dannyryan

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Goodbye, Poseidon!

An epic 8-year, 8-figure rabbit hole in post-quantum cryptography reaches its dream conclusion. The Ethereum Foundation is abandoning Poseidon for L1, pivoting to SHA or BLAKE. This milestone unlocks ultimate security for lean Ethereum and foreshadows a golden era of hash-based cryptography.

Since 2018, the Ethereum Foundation has invested in magic cryptographic bricks, so-called "SNARK-friendly hashes". In 2019, Poseidon was born. It held strong and became the dominant SNARK-friendly hash, securing billions via zkrollups and zkVMs.

In a stunning reversal, breakthrough SNARK designs show that SNARK-friendly hashes aren't necessary after all. Off-the-shelf traditional hash functions like SHA2 and BLAKE2s can now match Poseidon in a SNARK. In hindsight the key was not SNARK-friendly hashes, but hash-friendly SNARKs.

The secret is doing maths over the smallest prime number: 2. So-called "binary fields" natively speak the language of bits, aligning with the boolean operations inside traditional hashes. This is a stark departure from "prime fields", where awkward large-prime arithmetic makes bit manipulation painfully expensive.

We're talking sci-fi cryptography. 1M traditional hash calls proven per second, on a laptop. Just 100x overhead vs native CPU boolean compute. Nobody predicted such performance, not even the handful of binary-field visionaries. Hat tip to the research geniuses: Jim and Ben with Binius in 2023; Ron, Benedikt and William with Flock in June.

With SHA2, the lean aesthetic of minimal assumptions reaches its climax. The EF's principled stance on pure hash-based cryptography has aged like fine wine. We now enjoy foundations the world can trust for decades and centuries, foundations worthy of the dream of an internet of value.

Speed of deployment is a secondary win. There's no longer a need to wait years for Poseidon cryptanalysis to bake. Emile and Thomas from the EF post-quantum team are moving at breakneck speed with binary fields. The strawmap now points to a production-grade leanVM in 2027, with CL, DL, EL deployments in 2028.

As AI becomes exceptional at cryptanalysis, the contrarian bet to avoid riskier structures like lattices and isogenies is visibly paying off. The past weeks have been brutal. Lattice-based "HAWK" and isogeny-based "SQIsign", both signature schemes in NIST's Round 3, have suffered blows. Sources I trust say more blood is coming.

On AI, the open autoresearch trend kicked off by ECDSA[.]fail is spreading fast, with amazing outcomes from zk[.]golf and SNARK[.]fast. Days ago SNARK[.]fast crossed 1.8M BLAKE3/sec proven on an M3 Max. Stay tuned for fresh autoresearch challenges dropping tomorrow.

Also tomorrow: Ethproofs call #10, dedicated to binary fields. Possibly the most noteworthy Ethproofs call yet. Experts leading the charge will present the future of hash-based SNARKs at 2pm UTC. What an incredible time to be alive. To witness history, DM me for a calendar invite :)

Today I can confidently claim that hash-based cryptography has won out for blockchain post-quantum signatures. SNARK succinctness compresses arbitrarily many signatures into one small proof per block. SNARK flexibility yields k-of-n threshold signatures, complex multisigs, and more.

Ultimate security. Uncompromising performance. Full programmability.

Believe in something. Believe in hashes.

[Etherealize @Etherealize_io]

Our team is growing. We're hiring a Full Stack Engineer to join Etherealize in Austin, TX.

Etherealize is bringing Wall Street settlement into the 21st century. As trillions of dollars of real-world assets move on-chain, we're building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of global markets on Ethereum.

You'll collaborate closely with our President, @dannyryan, our CTO, @zachobront, and an elite team of engineers formerly at Circle, Amazon, Bloomberg, and Kraken.

If you want to solve complex technical challenges and have the chance to build products that transform global finance, apply here: https://t.co/dLcxLWEfPf

[Barnabé Monnot | barnabé.eth @barnabemonnot]

https://t.co/VPqDnwH5dJ

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

New node, killer team

Ethereum's success is derived on many fronts through diverse mindshare, diverging concerns, healthy competition, and a shared responsibility

Excited to collaborate with @ethlabs_org to ensure Ethereum becomes the settlement layer of the global economy

[Ethlabs @ethlabs_org]

Announcing Ethlabs: a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum and ETH

Our mission is to make Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy.

The internet became global because shared protocols created a common language between networks. Private systems remained useful, but bounded. Finance is approaching a similar moment. As value, assets, and markets become digital, the world needs shared settlement infrastructure.

Ethereum is uniquely positioned to become that shared base layer, the neutral foundation on which users, institutions, and agents can transact without intermediation.

What we believe:

• We believe credible neutrality matters. Ten years of uptime and the lowest counterparty risk. Ground that cannot be pulled away by any one country, institution, company, or person.

• We believe ETH matters. The most valuable, programmable store of value. A decade of broad distribution, deep liquidity in onchain markets, and maximally trustless asset on Ethereum.

• We believe DeFi matters. Markets, liquidity, credit, exchange, and coordination, open to anyone.

• We believe adoption matters. Principles do not change the world until people benefit from them.

