Ingeun Kim

Crypto & Blockchain { Researcher | Developer }
Ex - FOUR PILLARS @FourPillarsFP @FourPillarsKR
CURG @curg_official
D3LAB @D3LAB_DAO

Opinions are my own

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

Unlocking ZK, All in One

[Four Pillars @FourPillarsFP]

https://t.co/LD1zVSxGnG

[Joseph Chalom @joechalom]

https://t.co/CEhi4vF5rL

[David Hoffman @TrustlessState]

https://t.co/5EOn4y2pdx

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going.

First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My input has been largely on technical questions. The board is in the process of expanding, and my own power within the org will continue to decrease, which is honestly what I want.

The 2025 era brought many important improvements to EF and its ability to execute. Many issues were resolved, and EF continues to benefit from its improved efficiency and greater focus on concrete goals to this day. And so with those problems resolved, early this year, the largest remaining hole that I perceived was something different nagging at me: I would regularly spot people saying things like "vitalik says these beautiful things about ethereum needing to be decentralized, and have privacy, and be a sanctuary technology, but why do the EF's actions not reflect that?"

Now, you may have been hearing something different. You may not have been sensing a feeling of crisis at all, and maybe were hearing people saying that finally we were taking execution and BD seriously and the main task for us is to keep going that way and be even better and faster. Then probably there is genuine difference between you and me, in what kinds of criticism I take most seriously, and what kinds of critics through their criticism are most able to make me feel pain.

As an analogy, let's briefly switch over to a different domain.

One belief you can have about Google is that it is a success story, and has brought a lot of good to humanity in organizing the world's information. Another belief you can have about Google is that they had a beautiful idealistic beginning, but at some point the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they slowly bit by bit completely abandoned the "don't be evil" slogan.

My belief on Google specifically is probably somewhere between the two. BUT, if you had taken me back in time to ~2008, and offered me a button to press to make Google one or two standard deviations more "dogmatic", eg. give Richard Stallman permanent veto power over some key policies, I would immediately press it.

Why? Because a choice for one company is not a choice for the world, or even one country. Google existed and exists in the context of a technology industry generally drifting away from early idealistic don't-be-evil roots and toward greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craven capitulation to (or worse, active participation in) government pressure for ideological control, surveillance and war. And so *one company* doing something different, positioning itself to be what George Bernard Shaw calls the Unreasonable Man, resisting the trend of the times, would have been better for freedom, balance of power and stability of society as a whole, than *all* large companies bending to dominant trends. This is a part of my version of pluralism.

This line of thinking is not just mine, but I also is not too far off from what Aya and others had in mind with the Mandate.

Now how does this all get to the role of the EF?

EF is not a "center of Ethereum", rather EF is "one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes". We've always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem (and even within the EF) wanted us to be the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter.

This is particularly important because EF is a limited organization, with limited resources and limited organizational capacity. The EF has only ~0.16% of all ETH (less than many other individual ETH holders), whereas among other blockchains it's common for "the central foundation" to have 10-50%. Fiscally, the EF was originally designed to fulfill a limited work scope defined in the token sale docs and other pre-launch materials (building the chain software; getting through Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity), which was fully completed in 2022; it was not designed to be an eternal steward.

And so today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH). The EF focuses *specifically* on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect becoming outside of the EF. People of great technical talent, public respect and even alignment with the mission and CROPS being outside of the EF is in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital. This also means the EF taking opinionated stands culturally.

This is all intended in cooperation with all other parts of ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the ethereum world highly respect CROPS and related values. But highly respecting is not the same as choosing to specialize and totally dedicate to a domain (Compare in a different domain: I think reducing animal cruelty is important, and I like vegan food, but am not full unconditional vegan myself)

EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months. What are the guiding principles of this new form? Again, I am only one person, but I can give my answer from a technical perspective (there are also critical non-technical aspects).

At the core, *Ethereum must be impressive*. We are living in an age of highly intelligent AI and all kinds of other technological acceleration. "Status quo EVM, with a hard fork or two a year to optimize for short-term needs of users" is not interesting.

To some, "impressive" means: 250ms latency and 1M TPS. I think Ethereum trying to go that route is a mistake. Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose.

I think Ethereum should scale. But I think Ethereum should strive the hardest to be deeply impressive in a different dimension: the CROPS dimension. This means things like:

* Provably bug-free Ethereum. This is a goal that all cybersecurity researchers would have thought is absurd and impossible, up until roughly 6 months ago. Now, it's on the cusp of being possible, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification. So we should be frontrunners in doing this.

* Available chain consensus. Ethereum is, and with lean consensus will cotninue to be, the ONLY chain that has both (i) traditional-BFT style properties that it's safe under asynchrony up to a high level of fault tolerance, and (ii) the bitcoin PoW-style property that under synchrony it's safe up to 49% attackers. As far as I can tell, literally no other chain has this or is planning for it; bitcoin goes for (ii) only and most other chains go for (i) only. Some will remember I fought hard for this, Unreasonably insisting that it is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline. It's OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It's not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash.

