BIWLS: Why Does That Little Guy With Nothing Stand Out So Much?
Have you ever noticed?
Sometimes, the people who seem to have “nothing” are the ones you remember the most.
The first time I came across @biwlsxyz, I was honestly a little confused.
NFT projects today are getting more and more flashy. Different colors, different traits, different rare attributes — almost every project wants to tell you at first glance, “I’m special.”
But BIWLS goes the other way.
There’s this little character called BIWL.
No bright colors.
No complicated accessories.
No flashy traits.
He almost looks like a sketch that hasn’t been colored in yet.
My first thought was:
“Wait… is this even finished?”
But after learning the story behind BIWLS, I started to really like this “unfinished” little guy.
The world of BIWLS is simple.
Hand-drawn lines. Simple characters. Everyone seems to have their own color and identity.
Except BIWL.
He’s different.
He doesn’t have many labels, and he doesn’t have some impressive identity that makes him stand out.
So he gets laughed at. He’s treated like an outsider.
And honestly, that feels pretty familiar.
We all remember that kid from school who didn’t talk much, didn’t quite fit in, and wasn’t particularly good at standing out.
Everyone thought he was just… ordinary.
But that’s exactly where things get interesting.
When darkness arrives and the whole world falls into danger, those characters who once looked so “complete” and “special” begin to freeze.
And BIWL — the one everyone thought was incomplete — starts running forward.
He doesn’t have the coolest colors.
He doesn’t have the rarest traits.
He doesn’t even have anything to prove that he’s more special than everyone else.
But he runs anyway.
And more importantly:
He’s the first one to run toward the darkness.
That’s when I realized what BIWLS might really be trying to say.
You don’t have to become good enough before you’re allowed to start.
You don’t need a perfect identity before you can prove who you are.
Sometimes, you just need to take the first step.
That’s also why I love the phrase behind BIWLS:
Every Run Writes History.
It doesn’t say “Every Win.”
It doesn’t say “Every Success.”
It says Every Run.
Because maybe what really matters isn’t where you eventually end up.
It’s whether you chose to start running in the first place.
Even if you’re still a blank page.
Even if you feel like you’re not good enough yet.
Even if nobody else can see anything special in you.
The moment you start moving forward, you’re already leaving your mark.
So now, when I look at BIWL, I don’t see a character who has “nothing.”
I see someone who has never been defined for you.
No fixed color.
No fixed label.
No story written by someone else.
His story is something he has to run and write himself.
And that’s probably what I love most about BIWLS.
It doesn’t tell you:
“You have to become this kind of person.”
It simply puts a little blank runner in front of you and says:
Go run.
The rest of the story is yours to write.
Maybe there’s a little BIWL inside all of us.
That kid who once felt ordinary, lost, not good enough, or simply unsure of where to go next.
And that’s okay.
Life was never supposed to come with all the answers already drawn in.
Every step you take becomes part of your story.
So the next time you feel like you’re “not ready yet,” maybe you don’t have to wait.
Just start running.
Because in the world of BIWLS:
Every run leaves a trace.
And maybe your story begins with this run.
BIWLS:那个什么都没有的小人,为什么让我记住了?
你有没有发现?
有时候,越是“什么都没有”的人,反而越容易让人记住。
第一次看到 @biwlsxyz 的时候,我其实有点懵。
现在的 NFT 项目,一个比一个花哨。各种颜色、各种属性、各种稀有特征,恨不得一眼就告诉你:“我很特别。”
但 BIWLS 偏偏反着来。
它有一个叫 BIWL 的小人。
没有鲜艳的颜色,没有复杂的装饰,甚至看起来就像一张还没来得及上色的草稿。
第一眼看过去,我甚至觉得:
这是不是还没画完?
