and building the product).

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

Mandarin and Spanish translations being added to https://t.co/EHnxzAyFjW now.

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

First newsletter post since August 2023. We’re back. The audio show for BlockChannel will make its return later in the year once the host gets settled in a new place.

We’ve missed talking, learning and educating with you all.

No apologies, we needed the break to breathe.

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

https://t.co/cJCTp7IsdP

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

This is a lie.

[Howard Wu @1HowardWu]

All private transactions today will be deanonymized when quantum computers come online.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Short-term things being done to shift Ethereum toward native privacy:

* AA + FOCIL (makes privacy protocol txs, among many other things, first-class with strong inclusion guarantees)
* Keyed nonces: https://t.co/BeTJvFhxiV
* Access-layer work (Kohaku, private reads...)

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

https://t.co/mLbXOd66vH

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

Yes yes, that’s where I was in the story.

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

We can use social intelligence, data visualization, and AI to create realtime block politicking and policing. We can infer and analyze every series of transactions in fixed intervals or epochs. Then we can parse and solve those blocks by then delineating each suspect block..

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

Then we can delineate each block into a fixed legal jurisdiction. This enables politicking/policing of every block of value that transfers in the world. And voila, we can scale the world into the AI and Crypto Quantum world SAFELY and sensibly without unnecessary regulation

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

We had trouble educating people on @Zcash so Claude and I made the BlockCube to explain the anatomy of a ZCash/Ethereum/Bitcoin block.

Fully interactive and filled with info. Learn the entire biology of a blockchain block.

https://t.co/cJCTp7IsdP

cc: @zooko @VitalikButerin

[Steven D. McKie @Steven_McKie]

Very proud to announce the relaunch of @BlockChannel - where I’ve housed musings, research, joint posts, and the educational podcast since 2016.

🎊 https://t.co/Jj7S7Y4UHR 🎊

This a monument portal for everything crypto will do between now and 2030. It’s a digital guidebook.

[Steven D. McKie @Steven_McKie]

Ze new @BlockChannel logo revamp now represents what crypto was making all along:

The blackbox of money and knowledge.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

"Even more bugs are inevitable, software is all going to become probabilistic now" is cope. "AI bug-finding means we have to embrace closed-source now" is a psyop.

Writing buggy code has moved from hard to trivial. Writing secure code has moved from impossible to hard.

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

Blockchannel is getting a rebranding and mission refocus for its blog and podcast.

[Steven D. McKie @Steven_McKie]

Every major L1, to ensure “machine compatible fault tolerance”, should have at least ONE WORKING implementation that is entirely written, maintained, and audited DAILY by a frontier coding model.

This ensure that in the event of a black swan zero day, at least one is AI ready.

[Steven D. McKie @Steven_McKie]

My friend Elsa wrote an article on UX researchers and product folks transitioning into builders with the aid of AI. Not sure what’s considered bad for the X algorithm these days, but here’s the post. https://t.co/vIgN2rUKVF

[BlockChannel @BlockChannel]

Amazing that polymarket actually got such a substantial investment and it’s going to flop ridiculously.

[Erika Lee @erikalee]

ways to say someone has "it"

they have:

- the X factor
- je ne sais quoi
- the sauce
- panache
- undeniable aura