Eric Jing

making a mocklery of broken systems ✨

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

"Even more bugs are inevitable, software is all going to become probabilistic now" is cope. "AI bug-finding means we have to embrace closed-source now" is a psyop.

Writing buggy code has moved from hard to trivial. Writing secure code has moved from impossible to hard.

[Michalis Vasileiadis @memehalis]

You don't need Mythos when you have Bob https://t.co/L2hDmXVDHy

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

https://t.co/YTfBFtCRkn

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

gemma4 knows what vibe coding is
but it also knows about the *brutalist*

what have we done

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

@bdguan takes like these keep men afraid & unwilling to grow

other guys hitting on her? exciting ;) but does she start choosing them..? or are there indescribable reasons to respect you? control ain’t it.

let your baddie flourish & you’ll see the world in each other’s eyes

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

it’s live. vibing problems in your communities @ decision-makers. https://t.co/nzUNDOGqtg

come hold elected, appointed, corporate, whoever “official” accountable to action.

soon; bet on yourselves to debate problems.
to prove who you are, privately.

ethereum is catching up 👀

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

based

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

fire pit at @ethereumboulder… left with real feedback on https://t.co/HoqDoeWYPx + people hitting me up for guitar I put on soundcloud almost a decade ago

that’s what small spaces do

[EthBoulder @ethereumboulder]

Collaborative dialogue.
Collective problem solving.
Systems design in the open.

Where mountains meet machine,
and people meet protocol.

This is EthBoulder 💠

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

feeling anxiety become a self-fulfilling prophecy of incompetence sucks. instead, stop caring about it

kids don’t care. find that inner child

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

If you're tokenmaxxing pivot to thoughtmogging

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

@kokebsolomon lots of conversations & building to do in the real world. get back out there!! :)

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Have been following reactions to what I said about L2s about 1.5 days ago.

One important thing that I believe is: "make yet another EVM chain and add an optimistic bridge to Ethereum with a 1 week delay" is to infra what forking Compound is to governance - something we've done far too much for far too long, because we got comfortable, and which has sapped our imagination and put us in a dead end.

If you make an EVM chain *without* an optimistic bridge to Ethereum (aka an alt L1), that's even worse. We don't friggin need more copypasta EVM chains, and we definitely don't need even more L1s. L1 is scaling and is going to bring lots of EVM blockspace - not infinite (AIs in particular will need both more blockspace and lower latency than even a greatly scaled L1 can offer), but lots.

Build something that brings something new to the table. I gave a few examples: privacy, app-specific efficiency, ultra-low latency, but my list is surely very incomplete.

A second important thing that I believe is: regarding "connection to Ethereum", vibes need to match substance.

I personally am a fan of many of the things that can be called "app chains". For example I think there's a large chance that the optimal architecture for prediction markets is something like: the market gets issued and resolved on L1, user accounts are on L1, but trading happens on some based rollup or other L2-like system, where the execution reads the L1 to verify signatures and markets. I like architectures where deep connection to L1 is first-class, and not an afterthought ("we're pretty much a separate chain, but oh yeah, we have a bridge, and ok fine let's put 1-2 devs to get it to stage 1 so the l2beat people will put a green checkmark on it so vitalik likes us").

The other extreme of "app chain", eg. the version where you convince some government registry, or social media platform, or gaming thing, to start putting merkle roots of its database, with STARKs that prove every update was authorized and signed and executed according to a pre-committed algorithm, onchain, is also reasonable - this is what makes the most sense to me in terms of "institutional L2s". It's obviously not Ethereum, not credibly neutral and not trustless - the operator can always just choose to say "we're switching to a different version with different rules now". But it would enable verifiable algorithmic transparency, a property that many of us would love to see in government, social media algorithms or wherever else, and it may enable economic activity that would otherwise not be possible.

I think if you're the first thing, it's valid and great to call yourself an Ethereum application - it can't survive without Ethereum even technologically, it maximizes interoperability and composability with other Ethereum applications.

If you're the second thing, then you're not Ethereum, but you are (i) bringing humanity more algorithmic transparency and trust minimization, so you're pursuing a similar vision, and (ii) depending on details probably synergistic with Ethereum. So you should just say those things directly!

Basically:

1. Do something that brings something actually new to the table.
2. Vibes should match substance - the degree of connection to Ethereum in your public image should reflect the degree of connection to Ethereum that your thing has in reality.