但看完 BIWLS 的故事之后,我反而越来越喜欢这个“没画完”的小人。
BIWLS 的世界很简单。
手绘的线条,简单的角色,每个人似乎都有自己的颜色和身份。
只有 BIWL 不一样。
他没有那么多标签,也没有一个看起来很“厉害”的身份。
所以,他会被嘲笑,也会被当成异类。
这其实挺像我们小时候。
班级里总有那么一个孩子,不太会说话,不太合群,也没有什么特别耀眼的地方。
大家都觉得他很普通。
可真正有意思的地方,恰恰发生在后来。
当黑暗降临,整个世界开始陷入危机。
那些原本看起来很“完整”、很“特别”的角色,一个个停了下来。
而那个一直被认为“不完整”的 BIWL,却开始往前跑。
他没有最漂亮的颜色。
没有最稀有的属性。
甚至没有什么可以证明自己比别人更特别。
但他还是跑了。
而且是第一个冲出去的人。
看到这里,我突然觉得,这可能才是 BIWLS 真正想表达的东西。
你不需要等到自己足够优秀,才有资格开始。
你也不需要先找到一个漂亮的身份,才能证明自己是谁。
有时候,你只是需要先迈出第一步。
这也是我很喜欢 BIWLS 那句话的原因:
Every Run Writes History.
每一次奔跑,都在书写历史。
它没有说“Every Win”。
也没有说“Every Success”。
而是 Every Run。
因为真正重要的,可能从来不是最后你跑到了哪里,而是你有没有选择开始跑。
哪怕你现在还是一张白纸。
哪怕你觉得自己还不够好。
哪怕别人还看不到你有什么特别。
只要你开始往前走,你就已经在留下属于自己的痕迹。
所以我现在再看 BIWL,已经不会觉得他“什么都没有”。
恰恰相反。
正因为他没有被定义,所以他有无限可能。
没有固定的颜色,没有固定的标签,也没有别人替他写好的答案。
他的故事,要靠自己去跑出来。
这也是 BIWLS 最打动我的地方。
它没有告诉你:
“你必须成为一个什么样的人。”
它只是把一个小小的白色奔跑者放在那里,然后告诉你:
去跑吧。
剩下的故事,你自己写。
也许我们每个人心里,都有一个这样的 BIWL。
那个曾经觉得自己普通、迷茫、不够好,甚至不知道自己应该往哪里走的小孩。
但没关系。
人生本来就没有一开始就画好的答案。
你跑过的每一步,才是你的答案。
所以,下一次当你觉得自己“还没准备好”的时候,或许不用等了。
先跑起来。
因为在 BIWLS 的世界里:
Every run leaves a trace.
而你的故事,也许正好从这一跑开始。
I’ve been looking into @get_optimum lately, especially its take on network latency.
And I realized the interesting part isn’t simply “how much faster can it get?”
It’s a much more fundamental question:
How does data actually move?
TradFi has a pretty straightforward way to reduce latency.
Put servers next to the exchange.
Or build a dedicated fiber connection.
The shorter the distance, the lower the latency.
But DeFi doesn’t have that luxury.
Ethereum validators are spread across the world.
You don’t know where the next block will be produced, or which nodes the data will travel through one second from now.
Nodes join and leave.
Network conditions constantly change.
So unlike TradFi, you can’t simply build one “fastest road” and call it done.
That’s the problem Optimum is trying to tackle.
Instead of moving all the nodes closer together, it takes a different approach:
If you can’t know which path will be fastest, make the data itself better suited for unpredictable paths.
This is where RLNC — Random Linear Network Coding — comes in.
It was co-invented by Optimum CEO and MIT professor Muriel Médard.
A simple way to think about it:
Traditional networking is like sending a box of packages labeled 1, 2, 3, 4.
If package #3 gets lost, you have to go back and resend #3.
RLNC is more like mixing the information into many encoded pieces.
Intermediate nodes don’t need to know exactly where the data will end up, or follow one fixed route.
As long as the receiver gets enough useful pieces, it can reconstruct the original data.
So even if some packets are lost along the way, the whole process doesn’t necessarily have to stop and wait for retransmission.
And this becomes especially interesting for blockchain.
Because the biggest feature of a decentralized network is also its biggest networking challenge:
the path is unpredictable.
Optimum isn’t trying to eliminate that uncertainty.
It’s trying to make the network work better despite it.
That’s how I understand mump2p.
It doesn’t require a new blockchain or expensive hardware upgrades.
It runs as a sidecar alongside existing clients, while the original GossipSub path can still serve as a fallback.
According to Optimum’s testing, mump2p can deliver blocks and blobs around 6–20× faster than GossipSub while reducing bandwidth usage by roughly 90–95%.
