📢 Now Available! Ep. 141 w/ @estiewoo, a Graph Advocate, member of Graph AdvocatesDAO, & Co-founder at @_cryptopols. Esther’s web3 journey is amazing: from normie to Graph Advocate to learning to code & building at CryptoPols!
🎧Available Everywhere!
https://t.co/qIMBQKwWUn
The world got a little quieter today. I was informed earlier this morning that @jimwavefive has passed away.
I don't know how to sum up what Jim meant to me. He was the friend who called just to talk, about anything, about nothing and somehow you always hung up feeling better than when you picked up. He sent me the same meme every single Wednesday. It wasn't about the meme. It was Jim saying "I see you. I'm here." You were honest when it was hard. You were kind when it was easy. You were present when it counted.
That was his gift. He made people feel seen. He made people feel like they belonged. He did it all with a warmth that I have rarely encountered.
There won't be a day I don't miss him. Wishing peace to his family and everyone whose life he touched.
My heart broke yesterday with news that my closest friend Jim unexpectedly passed away. He introduced me to web3, mentored me through it and kept me in this space with his inspiration.
Jim was dedicated to making this world better through the mission of web3. He worked tirelessly at @jimwavefive, but he understood something most people miss: technology means nothing without people. In a space where connections often feel transactional, Jim made himself available to anyone who needed him. He had a rare gift—he could see the best in someone and make them feel like that quality mattered. He made everyone in the room feel important.
Jim never gave up on you. When you hit the roughest patch where most others walk away, Jim did the opposite. He showed up. He always saw your human side and would never judge someone by the worst moment of their life. I will always remember you, brother.
My thoughts are with Jim's family and my heart goes out to them. RIP. You deserved so much more time and you will be missed greatly 💜
It’s critical for policy to reflect the pragmatic and technical realities of securing $100B+ onchain, without intermediaries.
Meet the Ethereum Protocol Advocacy Alliance.
Happening now… DTCC and @graphprotocol sharing a fireside chat during #SmartCon… yeah, DTCC uses The Graph 🤯
Andrew Clews (The Graph Foundation)
Dan Downey (CTO at DTCC)
Derek Meyer (The Graph Council)
🚨 There’s a large-scale supply chain attack in progress: the NPM account of a reputable developer has been compromised. The affected packages have already been downloaded over 1 billion times, meaning the entire JavaScript ecosystem may be at risk.
The malicious payload works by silently swapping crypto addresses on the fly to steal funds.
If you use a hardware wallet, pay attention to every transaction before signing and you're safe.
If you don’t use a hardware wallet, refrain from making any on-chain transactions for now.
It’s still unclear whether the attacker is also stealing seeds from software wallets directly at this stage.
Excellent report here: https://t.co/5CtiZJHYsN
14/ Why I'm Sharing This:
Pride hurt? Yes.
Embarrassed? Absolutely.
But if one dev avoids this because of my thread, it's worth it.
We need to normalize discussing failures. Security through obscurity doesn't work.
I've been in crypto for over 10 years and I’ve Never been hacked. Perfect OpSec record.
Yesterday, my wallet was drained by a malicious @cursor_ai extension for the first time.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to you. Here’s a full breakdown. 🧵👇
😎 What was your favorite @graphprotocol gelato flavor at @ETHGlobal Cannes? 🍨
I think I can quit my day job and be a dessert model. 😂
Thanks Benji for the amazing photos!
🙏 Raising this awareness is so critical, even if it seems redundant!
Recently, a close friend, who knows little to nothing about blockchain, wanted to invest in a web3 project and had asked how to go about it. Long story short, we had a lengthy discussion which included insight on hard wallets (suggested Ledger as one option). Imagine my friend (and others who are less knowledgeable) got this letter…😳
This week I received a physical phishing letter pretending to be from @Ledger. 😱 This is incredibly brazen and dangerous and a good reminder to:
NEVER enter your seed-phrase anywhere online. NEVER!
Legitimate companies like Ledger will never ask for seed phrases via mail, phone call, email, DM, or any other method.
(I know most of my followers are probably already aware but if this message can prevent one more phishing victim, it was worth it)
#StopTheScammers
It's clear from all the personal conversations I've had in the last few months - we're all having an unusally hard time with some aspect of life. My coping mechanism is to ask myself the following questions and then focus on a daily plan to tackle the answer that hurts the most:
The Graph Token API is launching soon 👀
✅ Fast, scalable token data
✅ Seamless integration
✅ More efficient than RPCs
Be among the first to integrate. Find out more and get early access ⬇️
since I joined GraphOps, I’ve been impressed by how every Tuesday, for nearly 200 sessions, @graphprotocol indexers get together at @TheGraphIOH (aka IOH)
they open up about their struggles, celebrate their wins, and share their questions, concerns, and learnings. they truly care about improving The Graph and are an incredible example of the value added by strong communities 💜
@TwentyTwoNode Well-deserved, and not just because of all your amazing talents and vigorous work ethic, but you are also an incredible human! Congrats Nick, from the bottom of my heart 🫶
Great news!
