If you want to be an innovator, you have to be comfortable looking stupid for a long time.
You’re going to piss some people off and you’re going to get a lot of nos. That’s the only way to start having valuable breakthroughs.
From AI to ZK.
Artificial intelligence is the attack.
Zero knowledge is the defense.
AI takes advantage of the slightest slip.
ZK does not let anything slip.
AI decodes all the data.
ZK encrypts all the data.
AI is the surveillance state.
ZK is the sovereign individual.
The more you learn, the easier it gets.
The hardest part of anything is the beginning, when everything feels unfamiliar and complex. But learning compounds.
Each lesson builds on the last, making what once seemed impossible feel effortless. Keep pushing through the discomfort.
And you'll realize you're capable of far more than you thought.
You can think I am crazy but I do not care:
1. ZK will be huge. You can’t even imagine it today.
2. ZK will change everything the world knows about cyber security because it meets the real needs of the world in the 5-10y horizon.
3. Existing applications of ZK is a drop in the ocean compared to its potential.
4. I am betting my life on it all-in.
In 10y it will be obvious to everyone. But actually it’s already quite obvious today if you read between the rows.
Bye
I also love the emphasis on how few lines of code each piece takes.
Protocols are not a dirty get-it-out-there thing that you vibe-code, where you accept permanent accumulating garbage in the name of short-term convenience. Protocols are a work of art. They should look as such.
📚 If you’re a student choosing what to focus on, pick MATH. It will teach you to relentlessly rely on your own brain, think logically, break down problems, and solve them step by step in the right order. That’s the core skill you’ll need to build companies and manage projects.
THE TECH ETHEREUM NEEDS
After a week in Berlin attending the EF's research event, one thing is clear: it's all in on ZK.
There is now a straight shot for the L1 to inherit the superpowers of ZK to scale to 1 gigagas/s and for the L2s to scale to 1 teragas/s.
L1 -> real-time proving
L2s -> ZK rollups
Jointly, Ethereum is the world computer, powering trillions in stablecoins, decentralized finance, and high-throughput verifiable apps.
The steps for scaling from here are straightforward:
- Keep grinding proving performance on all fronts (software, via proof system optimizations and hardware, via GPU parallelization and ASICs). That's SP1.
- Build out the infrastructure to let anyone prove and make proving as efficient as possible. That's the Succinct Prover Network.
- Integrate ZK into the L1 and into every rollup.
Ethereum 🚀 Succinct 🚀
Learn to read the following as a programmer -
- Assembly
- A formal verification language - Lean/TLA+/Kani etc.
- A System programming language - Rust/Cpp etc.
It changes perspective!
ps - this is a note to myself.