Those numbers are currently based largely on the project’s own testing, so I think they still need to be validated at larger scale and under real mainnet conditions.
But the direction itself is worth watching.
Because when we talk about blockchain performance, we usually talk about:
TPS.
Consensus.
Execution.
Hardware.
But we rarely ask:
Once a block is produced, how long does it actually take to travel across the network?
That matters.
Slower block propagation can mean missed attestations.
It can affect proposers.
And in some cases, it can even affect MEV capture.
As blockchain networks become more global and geographically distributed, how data moves becomes infrastructure in its own right.
That’s why I find Optimum interesting.
Not just because of a flashy performance number.
But because it is trying to solve a problem that decentralized networks will increasingly have to deal with.
Here’s the simplest analogy I can think of:
TradFi tries to build the highway as straight and short as possible.
Optimum is trying to make the traffic smarter — even when you don’t know exactly which road will be available.
Everyone is tuning the engine.
Optimum is working on the road.
If blockchain really is a global computer, then maybe execution is the engine, consensus is the rulebook, and data propagation is the bloodstream.
If the bloodstream is congested, a better engine only gets you so far.
That’s why I’ve been paying more attention to @get_optimum.
Not because of one impressive multiplier.
But because of a much simpler question:
How do we make a truly global, decentralized network move data faster, cheaper, and more reliably — without giving up the very decentralization that makes it valuable?
That’s the problem Optimum is trying to solve.
@tgogayi@CryptoSundayz@shariaronchain@aqccapital@ada_pegasus@jany268
TradFi latency optimization is straightforward, colocate or run fiber direct to the exchange.
In DeFi you can't do that because you don't know the path that data will need to travel. Our CEO @MurielMedard recently went on A Global Tech Podcast to explain how Optimum solves this.
Korea Blockchain Week is getting closer, and one update from @get_optimum caught my attention.
On September 28, Optimum COO Kent Lin will join the Staking Infra panel at Ethereum Korea One, alongside teams from Nodeinfra, DSRV, and Lido’s APAC institutional team to discuss custody, yield, and compliance around ETH staking.
At first glance, it’s just another conference panel.
But I think there’s something more interesting happening underneath:
ETH staking is starting to look more like institutional infrastructure, rather than simply “deposit ETH and earn yield.”
Once institutions put ETH into validators, custody and compliance obviously matter.
But there’s another piece that’s easy to overlook:
Can your validator receive blocks fast enough?
That’s exactly where Optimum’s work comes in.
mump2p doesn’t ask node operators to rebuild their infrastructure from scratch.
Instead, it adds a faster data propagation layer alongside the existing consensus client.
In simple terms:
Traditionally, nodes keep forwarding complete pieces of data.
mump2p uses RLNC to encode data into different combinations, allowing nodes to start forwarding information earlier instead of waiting for the entire message to arrive.
It sounds technical, but the end result is pretty simple:
Faster block propagation, more timely attestations, fewer moments where validators are “a step behind,” and potentially lower bandwidth costs.
According to Optimum’s Hoodi testnet data, average block propagation was around 150ms, more than 6× faster than the Gossipsub baseline.
What interests me even more is that more node operators are actually testing it.
Everstake, https://t.co/xjO4getKbr, Blockdaemon, InfStones, Luganodes, Kiln and others have appeared among Optimum’s announced testing partners.
To me, that suggests mump2p is gradually moving from “interesting technology” to infrastructure that node operators are genuinely willing to try.
And Korea is a pretty interesting place to have this conversation.
Because as the amount of ETH being staked grows, even differences of a few dozen or a few hundred milliseconds can potentially matter at scale — affecting rewards, costs, and operational consistency.
That’s why I’m increasingly convinced:
Network latency isn’t just a technical metric. It can eventually become part of the staking economics.
I’m looking forward to the Staking Infra panel on September 28.
On the surface, the conversation is about custody, yield, and compliance.
But underneath, they all come back to the same question:
As more institutions enter Ethereum, is the infrastructure supporting all that ETH ready?
And the layer Optimum is trying to improve may be one of the most overlooked:
Making data move faster and more reliably.
@get_optimum
KBW is coming up soon! 🇰🇷
Catch @kentlinyy on the @ethereumkoreaio Staking Infra panel for an inside look at why top node operators are choosing mump2p.
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