We sit between two worlds: real usage from the builders at the frontier, and the protocol that has to support it. We work with users, applications, wallets, L2s, infrastructure teams, institutions, ETH holders, core devs and researchers, then turn what they actually need into protocol work, shared standards, infrastructure, and shipped products.

Ethlabs is independent but Ethereum is a shared project. We are one node in a much larger network of stewards. This is the multi-node future.

We have spent the better part of the past decade contributing to Ethereum core research and development.

We are opinionated and transparent. We move with urgency, learn in public, and course-correct when we’re wrong.

We are building a lean, talent-dense team for people who want to do the most important work of their careers: [email protected]

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

so who do I have to complain to to get unbanned on anthropic?

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

@peter_szilagyi oh me too!

good luck on that "appeal form"

[Milk Road @milkroaddaily]

@DannyRyan: "Agentic finance is gonna take over the world faster than you think."

→ Agents want atomic swaps, not wires.
→ They want to be able to coordinate globally.
→ They won't use some US-centric chain if they're European.

They'll go where the assets and liquidity are.

"Secure agentic finance that can handle $10B workflows is one of the most important things we can work on."

Ethereum is the only answer.

Pod: @RealVision / @RaoulGMI

[Raoul Pal @RaoulGMI]

Wall Street is moving onchain. The question isn't if. It's which infrastructure wins.

I sat down with @VivekVentures and @dannyryan from Etherealize to talk about Ethereum's role in tokenization, stablecoins, AI agents, and the regulatory path ahead. As ever, please enjoy!

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

@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 🥲

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

@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 🥲

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

@Fatalmeh wait is that me

[James | Snapcrackle @Snapcrackle]

Fair warning. This post is bullish on Ethereum.

Yesterday, the Ethereum Foundation Enterprise team ran the Institutional Ethereum Forum in New York City.

Broad Adoption Activated.

Invitation only. 100's of Banks, asset managers, and infrastructure providers representing around $250 trillion in assets under management.

feedback so far
"Absolute banger tbh."

"People won't stop talking and networking and the content has all been great."

"Your institutional team did an amazing job. I was there. Kudos."

BlackRock. Western Union. Robinhood. Moody's. Baillie Gifford. Securitize. All on panels. Not as guests. As participants building on Ethereum.

This is what adoption actually looks like. EF also presents its post-quantum security strategy and launches https://t.co/1fPpbCRIcY.

EF also presented its post-quantum security strategy and launched https://t.co/1fPpbCRIcY. This is not just leading blockchain. No major technology platform has a published, open-source post-quantum migration roadmap at this level of detail. Ethereum is doing it before it is required, not after.

Proud of the Enterprise team for putting this together.

Choose Ethereum.

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

https://t.co/RHgJ0bJTKY

The fast confirmation rule is incredible

So many years in the making. Super excited to see it finally ship!

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

you go deep, we'll go broad

I respect and appreciate the EF clarifying its focus and mandate so that others know what gaps to fill and which alternative threads to follow so we make maximal impact as a collective

At @Etherealize_io we'll stay the course and focus on rearchitecting institutional finance from the inside out

We are one piece of the diverse machine that will make the deepest and broadest impact possible

[Ethereum Foundation @ethereumfndn]

Today, the Foundation’s Board released the EF Mandate.

This document, which was first intended for EF members, reaffirms the promise of Ethereum, and the role of EF within this ecosystem.

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

1. do better on security
2. have a differentiated reason to exist

seems reasonable

[Etherealize @Etherealize_io]

https://t.co/DrKAELg2kw

[Fredrik @0xfredrik]

The Ethereum Foundation Bug Bounty Program (https://t.co/MaBGlzTJ9S) has increased its maximum payout from $250K to $1M.

[dannyryan @dannyryan]

Thank you @tkstanczak 🙏

And welcome Bastian 🔥

Bastian is the single most thoughtful and wise person I have ever worked with

While at the EF, Bastian was my number one source of counsel on every tough decision I made during that era, and I still regularly seek his perspective on my complex new work at @Etherealize_io

The EF is in good hands

[Tomasz K. Stańczak @tkstanczak]

I am stepping down from my co-ED role at the EF at the end of February 2026. Bastian Aue is taking over the co-ED role alongside Hsiao-Wei. The future is bright for builders, for Ethereum, for the EF, and for me.

I wrote a longer blog post (link below). I will answer all of your questions here, at ETHDenver, and during podcasts and AMAs that will be there over the next few days.

https://t.co/cV1ApqtrVO

[Ben Edgington @benjaminion_xyz]

I left paid work almost a year ago saying that only something spectacular would drag me out of retirement.

Well, it happened - I am now with @ethereumfndn helping to shepherd fast finality to Mainnet.

It's going to be quite the journey, but I am very excited! 🚀

[Etherealize @Etherealize_io]

New year, same goal: To make DeFi mainstream.

@DannyRyan, Co-Founder & President of Etherealize, spoke at DevConnect Argentina about bringing institutional capital onchain and the evolution of DeFi as traditional markets upgrade to Ethereum rails.

"We need to compel the world's assets onchain. As we encode market rules and bring assets onchain, we reduce middlemen, create better products, and improve access. Institutions will increasingly become DeFi companies—or be replaced by those who do."

Watch the full talk 👇

https://t.co/YqeJDfDgBT