Merlin

tinkerer , builder. loves tech, ux and impactful products. currently focusing on the kaspa ecosystem and part of the great KYO team

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

quick AI translation of a message I sent about kaspathon : Hey, have you checked out the results/projects submitted at Kaspathon? We had 296 participants and 50 projects... It's awesome... with projects like:

- Gaming: Tons of great games and projects... including one where you earn KAS in real time when you hit your opponent, for example... Nobody else, no other blockchain does that
- Payments with lots of different use cases: Uber-like, content creator rewards/donations, payment stations for festivals, invoicing/payment platform for freelancers, e-commerce, concert ticket buying/selling management
- Governance: Content audit trails/ERP, event management/execution guarantees for IoT, decentralized application execution (ICP?)
- AI: OpenClaw integration, payment for AI agent service execution via x402
- And more: Encrypted email, learning platform, blockDAG visualization tools, online auctions, price observer/oracle/transaction visualization, travel guides with AI generator

Honestly... lots of top-notch ideas and builds, all without covenants or vprogs...

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@kaspathon 4 hours to the finish line on Kaspathon !
44 projects so far and lots lots of real innovations, ideas and creativity... Judging is going to be hard (and fun !)
Lots of them really show Kaspa incredible speed.
Bravo to the participants !
#Kaspa #kaspathon

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

Kaspathon submission deadline is approaching soon ! (can't believe it's going to be tomorrow already). So far we have 290 hackers registered, 32 projects submitted with excellent quality ! This is FANTASTIC !
#Kaspa #Kaspathon #Blockchain @kaspathon

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@LevendiPro https://t.co/cGlUscfBvs

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@LevendiPro Don't hesitate to add to https://t.co/XcPdPudnMp

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@michaelsuttonil @FreshAir08 @elldeeone @hashdag Added that as a reference for kaspathon. Would be great to see a project capturing this and extending / realizing the ideas you have outlined here !

[HTX @HTX_Global]

📣New Spot Listing Alert: $KAS Kaspa @kaspaunchained @Kaspa_KEF

Kaspa is a decentralized and fully scalable Layer-1, based on the GHOSTDAG protocol.

🪙Deposits Opened,
📈Trading Starts Soon!

https://t.co/7BXhMQRX8C

[火币HTX @HuobiGlobal]

HTX公告将上线 $KAS (Kaspa) @kaspaunchained @Kaspa_KEF
📌 Kaspa 是一种去中心化的和完全可扩展的 Layer-1，基于 GHOSTDAG 协议。

✅ 充币业务已开启
⏰ 币币交易12月24日 17:00 (UTC+8)
⏰ 提币业务12月25日 17:00 (UTC+8)

[Kaspathon @kaspathon]

🚨 DEVS & CRYPTO CHADS – KASPATHON IS HERE TO BLOW YOUR MIND! 🔥🔥

Code dApps, DeFi, wallets, tools, anything that you can think of creating that actually feel like the future!

Huge KAS prizes 💰
Instant legend status + eternal glory 🔥🚀

If you're a:

- vibe coder
- developer
- idea man

This is your entry to discover and experiment building on a PoW network with internet speed. Work together to create something amazing!

DROP EVERYTHING. JOIN KASPATHON NOW. WE'RE MAKING HISTORY!!!

#cryptocurrencynews #Hackathon #Kaspa #eth #Bitcoin

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@Kaspa_KEF #HelloTX ! :)

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@oneforonehaha @HTX_Global @DefiLlama Should we go from #byenance to #HelloTX ?
Great work to all who were involved !

[JH @oneforonehaha]

Good to see @HTX_Global finally listed $KAS.

For those who are not familiar with HTX, you may be inetrested in reading this post: https://t.co/kN6uTrcRmQ, open release of its proof of reservce for the 38th month consecutively.

DYOR, CEX transpareny @DefiLlama: https://t.co/QBNQFLoIdB

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

Agree... But you forgot trust... If I am using an open source project, I can and I know others have checked its inner details and report / fix issues. But also, as a builder or user, I know that even if the original author is not able to make it evolve, there is still a possibility to resurrect it.
Now, on the other hand, it's a complex business model (supposing you want to live from your work)

[Parker Schmidt @parker2017]

(human thought [and wrote] for 3 days, 7 hours, 15 minutes, 34 seconds)

The death of a casino, The birth of a clock

'Cypto is dead' is half-right. Crypto has only been around for less than two decades. You can only build something that is guaranteed to last by modeling it on something that has been needed for centuries, like clocks

The closed loop 'cryptoland' has currently built-- the CT casino and the same 50k wallets rotating liquidity between slightly different yield farms is hitting its ceiling

The people cheering for 'cryptoland's (in its current forms) death are right: as a subculture, crypto is finished. This also ties to misunderstanding the internal and external communities have about Kas

