ilmoi

serial founder, exits to @coinbase @f5

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

I'm entirely self taught

all kinds of smart people told me not to learn to code (I'd "waste my time" and "at best become a mediocre engineer")

good thing I didn't listen

nor should you. follow your curiosity.

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

man, if you want to do anything remotely meaningful

the amount of NOs you have to tell yourself is nauseating

every day, 10 times/day I get some idea - "wouldn't it be cool to..." ...yeah, no

if you're serious about doing great work you're allowed exactly one desire at a time

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

Make product as complex as necessary but as simple as possible

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

https://t.co/GGdRcxn8q2

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@itszach @VeryAI congrats!!!!

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

if you read his post he basically analyzed layers in LLM and added the ones that did most work

an agent could do this

together with karpathy's post yesterday it's pretty clear the future of AI is agents recursively optimizing models

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@0xrwu bro this is my hack

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@buffalu__ in some ways

but not in others: the cost is your (founder) time, and that's arguably the most precious resource in the company

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

best ideas come from tinkering

but if you're ambitious you feel urgent and at war

feels wrong to tinker at war

yet this is the only way. must hold 2 contradicting ideas in your head at the same time

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@RamanshuSharan took me 15 years to put it in words, so don't feel bad

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@broodsugar @Melt_Dem lmao I knew you'd be in comments

best seed check I wrote

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

"this is our second priority"

haha

there is no second priority

it's either first, or it never gets done

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

i think every founder suffers from same disease

"the overoptimistic underestimating brain"

i have never yet in my founder journey woken up and thought "oh wow that took less than I thought and was as easy as I thought"

it's always: "we planned too much, we can do 1/10th maybe if we get lucky and really try"

which is why focus is so important

radical focus means you choose the 1/10th that actually matters

so stay focused

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

@chris_j_paxton isnt the problem manufacturing >at scale< that drives down cost?

aka if humanoid can do everything > becomes hyper cheap > nothing else can compete, even if could be built more custom

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

Duopolies are everywhere, not just crypto

Apple (nice but closed) - Android (open but less ncie)
Windows (functional but sucks) - Mac (designery but eg cant play games)
Solana (fast, trades off decentralization) - Eth (decentralized but slow)

This makes sense because you can take any product category and draw a line of preferences from A to B, and duopolies occupy the extremes

[Joel John @joeljohn]

We have been crunching numbers around revenue and valuations within the industry. Last day, I shipped a long-form observing how and where crypto generates its revenue.

Here are four charts that explain the state of the industry.

1. Crypto is indeed a game of extreme power laws
Since 2020, crypto has generated ±$74.8B in verifiable revenue. This is a mix of t-bills income, trading fees and protocol revenue. The vast majority of it in the past year, came through stablecoins. Circle and tether account for ±98% of all stablecoin revenue. $0.34 of every dollar made (from defillama's data set) goes to a stablecoin firm.

It is fairly apparent that there is latent demand for on-chain dollars and that is why we see an entire economy of VCs and founders flocking to the payments and fintech angle for blockchains. I am not entirely sold on what down-stream monetisation for neobanks look like, esp with Meta coming into the stablecoins game, but there is demand is what is apparent.

The 18 months between Jan of 2024 and June of 2025, saw half of all crypto revenue being generated. We were in an upward trajectory for revenue for a good while before the temporary cooling that has come in the past few quarters.

2. Duopolies are the norm

The lack of latent competition in multiple sectors have made an industry of duopolies. Across the top 15 sectors, combining the top two in terms of revenue, would quickly reveal that close to 80% of most revenue generating sectors are taken up by two firms.

We may not see more competition unless there are two factors playing
- more venture enables small, nimble teams to pursue large opportunities (like telegram bots) without tokens
- tokenised ventures bring fresh energy to established sectors and pursue latent leaders (like in perpetual dex)

Most founders presume there is no competition, when entrenched leaders are eating up $0.8 of every dollar produced. The long-tail is a scary place to be at.

3. More firms generate revenue than ever before

There are close to 100 protocols/projects making over $1million in revenue. Many of these are small, nimble teams making trading interfaces or bots. Some of them are protocols that coordinate capital. It now takes shorter spurts of time to hit $1mil in revenue than ever before.