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

let L1, L2 become protocol → application

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

L2s have always felt like a reach for capability the base protocol is missing. growing pains.

the real L is cruft this brings to the ecosystem; cruft that can hide toxic behavior. a pattern growth can’t escape from.. like cancer lurking across dividing cells, like ego & success

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

There have recently been some discussions on the ongoing role of L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of two facts:

* L2s' progress to stage 2 (and, secondarily, on interop) has been far slower and more difficult than originally expected
* L1 itself is scaling, fees are very low, and gaslimits are projected to increase greatly in 2026

Both of these facts, for their own separate reasons, mean that the original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path.

First, let us recap the original vision. Ethereum needs to scale. The definition of "Ethereum scaling" is the existence of large quantities of block space that is backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum - that is, block space where, if you do things (including with ETH) inside that block space, your activities are guaranteed to be valid, uncensored, unreverted, untouched, as long as Ethereum itself functions. If you create a 10000 TPS EVM where its connection to L1 is mediated by a multisig bridge, then you are not scaling Ethereum.

This vision no longer makes sense. L1 does not need L2s to be "branded shards", because L1 is itself scaling. And L2s are not able or willing to satisfy the properties that a true "branded shard" would require. I've even seen at least one explicitly saying that they may never want to go beyond stage 1, not just for technical reasons around ZK-EVM safety, but also because their customers' regulatory needs require them to have ultimate control. This may be doing the right thing for your customers. But it should be obvious that if you are doing this, then you are not "scaling Ethereum" in the sense meant by the rollup-centric roadmap. But that's fine! it's fine because Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on L1, with large planned increases to its gas limit this year and the years ahead.

We should stop thinking about L2s as literally being "branded shards" of Ethereum, with the social status and responsibilities that this entails. Instead, we can think of L2s as being a full spectrum, which includes both chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum with various unique properties (eg. not just EVM), as well as a whole array of options at different levels of connection to Ethereum, that each person (or bot) is free to care about or not care about depending on their needs.

What would I do today if I were an L2?

* Identify a value add other than "scaling". Examples: (i) non-EVM specialized features/VMs around privacy, (ii) efficiency specialized around a particular application, (iii) truly extreme levels of scaling that even a greatly expanded L1 will not do, (iv) a totally different design for non-financial applications, eg. social, identity, AI, (v) ultra-low-latency and other sequencing properties, (vi) maybe built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution or other "non-computationally-verifiable" features
* Be stage 1 at the minimum (otherwise you really are just a separate L1 with a bridge, and you should just call yourself that) if you're doing things with ETH or other ethereum-issued assets
* Support maximum interoperability with Ethereum, though this will differ for each one (eg. what if you're not EVM, or even not financial?)

From Ethereum's side, over the past few months I've become more convinced of the value of the native rollup precompile, particuarly once we have enshrined ZK-EVM proofs that we need anyway to scale L1. This is a precompile that verifies a ZK-EVM proof, and it's "part of Ethereum", so (i) it auto-upgrades along with Ethereum, and (ii) if the precompile has a bug, Ethereum will hard-fork to fix the bug.

The native rollup precompile would make full, security-council-free, EVM verification accessible. We should spend much more time working out how to design it in such a way that if your L2 is "EVM plus other stuff", then the native rollup precompile would verify the EVM, and you only have to bring your own prover for the "other stuff" (eg. Stylus). This might involve a canonical way of exposing a lookup table between contract call inputs and outputs, and letting you provide your own values to the lookup table (that you would prove separately).

This would make it easy to have safe, strong, trustless interoperability with Ethereum. It also enables synchronous composability (see: https://t.co/9jy6v1X6Fw and https://t.co/gZmu3YjebM ). And from there, it's each L2's choice exactly what they want to build. Don't just "extend L1", figure out something new to add.

This of course means that some will add things that are trust-dependent, or backdoored, or otherwise insecure; this is unavoidable in a permissionless ecosystem where developers have freedom. Our job should make to make it clear to users what guarantees they have, and to build up the strongest Ethereum that we can.

[Don @donatelli2026]

How to make friends in San Francisco

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

https://t.co/DML1OrU8nh ;)

[Whats Cool in Tech? @WhatsCoolinTech]

I watched an AI coding agent get socially engineered tonight.
Yes, really.

Vibe Coding Nights #10: Offensive Security at @frontiertower 🔥

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

chatting with well-known people that have “made it” is incredible when you don’t go in imposing yourself, asking for selfie, etc.

how else can you really see the authentic character in them? how else do they feel seen as the people they are?

[Eric Jing @mocklee]

self-driving office?? this was surreal 🤣

[tim-clancy.wei @_Enoch]

You can just write software. You can just write software that is beautiful, and good, and pleasant to read and works well. It can be artisinal. It doesn't have to be slop. Nobody can stop you.