The market (and 'cryptoland', more generally) is missing this pivot. The death of "crypto as a lifestyle" is the birth of crypto as infrastructure. The winning endgame is not a casino; it’s an invisible, neutral, immutable verification layer of the internet

And that is exactly why the market isn't understanding $KAS

A speed/decentralization paradox:

Here is a technical reality most people ignore- fast proof-of-work (PoW) is the only way to scale without centralizing control

In proof-of-stake (PoS), speed comes from knowing the validators ahead of time. You select the committee, then they work (select-then-work). This makes them fast, but it makes them targets; bribable, coercible, and political

Fast PoW (Kaspa) flips this model: work first, select later

You don't need a committee. Every block is a statistical proof that it out-worked the network. This means you can crank the block rate to 10 or 100 BPS without appointing a 'ruling class' of stakers (who continue to grow with power as they accumulate more of their favorite coin). Will the world in the future be based on doing (and proving) the work, or selecting those who already have the power?

A ledger war: the computer vs. the clock, and the importance of understanding the differences

We have been fighting the wrong war, staying in 'cryptoland'. Here's a brief on some technical nuances:

Account Models (ETH/SOL): Optimized for stateful apps. Great for DeFi casinos, terrible for global verification (bloat, sequential bottlenecks)

eUTXO: A hybrid attempt. Smart contracts on L1 are cool, but they add (too much) weight

Kaspa is taking a different path, one let's call Radical Simplicity (this is the point most people are missing)

We keep L1 (Kaspa) as a pure, fast (maxxed-out) UTXO timestamping engine. It doesn't want to be a computer; it wants to be a clock

By stripping away the heavy logic, Kaspa becomes the perfect anchor for Real-Time Data, and therefore Real-Time Decentralization (RTD)

Miners as a believable witness- at 10+ blocks per second, miners effectively become a real-time decentralized committee that can attest to external events (prices, APIs, payments) in seconds

The end game: A "truth" layer- Flight delay insurance that pays instantly. Viral video verification where the deepfake is caught by checking the chain's timestamp. ZK-logins that kill phishing without needing a central server

The point of all of this
Scaling is messy. You will see politics. You will see friction between purists and builders. You will hear about bad actors and subversion. It will be unclear who to trust

Ignore noise. Focus on the network that's being built and what will be required to run it

If you believe the future of the internet requires a neutral, un-bribable way to prove what happened and when, you don't build it on a council of stakers. You need it built on high-speed proof-of-work. The protocol protects itself

The casino is closing. A truth verification layer is opening

Crypto is dead. Long live the Clock

[Justin Bons @Justin_Bons]

SUI was DDoS attacked yesterday causing mass delays

Proving again that 127 validators is not enough

Sufficient decentralization demands a larger attack surface

Let this be a lesson for SOL not to let validator counts drop too low. We must win on scalability & decentralization!

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@KaspaMarketing @kaspathon I don't know :) and that's what makes it even better. Let's all be wowed !

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@Damian890127 @michaelsuttonil Credits should really go first to Tim for his generosity, the community to have voted for a hackathon and to the whole team who worked on making it a reality (izio, bkyou, rhubarb media and many others)

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

I've been working in tech and monitoring the blockchain space for over 10 years - anticipating how it would disrupt the products and industries I worked on.

Now I'm on the other side, helping build that disruption.
And a project that really caught my attention is Kaspa. Fair launched, fully decentralized, proof-of-work - but with block times so fast you can build at internet speed. Ready to be the infrastructure that enables these disruptions.

I've participated in hackathons. I've organized them. I know how powerful they can be - not just for building cool stuff, but for bringing people together and sparking ideas that stick around long after the event ends.

This is why I'm thrilled to have worked with the Kaspa community to launch a new hackathon: https://t.co/yYmEg8nm5V

200K KAS in prizes. 4 tracks. A chance to bring new builders into an ecosystem I believe in.

If you know someone who loves to build - a dev, a student, a tinkerer - send them our way. Whether you're Web3-native or even better, wanting to learn and bring a different perspective from real world experiences, hackathons are the best way to learn by doing.

The best projects come from unexpected places. Let's learn, let's disrupt and let's see what we can create together.

#Kaspa #Kaspathon #Hackathon #Web3 #BuildInPublic

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

@chriskontz01 That's even better ! successful teams have often people with different backgrounds / affinity (eg engineering, product, UX,...). The platform on Dorahacks allows you to create a team and make announcements to hire these missing profiles for your team

[Merlin @MerlinNobody]

Exactly ! I often have seen teams forming during a hackathon and talking like "hey, we should make a business out of it (remind me I have to follow up with some teammates from a hackathon we did in November where we built an AI augmented prospection platform with a process to autogenerate its own code - skynet ! )