rowie

flip my life /

[rowie @rowiedev]

@flipmaxxing yaaap

[rowie @rowiedev]

I love corgis

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Regular reminder:

A key property of a blockchain is that even a 51% attack *cannot make an invalid block valid*. This means even 51% of validators colluding (or hit by a software bug) cannot steal your assets.

However, this property does not carry over if you start trusting your validator set to do other things, that the chain does not have control over - at that point, 51% of validators can collude and give a wrong answer, and you don't have any recourse.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Finally, the block building pipeline.

In Glamsterdam, Ethereum is getting ePBS, which lets proposers outsource to a free permissionless market of block builders.

This ensures that block builder centralization does not creep into staking centralization, but it leaves the question: what do we do about block builder centralization? And what are the _other_ problems in the block building pipeline that need to be addressed, and how? This has both in-protocol and extra-protocol components.

## FOCIL

FOCIL is the first step into in-protocol multi-participant block building. FOCIL lets 16 randomly-selected attesters each choose a few transactions, which *must* be included somewhere in the block (the block gets rejected otherwise). This means that even if 100% of block building is taken over by one hostile actor, they cannot prevent transactions from being included, because the FOCILers will push them in.

## "Big FOCIL"

This is more speculative, but has been discussed as a possible next step. The idea is to make the FOCILs bigger, so they can include all of the transactions in the block.

We avoid duplication by having the i'th FOCIL'er by default only include (i) txs whose sender address's first hex char is i, and (ii) txs that were around but not included in the previous slot. So at the cost of one slot delay, only censored txs risk duplication.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, the builder's role could become reduced to ONLY including "MEV-relevant" transactions (eg. DEX arbitrage), and computing the state transition.

## Encrypted mempools

Encrypted mempools are one solution being explored to solve "toxic MEV": attacks such as sandwiching and frontrunning, which are exploitative against users. If a transaction is encrypted until it's included, no one gets the opportunity to "wrap" it in a hostile way.

The technical challenge is: how to guarantee validity in a mempool-friendly and inclusion-friendly way that is efficient, and what technique to use to guarantee that the transaction will actually get decrypted once the block is made (and not before).

## The transaction ingress layer

One thing often ignored in discussions of MEV, privacy, and other issues is the network layer: what happens in between a user sending out a transaction, and that transaction making it into a block? There are many risks if a hostile actor sees a tx "in the clear" inflight:

* If it's a defi trade or otherwise MEV-relevant, they can sandwich it
* In many applications, they can prepend some other action which invalidates it, not stealing money, but "griefing" you, causing you to waste time and gas fees
* If you are sending a sensitive tx through a privacy protocol, even if it's all private onchain, if you send it through an RPC, the RPC can see what you did, if you send it through the public mempool, any analytics agency that runs many nodes will see what you did

There has recently been increasing work on network-layer anonymization for transactions: exploring using Tor for routing transactions, ideas around building a custom ethereum-focused mixnet, non-mixnet designs that are more latency-minimized (but bandwidth-heavier, which is ok for transactions as they are tiny) like Flashnet, etc. This is an open design space, I expect the kohaku initiative @ncsgy will be interested in integrating pluggable support for such protocols, like it is for onchain privacy protocols.

There is also room for doing (benign, pro-user) things to transactions before including them onchain; this is very relevant for defi. Basically, we want ideal order-matching, as a passive feature of the network layer without dependence on servers. Of course enabling good uses of this without enabling sandwiching involves cryptography or other security, some important challenges there.

## Long-term distributed block building

There is a dream, that we can make Ethereum truly like BitTorrent: able to process far more transactions than any single server needs to ever coalesce locally. The challenge with this vision is that Ethereum has (and indeed a core value proposition is) synchronous shared state, so any tx could in principle depend on any other tx. This centralizes block building.

"Big FOCIL" handles this partially, and it could be done extra-protocol too, but you still need one central actor to put everything in order and execute it.

We could come up with designs that address this. One idea is to do the same thing that we want to do for state: acknowledge that >95% of Ethereum's activity doesn't really _need_ full globalness, though the 5% that does is often high-value, and create new categories of txs that are less global, and so friendly to fully distributed building, and make them much cheaper, while leaving the current tx types in place but (relatively) more expensive.