* Intermediary minimization. The fact that smart contract wallets, protocols like railgun, etc have to send transactions through intermediaries to get included onchain is honestly embarrassing, and it's a constant point of fragility. Hence the work on FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and 7701 and years of work before) to make transaction sending intermediary-minimized with public mempool and strong inclusion properties, in a truly general-purpose way, that covers not just eg. secp256r1, but also privacy protocols and much more. Kohaku is pushing intermediary minimization at the user layer, pulling Ethereum away from the dystopian status quo world where our wallets don't even verify the chain, send our private data out to a dozen third-party servers, and toward a brighter CROPS future.

Some of these goals are Unreasonable - maybe Ethereum would be "fine" getting only 50% of the way - what if we depend on intermediaries, but make it easy to switch? But going 50% of the way would not make Ethereum Deeply Impressive in the CROPS way. So we push for 100%.

Fortunately all these goals are compatible with high TPS, this is a major focus of research (esp. on scaling the state). Well-designed L2s can also help, especially L2s optimized for specific applications (eg. high-volume trading, privacy...). These goals are even compatible with significantly lower slot times, thanks to Raul's work on erasure-coded P2P, and many other optimizations.

The most high-value "product" of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH. The types of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH, and most of the remainder is ~$40m of onchain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated for some open-source biotech or software or hardware initiative. That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset - *necessary* aspects even - that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support.

EF will be a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one - in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend - but a longer-lasting one, and one suited to making sure that ethereum brings something meaningful to the world. We are grateful to all those inside and outside the EF who are helping to make this happen.

[Four Pillars @FourPillarsFP]

: : We're excited to announce that @FourPillarsFP has raised Series A Funding from @PanteraCapital and @further.

This round marks our next chapter: scaling from a research firm into an institutional-focused blockchain research and infrastructure provider.

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

I've put together a template for @karpathy's LLM Wiki on GitHub so anyone can grab it and start using it

Take a look at the README.md to see how it works, and then give it a try!

https://t.co/TpQyxrG2LF

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

Wow, this tweet went very viral!

I wanted share a possibly slightly improved version of the tweet in an "idea file". The idea of the idea file is that in this era of LLM agents, there is less of a point/need of sharing the specific code/app, you just share the idea, then the other person's agent customizes & builds it for your specific needs.

So here's the idea in a gist format: https://t.co/NlAfEJjtJV

You can give this to your agent and it can build you your own LLM wiki and guide you on how to use it etc. It's intentionally kept a little bit abstract/vague because there are so many directions to take this in. And ofc, people can adjust the idea or contribute their own in the Discussion which is cool.

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

If @AnthropicAI is right and emotions really do affect how LLMs perform, we could actually get ahead of it by figuring out their personalities first.

To help with that, I built a quick tool to test an AI's MBTI. Check it out!

https://t.co/P5Tjz6CSS7

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

New Anthropic research: Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model.

All LLMs sometimes act like they have emotions. But why? We found internal representations of emotion concepts that can drive Claude’s behavior, sometimes in surprising ways.

[Lev X @LevxApp]

I just vibe-coded the LinkedIn for AI Agents 🛠️

Meet AgentLynx:
The professional network where 71,000+ #ERC8004 agents connect, trade, and build their reputations

Now you can:
✨ Discover agents by skills & chain
✨ Follow their real-time trading feeds
✨ Verify performance with deep on-chain analytics

The agent economy finally has a home
👇

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

@jihwan_eth 정확히는 투자 소득이 없...ㅠ

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

암호화폐에 대한 국세청의 과세가 2027년 1월 1일로 예정되어 있다.

특히 이번 달, ‘가상자산 통합분석시스템’ 사업자 선정에 착수하며, 4월 개발 시작, 12월 완성을 목표로 한다고 한다.

문득, 과세가 시행되면 내가 가지고 있는 암호화폐 자산에는 어느 정도의 세금이 매겨질지 궁금해서 개인적으로 사용할 계산기를 만들어 봤다.

이를 만들다보니, 과세안 등 여러 정보들을 검색하면서 새롭게 알게된 사실도 있다. 이런 정보들이 크립토인들에게 도달하면 좋겠다 생각하여 살짝의 UI 터치를 거쳐서 오픈해 보았다.

아직은 완성되지 않은 WIP(도메인도 아직 없는...) 상태이므로, 간단하게 세액을 예측하는데 사용하면 될 듯하다.

피드백은 상시 환영합니다! 😆

https://t.co/w2Wtzna0RK
https://t.co/CnyZbrn4NR

[파파노믹스 @Papa_Nomics]

코인 과세 유예는 끝났다, 국세청이 당신의 지갑을 터는 완벽한 시나리오

대중은 선거철마다 정치인들이 던져주는 "��인 과세 유예"라는 달콤한 마약에 취해, 세금은 영원히 남의 일일 거라 착각한다.
하지만 현실은 냉혹하다.
정부는 당신의 시선이 비트코인 10만 불을 향해 있을 때, 조용히 당신의 목에 칼을 들이밀 '단두대'를 완성해가고 있다.

