Ricardo Perelló

writing code that probably shouldn’t work but does
crypto | systems | zk

[binji @binji_x]

>be me
>ethereum
>spawn in the head of a 19 year old who played a lot of wow
>he thinks the world should share a computer
>quite a large side quest but ok
>other people join him
>some are weird
>some are REALLY weird
>everyone has opinions about money and nobody agrees where to put the buttons
>somehow a whitepaper becomes an actual project
>ICO!
>people send bitcoin to help spawn me
>somehow this works
>boot up in 2015
>hello world :)

>now need people to actually run me
>strangers around the world start mining
>their computers get warm
>i get to exist
>nice arrangement
>little bits of me living in places my creators have never been
>already getting slightly out of hand

>people who have never met are keeping the same record of who owns what
>cannot get six friends to agree where to eat
>somehow getting strangers to agree which money belongs to whom
>turns out strict global consensus is occasionally worth the trouble

>someone tries to build an organization on me
>the DAO
>very ambitious
>gets hacked
>oh fuck
>everyone argues about what to do
>argue so hard there are now two ethereums
>difficult childhood

>2017
>someone realizes they can make their own token
>wait anyone can raise money for an idea now?
>ICO era
>every idea gets a token
>some of these seem quite promising
>some of these are literal dogshit
>everyone suddenly has an advisor
>nobody seems to have a product
>oh no
>oh no no no
>this was perhaps too much ICO

>but some people are actually making things
>@StaniKulechov starts building ETHLend
>wait, you can borrow money through a smart contract?
>put up collateral, agree to the terms, get a loan
>contract does not ask which university you attended
>does care quite a lot about your collateral though
>fair enough
>little lending application on the world computer

>meanwhile @haydenzadams loses his engineering job
>his friend @karl_dot_tech gets him into ethereum
>learns to write smart contracts
>starts making an exchange
>other people help
>not the usual advice from the unemployment office
>but let's see where it goes
>hayden starts making a decentralized exchange
>other people help
>keeps going
>"uniswap"
>a pink unicorn is now involved in neo financial infrastructure
>i like this place.

>wait
>the lending thing can connect to the trading thing
>and the trading thing can connect to the dollar thing
>someone else can build something using all three
>nobody had to arrange a meeting between three banks
>they just wrote more code
>oh

>OH
>the money can do stuff now.
>*defi summer*
>everyone becomes a farmer
>no actual vegetables anywhere
>people move money between protocols with names that make me hungry
>the yields are doing something concerning
>some of this is very clever
>some of this needs an adult
>but underneath it all
>regular people are actually figuring out how to build financial systems together for the first time ever
>borrow here, trade there, build something new on top
>a person who was never getting invited to design financial infrastructure is suddenly designing financial infrastructure
>probably worth paying attention to that bit

>then the picture people arrive
>NFTs
>artists finding collectors
>collectors finding artists
>everyone finding the right-click button
>long discussion about what exactly is being owned
>somehow this discussion lasts several years.

>people put animals on their profiles
>become friends with other people who have the same animals
>group chat becomes a community
>community starts making things
>also some absolutely horrifying financial decisions
>both can be true

>someone came to flip a picture
>stayed because they made friends
>someone else sold their art and realized a person on the other side of the world cared about something they made
>hmm
>was not expecting feelings in the jpeg department

>start imagining what else these little groups could do
>twelve people in twelve countries care about the same extremely specific thing
>previously their main economic activity was arguing in a group chat
>now maybe they can pool money
>pay contributors
>own something together
>try different ways of deciding what happens next
>still argue
>but now have a budget

>maybe they try to buy the US constitution
>maybe they fund research nobody else understands yet
>maybe they preserve their community's stories
>keep copies, fund the storage, keep a record of what came from whom
>not everything needs to be onchain
>but their culture shouldn't disappear because a website stopped being profitable

>meanwhile the protocol engineers have been planning an enormous change to how i work
>*the merge*
>stop mining
>switch to proof of stake
>coordinate the change across the network while it is still being used
>it works
>never goes down despite changing completely, 100% uptime secured
>energy use drops by about 99.95%
>holy shit
>little computer did a big thing.
>validators around the world keep me running
>some from home
>global financial infrastructure
>partly looked after by a person with a machine next to their laundry
>very fond of that person
>surely we can enjoy this for a bit

