2025 is the year I realise my potential as a web3 security researcher, my aim is to go full time by 2026 - my current journey so far:
web3 nft developer -> graduated ethical hacking degree -> web2 cyber consultant (1.5yrs in)
Pashov Audit Group security researcher internship coming soon. Learn by doing, 100% practice. Real audits, real projects.
Like/RT this post if you'd be interested in this. There will be lots of slots, I've thought of a scalable model to do this right, full announcement soon🫡
2025 is the year I realise my potential as a web3 security researcher, my aim is to go full time by 2026 - my current journey so far:
web3 nft developer -> graduated ethical hacking degree -> web2 cyber consultant (1.5yrs in)
✅ 5 things I wish I knew before starting out with web3 security:
1️⃣ Go through @PatrickAlphaC course and try to understand as much as you can of what he is saying;
2️⃣ Try contests ASAP… focus mainly on understanding the given codebase even if that seems hard;
3️⃣ Don’t let FOMO hit you and focus on one contest at a time;
4️⃣ Change means progress… try out different techniques in making your mind find vulnerabilities (e.g. asking yourself how you can break a given function);
5️⃣ Don’t skip Rust!
What would you include in that list?
Things to Consider Before Reaching Out to Me or Another Security Firm for an Audit:
When preparing your code for an audit—especially if you're working with a novel protocol—finalizing the following elements is crucial. These steps can drastically improve the efficiency, depth, and quality of the audit 🧵
~ Simplest path to web3 security ~ 🧵
I first heard about web3 security sometime in July/2024. Therefore, this is not an expert view, only what has worked for me so far!
My path was the following:
1. Speedrun learning: I first learned how to read solidity (Jul - Aug / 2024) by speedrunning @PatrickAlphaC course
2. Audit: then, I audited
3. Feedback loop: simultaneously, I run a feedback loop where I understand the real knowledge gaps I face while auditing and study to fill them
I am now repeating steps 2 and 3 and will continue to do just that for the foreseeable future
It is as simple as that
More on all that below:
Live a life of self-development. Be the best version of yourself.
Read books, workout, build a business, challenge yourself to talk to that one person, always walk the extra mile in whatever you do, significant or not.
You can never pour from an empty cup. Develop yourself.
my 2025 crypto developer thesis
as a developer in 2025, you have 3 options
- SVM
- EVM
- Move
EVM will be by far the most competitive: Hyperliquid, Monad, Berachain, Base, Megaeth, and many new EVM L2s
SVM will be predominantly Solana and a few other L2s (Eclipse and Atlas most notable) + perhaps one SVM L1 fork akin to Pythnet
Move will be Sui, Aptos, and Move L2s
few consequences of this:
i) EVM teams will be more mobile. If their existing EVM ecosystem is not meeting their needs, they'll be able to move to a newer EVM ecosystem quickly and with little friction
meaning I expect all EVM ecosystems to compete against each other hard this year — and since the dev experiences will be relatively similar, the moat will have to come from other avenues (ecosystem support, liquidity, and "community")
you could also cross-deploy on multiple EVM environments of course and some will, but this becomes complex to manage and your product generally suffers in focus
ii) SVM and Move will have an edge for developer stickiness and talent density because those devs won't have many options to choose from, they will have a stronger incentive to stick it out
this is also why back in the day I spammed "only possible on solana" (OPOS) — the reason is that the platform can give you a head-start edge since copy/pasting EVM forks won't work in either direction
iii) however, since there are many more EVM ecosystems, I would expect the EVM dev tooling to advance more rapidly, generate more data for LLMs, and overall offer a better developer experience due to the abundance of educational resources
iv) at the same time, since the EVM is more mature in years, I suspect there are fewer low-hanging fruit for progress and progress might be slower, relatively
v) which brings me to my main point: the SVM and Move ecosystems have an inherent technical edge in 2025 due to lessened competition, higher talent density, and stronger incentives for devs
BUT, this will be entirely dependent on one key factor: how fast the SVM and Move ecosystems advance their respective developer experiences — contract-level, read-level, and core protocol-level
meaning, for example, if Solana can improve its developer experience 2-5x in 2025, its growth for the year could very well be 10x relative to others
but if it doesn't, this will be a huge setback — there can not be another "congestion" episode
as a result, @heliuslabs will focus 100% of our efforts on improving the SVM developer experience without a single day off in 2025 — if you're curious about building on Solana or other SVM L2s, give me a shout
let the dev tools arms race begin