Monica Rovalez

Building @BeaconLayerHQ

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

truly decentralized bridges, oracles and wallets are very hard to build

a basically unsolved problem if compared to BTC or ETH style decentralization. n=1, n=3 of 5, etc are not true decentralization

because of this, they are and will be a constant attack vector

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

Ethereum transitioned just in time

alternative view is Ethereum’s transition to PoS economically freed GPUs to feed AI

either way, gamers still rekt ☠️

[Viktor Bunin 🛡️🇺🇸 @ViktorBunin]

Ethereums transition off proof of work is underappreciated. It's security would have dropped precipitously as GPUs would have all transitioned to support AI workloads. We take PoS for granted these days, but it was a huge and controversial change that is still paying dividends.

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

4 cycles ago, the narrative was Bitcoin as a SoV

3 cycles ago, the narrative was programmable Ethereum and ICOs

2 cycles ago, the narrative was rudimentary DeFi and NFTs

last cycle, the narrative was memecoins

this cycle, the narrative looks like it'll be the entire financial system coming onchain to settle 24/7 across borders

it sorta makes you think the fireworks we see this time could be FAR bigger than most people (who have been repeatedly and cyclically destroyed in the trenches and have mostly capitulated their bags) can even imagine

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

i will probably be inundated with rabidly jingoistic reply guys, and let me say directly, that you are part of the problem which we must now solve

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

notice how the Chinese don’t get distracted by foreign wars and bullshit in general

if they set their mind on doing something, like re-shoring their industrial base or asserting influence in their own hemisphere, they’d just do it, mostly quietly, and very methodically

and then they’d watch on and laugh as they see foreign propaganda underestimating them, saying their birth rate and property market are about to collapse their society, etc. they wouldn’t care. they’d just keep quietly executing for decades

in many ways, this is the exact playbook they followed

has it come at a very heavy cost of being authoritarian? yes

but what price do we pay for being free and ruled by non-serious people who care more about lining their pockets than the future of the American republic?

i don’t believe it’s a trade off we should have to make

[𝕵𝖔𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖎𝖑😈 @JoeEvilinc]

Although I’ve been away from @niftyisland for 1 1/2 years, I still feel a deep connection to the team, world and community.

I was there grinding at the start helping build out pitch decks, making and scoring videos, even managing the community and socials. So the news of it…

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

This is the kind of conversation I want to see more of in the community.

Everyone talks throughput. @michaelh_0g gets into what actually changes when AI comes on-chain — and why DA has to evolve with it.

@sachitakamura pulled out a good one here.

[BeaconLayer @BeaconLayerHQ]

“DA layers really differ across three dimensions: performance, programmability, and AI-native design — because on-chain AI can’t operate in a world measured in mere megabytes per second.”

@sachitakamura catches up with @michaelh_0g, Founder of @0G_labs, to break down how 0G compares with Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA: why throughput needs to increase by orders of magnitude, how to move beyond the broadcast bottleneck, and why a decentralized storage network is essential for ultra-fast data ingestion and retrieval.

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

i think recent overreaches by media companies providing what is effectively “at will” access to electronic media when customers think they have “purchased” something

is significantly breaking through into the zeitgeist and may plant the seeds for what will be the second big adoption wave in onchain NFTs

we are already seeing it have a big influence in physical and retro media collection. and i would suggest the collectible card game mania is an extension of this as well

people are starting to realize that when they make a digital purchase, they don’t actually own anything at all

the only digital asset you can truly own is an onchain NFT

[6529 @punk6529]

this is 100% correct. it is true for example for books and videos to take a simple example - e.g. "buy a video on Amazon Prime" is not ownership, it is a licensing agreement.

There is only one way to actually own digital objects and that is NFTs

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

> Ethlabs wants to help Ethereum win the next 2-5 years. To that end, we will be very pragmatic with addressing the pain points of builders and users TODAY, both through our own engineering/research efforts and through pushing EF/core devs to allocate resources in that direction.

yes pls 🫡

[Derek Chiang | Ethlabs @decentrek]

Now that I've joined Ethlabs I can answer my own question.

We see EF as the shepherd of Ethereum's soul aka CROPS, which is what will ensure Ethereum's relevance in a 10-to-100-year timescale.

Ethlabs wants to help Ethereum win the next 2-5 years. To that end, we will be very pragmatic with addressing the pain points of builders and users TODAY, both through our own engineering/research efforts and through pushing EF/core devs to allocate resources in that direction.

Ethereum needs both EF and Ethlabs. Let's win together.

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

institutions which care about the adoption of Ethereum and credibility in ETH as an asset (like DATs, ETFs, DeFi apps, etc.) need to mobilize a lot more aggressively to get involved with the research and dev process immediately

maybe all of these EF spinouts are a way to do it, but they are also comprised almost 100% of ex-EF people who may require financial and governance incentives to present a different PoV which challenges the historic "ivory tower" perspectives which have dominated Ethereum development and adoption discourse

those perspectives haven't always been bad and often come from well-intentioned places, but they are often overly opinionated, too confident in their own assertions, do not give any regard to real social consensus or likely market dynamics, and prioritize secondary issues with complex second and third order effects which are often not anticipated and detract from efforts to grow scale the network and grow adoption

the alternative is you're going to have a small group of people tell you how the protocol should be run and risks of contentious hard forks

this is the time to organize and actually flex your muscles

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

the problem the Dems have right now is a lot of the voter base has become 1) decidedly anti-foreign intervention (Iran war) and specifically anti-unconditional-support for Israel and 2) many are struggling with affordability

the establishment Dems are not listening to them, so the only way they have to express their discontent is to vote for insurgents (in the form of socialists) because they are the only viable alternative to the Democratic Party establishment

so the Democratic Party continues to break, but has not properly broken yet in the ways it still needs to

still have another 2 years to go before the general election, but general election season will start to fully ramp up in about 1 more year

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

and so the next proposal if this happened and too much was staked would be, you guessed it, make staking yield negative and use it as paid rights to extract MEV 🏆

[Monica Rovalez @punk5844]

staking yield would ofc go to zero (eventually) it was implemented

and there would be a renewed drive to extract MEV like you’ve never seen

the network would be close to 100% operated by ETFs, DATs, exchanges, and other institutions

oh, and LSTs probably won’t die either because any yield from any vector greater than zero may still be enough to keep operating

solo/small stakers ofc wouldn’t exist in an environment like that. if they want to get rid of them, they should just state it plainly as a design goal

if these are things that research and core devs actually want but are too afraid to say, then we have a problem. or if these are things they don’t believe can happen because vibes will save us, then we also have a problem

and second and third order effects of these things would be much worse

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

Fast Company interviews some New Aesthetics grantees: https://t.co/HyREiUOd7l

[Art Blocks @artblocks_io]

✨This weekend is your final opportunity to experience EMULATION: Selections from the Art Blocks 500 at @museumartlight.

Closing Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026

Featuring work by ten AB500 artists, this dynamic exhibition explores how technology can extend human creativity, reshape familiar materials, and inspire new ways of seeing.

[seedphrase @seedphrase]

StonkBrokers, Unipeg, and FWA igniting interest in NFTs again 🚀🚀

[6529 @punk6529]

also legend

[6529 @punk6529]

congrats to @sqda

[6529 @punk6529]

one of us - and when you put NFTs in a SAFE, you don't even have to convert a pigsty

[6529 @punk6529]

bats is just hating because he is not a "grail" punk6529 11x11 hodler. NGMI. I'll send you an invite to my reception at the MoMA.

[6529 @punk6529]

well that was fun. time to pack for Art Basel.

@eli_schein you know where to find me, let's talk