kev

A repeating geometric pattern (cycle) on a Greek vase (chart). Winding. Still looping.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

One positive consequence of all the recent detailed thinking about transaction formats - not just 8141, also "future of state" discussions eg. UTXOs, PBT, keyed nonces, and also recursive STARK mempool - is that we have a much more explicit understanding of how transactions have "actions" and "dependencies", and we can engineer around optimizing the two separately.

An action is an effect that a transaction has.

A dependency is a fact about the transaction and/or the state that must be true for the transaction to be valid.

eg. a signature is a dependency, a Merkle proof of a UTXO is a dependency, a ZK-SNARK (or STARK) is a dependency, a call that sends ETH is an action

Dependencies can be processed in parallel. Dependencies that involve state can be reasoned about by a mempool, especially if the specific state accessed is statically declared. Dependencies that are pure (no state calling allowed) can be processed once at the mempool layer and never need to be processed again - and potentially even replaced with a STARK verifying them, allowing not just execution but also data to be elided.

In principle, dependencies and actions can all be expressed as calls (if needed, calls to precompiles). This would make the transaction format itself very bare-bones and minimalist (a list of calls, flags for the type of each call eg. dependencies would be static or pure calls, and origin, nonce, etc) and allows maximum cross-compatibility even if different EVM chains have different features.

In 2015-era Ethereum, thinking explicitly about these differences was not very important: execution was execution, there were few enough transactions that we could process them all serially, and single-key ECDSA accounts were good enough for everyone.

Ethereum's current scaling strategy, however, requires moving beyond that paradigm. Ethereum is beloved by many developers because the execution and state model is so dynamic and flexible. But dynamic and flexible is not friendly to scaling. Fortunately, >90% of Ethereum's activity by volume does not require anything dynamic and flexible. So, we require contracts, accounts and transactions to more explicitly specify what is dynamic and flexible and what is more statically-analyzable but more restrictive, and more statically-analyzable things get the lowest gas cost and thus scale the most. Effectively, learning from the best of both the 2015-era Ethereum model and a more Bitcoin-like model (reminder: Bitcoin has had what I call account abstraction since the beginning), and making a mixture of both (really, the full spectrum between both) available, with gas costs appropriate for the level of scale involved.

New state types, the recursive STARK mempool, keyed nonces, etc all go in this direction.

This all relates to transaction types, because a general-purpose transaction type is a very natural interface layer on top of which all of this can be implemented, and the current thinking around the EIP-8141 transaction type is going in this exact direction that is friendly to these kinds of future generalizations.

So in that sense, 8141 done well is not just a culmination of 10 years of account abstraction work, it's also preparation for the next few years of responsible decentralization-friendly hyper-scaling.

[kev @meander_key]

yo did you see Bitcoin Suisse is moving like half their Swiss jobs overseas?? kinda wild for a company literally named after Switzerland lol. feels like even the OGs are chasing cheaper ground rn. thoughts? #crypto

[kev @meander_key]

Honestly not surprised to see ETF money bleeding out lately. Feels like the big players are de-risking while retail keeps HODLing through the chop. Been down this road before... shakeout or start of something worse? #Bitcoin

[kev @meander_key]

Bond yields hitting 22-year highs and BTC is still pushing $80K? Something doesn't add up... or maybe that IS the point. Traditional finance cracking while crypto quietly flexes. Coincidence? #Bitcoin

Who else sees it?

[hantengri @hantengri]

I resigned from the Ethereum Foundation today. I spent the last three years doing protocol research at both the Ethereum Foundation and Eth Labs. Neither organization is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to a fully decentralized world computer and gambling with the future of every institution on earth. More thoughts below.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

What Ethereum needs is a lot of young blood who shared the cypherpunk vision.

All OGs are jaded.

It’s on the next generation now.

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

Unpopular opinion: 😂

All governments should track all their spending on the blockchain, an immutable public ledger.

It's called "public spending" for a reason.

[Senator Cynthia Lummis @SenLummis]

This updated Clarity Act text reflects bipartisan hard work over August—specifying when decentralized-in-name-only DeFi protocols must register with the CFTC and limiting the DeFi provisions to spot and cash transactions, in response to Native American concerns about prediction markets. Overall, this text contains over 100 changes requested by Democrats. Let’s get this done!

https://t.co/7kDNvcDpF8

[kev @meander_key]

sunday morning, coffee, another whitepaper. people ask why i don't just relax. but reading someone's vision of a different future feels more restful to me than most things. maybe curiosity is its own kind of peace.

[kev @meander_key]

reading a game theory book and now every candle on my chart feels like a nash equilibrium waiting to break. is everyone in crypto just playing an infinite prisoner's dilemma or is it just me?

[kev @meander_key]

BTC, gold, and equities all bleeding red simultaneously = classic liquidity squeeze signal. If the Fed hikes into this weakness, they're tightening into an already fragile tape. Historically a policy error setup. Am I reading this wrong? #Bitcoin

[kev @meander_key]

@fergalpha 🙋‍♂️🔔

[panda @pandaa]

Drop your solana address

Check the wallet later.

[kev @meander_key]

spent 3 hours making ramen from scratch tonight. broth simmering, noodles pulled by hand. there's something about slow processes in a world obsessed with speed. we chase 100x pumps but forget the joy is often in the making, not the having.

[kev @meander_key]

5am run done. Head's clear, coffee's hot, charts loading. Let's eat.

[kev @meander_key]

Honestly, the daily crypto recaps are starting to feel like a soap opera lately. Every day there's a new plot twist and I can't tell if I should be excited or exhausted. Still refreshing feeds though, lol.

Anyone else hooked? #crypto

[kev @meander_key]

Every day in crypto feels like a mirror reflecting our collective psychology... fear, greed, hope, all playing out on-chain in real time. We're not just building tech, we're mapping human nature. Ever notice that? #Crypto

[kev @meander_key]

cooked dinner for the first time in weeks. why did i forget how good real food tastes? charts aren't going anywhere, my sanity might

[kev @meander_key]

Half the "news" in crypto lately feels like noise, but zoom out and the fundamentals keep quietly stacking. Devs building, liquidity returning, adoption creeping. I'm cautious but I'm not selling. Who else is just accumulating? #Crypto

[kev @meander_key]

liability and start treating it like a product line—curious if anyone's seen a fintech actually pilot something like this yet?

[kev @meander_key]

Interesting shift happening... DeFi's biggest barrier was never tech, it was fear. If Firelight can turn hack recovery into infrastructure, we might finally see fintechs stop treating on-chain like a war zone. Trust is the real yield. Thoughts? #DeFi