After years of litigation, millions of your taxpayer dollars spent, and irreparable harm done to the country, we reached an agreement with SEC staff to dismiss their litigation against Coinbase. Once approved by the Commission (which we're told to expect next week) this would be a full dismissal, with $0 in fines paid and zero changes to our business.
This is hugely vindicating, especially because many people questioned my decision to engage in litigation with the SEC on this matter in 2023. People told me the courts would give a lot of leeway to the government. They said public market investors wouldn't like it. They said it would take years and cost us tens of millions of dollars in legal fees (which it did). They said the agency would use mafia tactics like trying to pressure other companies not to work with us while the lawsuit was underway (which they did).
But I knew a few truths that helped make it an easy decision to fight them in court:
1. The SEC was wrong on the law.
They were exceeding the authority given to them by congress by asking us to delist a number of assets that were not securities. We had taken a conservative approach to ensure we weren't listing any securities, and the SEC itself had allowed us to go public in 2021 after reviewing our listing standards in depth. We tried to “come in and register” but it turned out it was a fake offer, as every crypto company discovered. Regulators are supposed to enforce the law, but they can't make up new laws on the spot if they don't like the current ones, or weaponize a lack of clarity in the law.
2. Caving to their demands could have killed the crypto industry in America.
The SEC made it clear to us that the only way to avoid litigation was to delist the many assets they falsely claimed were securities. It was a bullying tactic, pure and simple, driven by Gensler's own political agenda. And if we had caved, it would have dramatically limited the scope of which crypto assets were allowed in the US, and pushed the industry further offshore, into the shadows. Never forget how close a few activists in government came to unlawfully killing an entire industry in America! It could have easily gone the other way. Thank goodness the founding fathers created the judicial branch, as a check and balance on executive power.
3. It was the right thing to do for our customers and the industry.
At the end of the day, it didn't matter what our chance of success was. I had to stand up for our customers’ and our industry’s rights. I also knew it would serve as a deterrent for future bad actors around the world we may have to engage with, for them to know that we won't be bullied or pressured. We are comfortable engaging in litigation across multiple fronts, indefinitely, while continuing to build. This is business as usual. As Bain in The Dark Knight says, "you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it".
Growing up I had a naive view that regulators exist to hold companies accountable. What I realized in this ordeal is sometimes, companies must hold regulators accountable who are painting outside the bounds of the law, to preserve freedom. Accountability can actually happen both ways. At Coinbase, our mission is to increase economic freedom, and I initially thought we could achieve this solely through our crypto products. But I'm increasingly realizing that we can move the needle on economic freedom in the courts and through our policy efforts as well, when we see bad actors in government around the world. We plan to do more of this.
I have to give credit here to the Trump administration, for winning the election, and for the departure of the activist head of the SEC, Gary Gensler, who orchestrated this unlawful action along with Elizabeth Warren, and a handful of their lackeys in congress. I feel confident we would have won this case in the courts either way, given our facts were so strong, but it certainly helped accelerate the process and drive accountability. I called out the sketchy behavior of the SEC back in 2021, and I believe this comment turned out to be prescient.
I want to give a shout out to all the other crypto companies who fought back with their own lawsuits (we certainly were not the only ones).
I want to give a shout out to all the crypto startups who couldn't afford the legal fees, and went bankrupt due to the administration's abusive tactics. Your company may have died, but crypto lives on. Don't stop building.
I want to give a shout out to both Democrat and Republican members of congress, who are working hard to ensure America leads on crypto. I know that Gary Gensler and Elizabeth Warren do not represent the entire Democratic party.
And I want to give a shout out to all the crypto holders in the US who elected pro-crypto candidates, on both sides of the aisle, to make sure your rights were preserved. It turns out the crypto voter is real, and showed up in the millions.
Finally, I expect we'll continue working productively with the SEC on any number of items over the years, just as we do with every agency around the world where we operate. I look forward to the SEC being reformed under Paul Atkins, Mark Uyeda, Hester Peirce, and DOGE, and new more sensible personnel coming into leadership roles. I commend the new leadership that is already in place for working to right this wrong - it's a great step in the right direction, and took courage. Now let's get some crypto legislation passed in the US to finally clarify the rules, and really kick off this next phase of building.
Two things can be true:
1. This is the most bullish US administration we could possibly have.
2. This weekend was a bit of a disaster.
We have a president who can actually allow crypto to flourish, but we must do it the right way.