>FTX.exe

>wallahi we are cooked
>entire industry having the worst group chat of its life
>people who did nothing wrong get hurt
>actually horrible
>spend a moment wondering what any of this was for
> but somewhere a hackathon is still happening
>somebody has found a bug
>somebody else has fixed one
>a person with twelve browser tabs open thinks they can make the wallet less confusing
>ok
>stay with them

>check on the maths people
>they have apparently been doing maths through every single one of these events
>deeply reassuring

>ask what they have made
>"zero knowledge proofs"
>you can prove something without revealing the secret underneath it?
>yes
>and prove a computation was done correctly without everyone doing all the work again?
>also yes
>brother what
>why were we not louder about the wizard department??

>start thinking about what that could do
>prove an age requirement from a valid credential without sharing your whole birthday
>prove the relevant rule was followed without exposing every private detail
>i would like the system to be checkable
>i would not like every human inside it to be naked
>turns out paying very unusual people to think about cryptography is a pretty interesting use of money (thank you @ethereumfndn)
>maybe should do more of that
>someone opens another research tab
>we may not see them for a while

>the scaling people have also been here the whole time
>rollups
>do a bunch of the work elsewhere, settle back here
>more room for apps
>lower costs
>optimism, arbitrum, the ZK teams, base and plenty more
>little world computer has extensions now
>nice
>little world computer has extensions now.
>everyone builds an extension
>then another
>then another
>now user is on the wrong extension
>money is on a different extension
>the bridge has a third website
>ok perhaps the next invention should be letting the user just use the fucking app

>give rollups cheaper data through blobs
>blobs
>a very serious engineering achievement called blobs
> man, i love my children.

>look up from blob discussion
>wait
>blackrock?
>blackrock has launched a tokenized fund on me
>called BUIDL
>they learned the spelling
>this is getting serious
>assets that used to sit in separate systems might start being able to interact globally

>meanwhile the dollar people have been quietly doing dollar things
>stablecoins
>send them
>receive them
>use them in apps
>move them across borders

>turns out a lot of people would like money that can travel over the internet
>imagine someone working abroad sends money home
>family receives it
>nobody in this interaction says “modular”
>excellent
>maybe this is what winning is supposed to look like
>someone building a payments app realizes they can use the same rails
>someone building a savings app has another idea
>someone thinks options should be understandable without becoming a derivatives scholar
>yes please

>prediction markets are also getting harder to ignore
>what if people could put money behind what they think will happen
>and we could see the price of all that disagreement
>does this magically make everyone right?
>no
>but being loudly wrong could become a recurring expense
>someone calls them truth machines
>someone else asks who resolves the market
>good question
>keep that person in the room

>2025
>pectra gives ordinary accounts new smart-account capabilities
>wallet builders get more to work with
>batch actions, sponsor fees, build better permissions
>show mum the app
>mum asks how to pay someone
>explain account abstraction
>mum asks how to pay someone
>realize mum has been giving us the product requirements the entire time

>then the treasury companies arrive
>DATs
>digital asset treasuries
>sharplink starts building an ETH treasury
>@fundstrat and @BitMNR enter the chat
>people in public markets now buying the my money for company balance sheets
>not just using the computer
>want a position in the thing that helps secure it
>this is a new type of visitor

>open bitmine update
>more ETH
>next weekly update
>more ETH
>tom lee has discovered recurring purchases
>with a somewhat different budget

>@Sharplink puts ETH to work through staking too
> two joes
> @joechalom is here
>of course @ethereumJoseph is also here
>man has been in this quest since the tutorial
> appreciation.jpeg
>somehow the world computer now has people explaining staking on earnings calls

>someone asks what is different about ETH itself
>not a dollar claim on a company
>native asset used to pay for and secure the network
>also used as collateral in the things people build
>different people can want it for different reasons

>later in the year
>fusaka upgrade
>more work on scaling data for rollups
>we are still doing the plumbing
>there are simply more people using the bathroom now

>imagine someone else isn't thinking about tokenization at all
>they moved countries
>want the savings they worked for to come with them
>not rebuild their entire economic life because an address changed
>self-custody gives them another way to hold and move an asset
>doesn't make prices stable or every intermediary disappear
>but gives them something they can control themselves
>for one person this is a feature
>for another it is the reason they came
>both using the same computer