Part of the reason is the underlying stack evolving. Players like Solana, Privy and the network of on-ramps for stables make it considerably easier for founders to build, distribute and develop applications. The surface area for what small, mimble, privately held projects can do through retaining bulk of the revenue is barely explored. I have a hunch sectors like prediction markets will continue to help teams turn profitable faster.

Which tbf puts the role of a crypto VC into question. What do you do when teams don't need your capital? I have views, but perhaps best shared later.

4. Decentralised Exchanges are considerably discounted compared to L1/L2

If you study the numbers, it quickly becomes apparent that there are DeFi primitives that do more in economic activity than most L2s but are considerably discounted. I think the market will reprice this entirely. There is a lot more bloodbath in L2-land. There is a lot of repricing to be had in DeFi.

With institutional capital entering the arena, there are good grounds for financial primitives to be valued higher. Most teams do not get an "integrity' premium but I have a hunch that this part of the cycle is where teams that were building since 2021, with treasury managed well begin dominating over random L2s that were grossly overvalued. Two key reasons for that. L2s were overvalued to begin with due to excess dry powder in '23/24 flowing towards them. In the two years since, many of them have sub $100 in daily revenue. Eventually markets will price that more aggressively.

Whole piece linked below if you'd like to follow the money

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

The biggest blocker to your dreams is yourself

Keep re-discovering this every year

[Umar @umzrs]

The guy who wakes up at 10am and goes straight to his laptop

Will go further than the guy who wakes up at 6am, journals, meditates, and does everything except the actual WORK

Don't get caught in the self improvement trap without actually moving the needle

[Nils @broodsugar]

The robot is navigating the world previously mapped and reconstructed by phones.

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

humanoid will be the winning form factor for the same reason bitcoin follows a 4 year cycle

it's a shelling point for minds who believe in it

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

One of the coolest companies in current batch

Check them out!

[Y Combinator @ycombinator]

Origami Robotics is building high-DOF robotic hands with in-joint motors and a co-designed data-collection glove to eliminate the embodiment gap by collecting high-quality, real-world data at scale.

Congrats on the launch, @DanielXieee and @QuanliangX!

https://t.co/BkzyfawSrg

[Quanting Xie @DanielXieee]

Why does manipulation lag so far behind locomotion? New post on one piece we don't talk about enough: The gearbox. The Gap You've probably seen those dancing humanoid robots from Chinese New Year. Locomotion isn't entirely solved; but clearly it's on a trajectory. But we haven't seen anything close for manipulation. 𝗪𝗵𝘆? When sim-to-real transfer fails, the instinct is to blame the algorithm. Train bigger networks. Crank up domain randomization. Those approaches have made real progress; we don't deny that. But we started wondering: are we treating the symptom or the disease? The Hardware Bottleneck: Fingers are too small for powerful motors. So most hands use massive gearboxes (200:1, 288:1) to get enough torque. But those gearboxes break everything manipulation needs:

  • Stiction and backlash are complex to simulate. Policies trained on smooth physics hallucinate when they hit that reality.
  • Reflected inertia scales as N². At large gear ratio, the finger hits with sledgehammer momentum.
  • Friction blocks force information. The hand becomes blind.

And they're the first thing to break. What we are trying to build at Origami, we cut the gear ratio from 288:1 to 15:1 using axial flux motors and thermal optimization. The transmission becomes more transparent: backdrivable, low friction, forces propagate to motor current. Early signs are encouraging. Still running quantitative benchmarks. Why Interactive? I love how Science Center uses interactive devices to explain complex ideas. I want to borrow this concept and help people understand the hard problems in robotics better visually. The post has demos where you can toggle friction, slide gear ratios, watch the sim-to-real gap widen in real-time. What's inside:

  • Interactive demos (friction curves, N² scaling, contact patterns)
  • Comparison table: 14 robot hands by sim-to-real gap and force transparency
  • The math behind why low-ratio matters

Read it here: https://t.co/imHPaCqNfS We're not claiming we've solved dexterity. The deadlock has many pieces. But we think this one's foundational. Curious what you think.

[ilmoi @ilmoi]

https://t.co/WQUjlaGwen