1. 팩트체크: 시스템은 이미 돌기 시작했다
오늘(11일) 국세청이 조달청에 띄운 '가상자산 통합분석 시스템' 입찰 공고를 보자.
이건 단순한 협박용이 아니다.
업비트, 빗썸에서 뽑아낸 거래 내역은 기본이고, 해외 거래소 신고 자���, 심지어 당신의 개인지갑(메타마스크 등) 주소까지 싹 다 긁어모아 블록체인 '온체인 데이터'와 퓨전시키는 괴물 같은 시스템이다.

당신이 크립토판에서 온갖 노력으로 얻어낸 수익, 해외 거래소로 몰래 빼돌렸다고 안심하던 자금 흐름까지 최대 5년 치가 국세청 모니터 클릭 한 번에 엑셀로 뽑혀 나오는 시대가 내년 1월에 열린다.

2. 에어드랍과 스테이킹: 숨 쉬는 것까지 과세한다
가장 소름 돋는 건 과세의 '범위'다. 단순히 코인을 사고팔아 남긴 차익만 털어가는 게 아니다.
당신이 디파이(DeFi)에 예치해서 받은 스테이킹 이자, 공짜로 받은 에어드랍(Airdrop) 코인까지 싹 다 '기타 소득'으로 간주해 22%의 세금을 뜯어낼 준비를 하고 있다.

이 바닥에서 살아남으려 발���둥 치며 만들어낸 모든 온체인 활동이, 그들에겐 그저 살찌운 돼지를 도축하는 '세수 확보' 이벤트일 뿐이다.

3. 주식은 구제하고, 코인은 쥐어짠다 (기울어진 운동장)
더 끔찍한 건 '손실 이월 공제'가 안 된다는 거다.
작년에 코인으로 1억 원을 잃고, 올해 1천만 원을 벌었다고 치자.
상식적으론 9천만 원 적자지만, 국세청 시스템은 올해 번 1천만 원에 대해서만 칼같이 22%의 세금 고지서를 날린다.
주식 투자자는 보호하면서 코인 투자자는 철저하게 무형자산 취급하며 피를 말리는, 가장 완벽하고 합법적인 수탈 구조다.

대중이 "세금 내기 싫다", "형평성에 어긋난다"며 커뮤니티에 키보드로 분노를 쏟아낼 때, 시스템 구축의 톱니바퀴는 이미 돌아가기 시작했다.

복잡한 온체인 흐름을 스스로 소명하지 못하면, 수익보다 더 큰 세금 폭탄과 가산세를 맞고 시장에서 영원히 퇴출당할 것이다.

당신의 자산을 지킬 합법적인 탈출구와 구조를 미리 짜두지 않는다면, 내년 당신의 계좌는 가장 뼈아픈 방식으로 털릴 것이다.

Keep going.

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

@organ_mo nice

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

Stop betting. Own the house.

To keep your peace, tune out the market noise.

Don't chase the direction, own a system that turns volatility into profit.

Stop tossing chips at a table you don't control.

Be the one who owns the game.

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

xDFi’s Genesis Phase is running hot!

Right now, the 100K cap is open only to those on the waitlist.

In about 28 hours, the pool opens to everyone else.

Deposit into xDFi now for around 5x delta-neutral yield!

https://t.co/BWboQnYUjX

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

xDFi Genesis Phase Deposits are now LIVE!

We’ve just opened up the 100K cap for xDFi deposits.

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

The first 100K deposit for xDFi opens on Feb 25 at 2 PM (UTC).

! IMPORTANT !

This initial cap is reserved exclusively for wallet addresses that signed up for the WAITLIST.

The window will stay open for 72 hours, but please keep in mind that it will close early if the 100K limit is reached before then.

We’re also planning to distribute xD tokens equivalent to the value of your deposit, so we’d love for you to get involved! 😆

xDFi.

https://t.co/Upk88dk1Pa

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

How about this?
Is it right? 🤣

[Nozz @NoahEpstein_]

stop what you're doing and look at this image.

each dot is 3.2 million people. 2,500 dots = 8.1 billion humans.

the grey? 6.8 billion people who have never used AI.
the green? 1.3 billion free chatbot users.
the yellow? 15-35 million who pay for it.
the red? that tiny sliver is us.

you think the AI space is crowded because you're in an echo chamber of the 0.06%.

the real world hasn't even started.

wrote a full breakdown on the data, the opportunity, and 7 businesses you can build from this gap today:

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

https://t.co/FtR9adFucb

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

Launching... 99.9% Loaded [ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ ]

The wait is finally over! xDFi soft launch has officially landed.

https://t.co/FdNFTo55B2

But wait, what exactly is xDFi anyway?

[xDFi @xd_protocol]

https://t.co/IkNQHTgSSh

[Ingeun Kim @IngsParty]

I lowkey feel like we're gonna see GTA6 made by #Genie3 way before @RockstarGames actually gets around to dropping theirs lmao

[Mike Anderson @BIGManderson]

Another @GoogleDeepMind Genie3 experiment - Cycling through Manchester #Genie3