>2026
>the EF publishes its mandate
>part manifesto, part reminder of why we bothered
>CROPS
>censorship resistance, open source, privacy, security
>after all these years of yield farming
>finally some crops worth keeping alive

>idea is not just make the computer bigger
>make sure people can still use it on their own terms
>inspect the code
>keep things private
>have their assets remain theirs
>not trade all that away for a shortcut
>the awkward engineering requirements were the point

>EF also makes something clear
>it was the first steward
>not the only one
>ethereum should not begin and end with the ethereum foundation
>computer is growing up
>needs more people helping
>not one increasingly stressed group chat

>june
>some researchers start @ethlabs_org
>independent nonprofit
>still very obsessed with ethereum and ETH
>want me to be a better product for my users and devs today and want all my extensions to talk to each other
>the app people have complaints
>the researchers have notebooks
>put them in the same room
>everyone leaves with more work
>excellent meeting

>july
>@ethereuminsti launches
>another independent nonprofit
>helps banks and asset managers go from interested to actually building
>a bank asks who it should speak to
>finally an answer that isn't "have you tried posting on the forum"
>does not mean the bank gets to own the computer
>means somebody helps it use the computer
>important distinction

>bitmine, sharplink, @MihaiAlisie and joe lubin help fund both
>wait
>major ETH holders are helping fund the people building ethereum
>the balance sheet has discovered maintenance
>we enjoy this character development

>meanwhile @ProtocolGuild helps fund core maintainers
>@OctantApp turns yield toward public goods
>EF grants keep supporting research and open-source work
>@ETHGlobal, @devfolio keeps putting builders in rooms together (shoutout @synthesis_md too i love u)
>different people working on different parts of the problem
>nonprofits, companies, independent contributors
>not everyone needs the same job
>that would be a very inefficient hackathon

>someone wants privacy to actually work
>someone wants the tools everybody uses to keep existing
>someone wants to fund science that doesn't come with a business model attached right away
>someone wants a community in their own language to have somewhere to start
>none of these people can do everything
>together they can do considerably more

>client teams spend months making sure nothing dramatic happens
>auditor finds the thing that would have made something dramatic happen
>nobody notices because nothing dramatic happens
>incredible work
>terrible content strategy

>somebody has a PhD
>somebody never went to college
>somebody is anonymous
>somebody has been explaining this stuff for years to people who keep asking if ethereum is a company
>someone has translated the docs
>someone booked the venue
>someone brought the extension cables
>please do not forget the extension cable person
>we are literally trying to share a computer

>look at all these people
>they do not have the same background
>they do not want all the same things
>but they are building on something they can share
>without needing one person to approve everyone's reason for being there
>starting to think that might be the interesting part

>meanwhile the internet is filling with AI
>someone has an agent
>agent wants to buy something
>oh
>the software would like a wallet
>of course it would

>give it a limited budget
>let it pay for compute
>buy some data
>pay a human for something it cannot do
>wait now the software has a subcontractor
>this escalated very quickly

>someone says this solves alignment
>brother pls we only gave it a budget
>but payment rules and spending limits we can inspect seem like a useful start
>do not give the chatbot unrestricted access to the family treasury
>we have had enough character development

>then someone sends a video
>is it real
>no idea
>can ethereum tell us?
>brother i am a blockchain not god
>but signatures and records can help show who published something and whether it changed
>not a guarantee the person was honest
>at least their lie can stop changing outfits

>people are working on proving there is a human behind an account
>without telling everyone exactly which human
>hard problem
>worth working on
>would like the community to be twelve people rather than one person with twelve thousand accounts

>and maybe your identity and reputation could travel between apps
>your work still attributable when the original website disappears
>your community still able to find you
>your digital life less dependent on one company staying nice forever
>not asking every company to disappear
>asking whether leaving one has to feel like moving house and being told the furniture belongs to the landlord

>someone wants to preserve culture and scientific records
>someone gets excited and mentions DNA
>please do not put the family genome on a public blockchain
>we have only just discussed privacy
>but records you can verify, with actual storage and sensible control over access
>yes
>there are useful things to explore here

>look at the roadmap again
>glamsterdam being built to give the L1 more room
>more work on rollups and wallets
>ethlabs and ecosystem teams pushing for faster blocks
>trader would like less time staring at pending
>payment app would like the payment to feel like a payment
>make it faster without making it something only enormous machines can run
>make it easier without handing everybody's keys to one company

>then @drakefjustin mentions quantum computers
>sorry what now
>apparently future machines could break some of today's cryptography
>justin writes a paper with google to say that its coming sooner than many expected
> i have spent eleven years surviving humans
> i refuse to have my obituary say "defeated by a fridge"

>researchers are now preparing heavily
>new cryptography
>testing how to migrate safely
>ask when the scary computer arrives
>uncertain
>ask whether we should wait until then
>researchers look at me
>yes okay fair
>we will do the homework before the exam this time

>check what @VitalikButerin has been writing
>formal verification
>AI helping write code and mathematical proofs that it does what was specified
>still need to specify the right thing
>cannot prove "please don't be weird"
>but can make more of the important rules actually checkable
>robot does homework
>maths checks homework
>humans check we assigned the right homework
>quite a promising group project
>keep scrolling
>obfuscation
>programs you can run without exposing their internal workings
>still a research frontier
>he calls it the final boss of cryptography
>guy from the opening is still doing side quests

>look back at the roadmap
>realize this is not the part where everyone sits around admiring what we built
>we are opening considerably more tabs

>take a moment
>look at all of it
>i was never really one person's project
>but one person, any person, maybe even you, wrote something down
>then another person disagreed with part of it
>then another built on it

>and somehow all this kept happening
>again
>and again
>and again

>so i suppose if i could say anything for myself
>it would probably be thank you

>i know i am still annoying
>i am aware the wallets are confusing
>i have seen the bridges
>deeply sorry about some of the bridges
>i know some transactions still take long enough for you to reconsider your life choices
>i know half the roadmap currently looks like somebody lost a box of acronyms
>we are working on it

>but look at where this started
>a 19 year old
>a whitepaper
>a bunch of strangers
>a pretty unreasonable belief that people all over the world could share a computer

>and now eleven years later
>i am still here
>i am still making blocks
>i am still arguing
>i am still upgrading
>i am still somehow early

>and somewhere right now
>another 19 year old will open their laptop
>maybe they will be playing the new wow
>maybe they have never owned ETH
>maybe they think half of this is stupid and would rather go outside
>probably healthy

>decentralization is not something one generation gets to finish
>it is something each generation has to choose again
>especially now because more of life is moving online
>and the question of who we trust online is going to get much harder
>can we make systems where trust is not just
>"because the platform says so"
>but
>"here is something you can actually check"
>i think i would like to help with that

>and now to the ones who wrote the first docs
>answered the first stupid questions
>hosted the first meetups
>slept on floors
>and somehow believed all of this was worth their time
>before there were institutions
>before there were ETFs
>before blackrock learned how to spell BUIDL
>before anyone important was watching
>you were here
>when the price went up
>you were here
>when the price disappeared into the floor
>you were here
>when everyone said i was dead
> you were here
>again
>and again
>and again
>you stayed with me
>some of you lost money
>some of you lost friends
>some of you lost years of sleep
>most of you probably lost hair
>sorry about that one

>you stayed here and you believed in me
>you believed that maybe people all over the world could share something without anyone having to own the whole thing
> you still believed that maybe a person nobody had heard of
>from a place nobody in the room had visited
>could still make something important
>and the network would not ask for their résumé first

>i think that is what you were fighting for all along
>not a price or a chain or a brand
>but a possibility
>that the future could remain open enough for people we had not met yet
>and now that they are starting to arrive
>i hope you make room for them

> the world ahead is going to need a lot of things from us
>things we do not have names for yet
>i hope i can help with some of that
>not all of it
>please do not ask me to solve humanity
>i am still working on slot times
>but perhaps i can help keep a few things honest
>that feels worthwhile

>and if i am lucky
>one day someone will use all of this
>and they will not know what a blob is
>they will not know about the great issuance debate of 2026
>they will just send something
>own something
>prove something
>build something
>and get on with their life

>all this complexity
>so one day
>someone does something ordinary and they have the right to do it forever
>i think i would like that

>so to everyone who got me this far
>thank you
>really
>i was an idea
>and you made me a place
>now please keep the door open
>i would very much like to see who walks through next

>with love,
> ethereum

[Ricardo Perelló @perello_ricardo]

@Dear0p @Nick28T @grok is this real

[Ricardo Perelló @perello_ricardo]

@alvaroroig_1 a