This is also an open and exciting long-term future design space.
https://t.co/CdpE9ugFxE

[Ted @TedPillows]

ETH in 2021: $1,700
ETH in 2022: $1,700
ETH in 2023: $1,700
ETH in 2024: $1,700
ETH in 2025: $1,700
ETH in 2026: $1,700
ETH before BitMine buying: $1,700
ETH after BitMine buying: $1,700
ETH before ETF approval: $1,700
ETH after ETF approval: $1,700
ETH during anti-crypto President: $1,700
ETH during pro-crypto President: $1,700
ETH before US-Iran war: $1,700
ETH after US-Iran war: $1,700

Performance of $ETH is an absolute joke.

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

Might be late...

I can't predict anything. 😂

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility. This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.

Binance is no longer a baby. It is time for me to let it walk and run. I know Binance will continue to grow and excel with the deep bench it has.

I’m pleased to announce that @_RichardTeng, our now former Global Head of Regional Markets, has been named the new CEO of Binance today.

Richard is a highly qualified leader and, with over three decades of financial services and regulatory experience, he will navigate the company through its next period of growth. He will ensure Binance delivers on our next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth.

Prior to joining Binance, Richard was CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM); Chief Regulatory Officer of the Singapore Exchange (SGX); and Director of Corporate Finance in the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

With Richard and the entire team, I’m confident that the best days for @Binance and the crypto industry lay ahead.

As a shareholder and former CEO with historical knowledge of our company, I will remain available to the team to consult as needed, consistent with the framework set out in our U.S. agency resolutions.

What’s next for me?

I will take a break first. I have not had a single day of real (phone off) break for the last 6 and half years.

After that, my current thinking is I will probably do some passive investing, being a minority token/shareholder in startups in areas of blockchain/Web3/DeFi, AI and biotech. I am happy that I will finally have more time to spend looking at DeFi.

I can’t see myself being a CEO driving a startup again. I am content being an one-shot (lucky) entrepreneur. Should there be listeners, I may be open to being a coach/mentor to a small number of upcoming entrepreneurs, privately. If for nothing else, I can at least tell them what not to do.

On that note, I am proud to point out that in our resolutions with the U.S. agencies they:

- do not allege that Binance misappropriated any user funds, and
- do not allege that Binance engaged in any market manipulation.

Funds are SAFU!

With that, I look forward to seeing the new leadership take the reins. Please join me in congratulating Richard on his well-deserved promotion.

Onwards!

CZ

[Altcoin Daily @AltcoinDaily]

Tom Lee is getting absolutely laughed at for his bet on Ethereum.

Good.

Thinking 10 years ahead isn’t always appreciated.

History is full of business titans who were laughed at for seeing the future too early:

Elon Musk: “Electric cars are weak & lame."

Jeff Bezos: “Selling books… online? Stocks down 99%”

Jensen Huang: “GPUs are just for video games.”

Steve Jobs: “Touchscreen? App marketplace? Smart?”

Jack Dorsey: “A 140-character social network? Who would use it?”

These visionaries weren't crazy.

They were just early.

Ethereum is a nascent industry exploding with growth.

Don’t be so quick to bet against technology.

Don't be so quick to count crypto out.

[Bald Knower 🧑🏼‍🦲 @BaldKnower]

i lent my friend 15k in Solana
(Solana was at 200 bucks and i sent him 75SOL)

He's trying to square up with me and send me 75 solana today, but 75 solana is now worth 4875

am i wrong here that he owes 15k not 75 SOL?

[BTC Bro @BTC_broo]

This bear market is seriously the last time the average person will be able to get to 1 bitcoin:native.

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Former President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, says "fiat is a sham, the banking class is corrupt."

"Decentralized digital currency and the blockchain are the inevitable future."

[Kalshi Crypto @Kalshi_Crypto]

JUST IN: BlackRock sells $230M worth of Bitcoin and buys $17M worth of Ethereum

[Crypto Rover @cryptorover]

5 years of only pain.

0 gains.

RIP altcoin holders.

[Ansem @blknoiz06]

bought a few memes on solana for first time in over a year

[Crypto Rover @cryptorover]

This is the worst year of the 4 year cycle.

Survive it.

The next 3 years will reward you for it.

Play your cards right and this is the year that makes you filthy rich later.

[Altcoin Daily @AltcoinDaily]

PASS crypto Clarity Act IMMEDIATELY 👏

Not maybe.

NOW.

[Altcoin Daily @AltcoinDaily]

Michael Saylor is getting absolutely laughed at for his bet on Bitcoin.

Good.

Thinking 10 years ahead isn’t always appreciated.

History is full of business titans who were laughed at for seeing the future too early:

Elon Musk: “Electric cars are weak & lame."

Jeff Bezos: “Selling books… online? Stock down 99% btw.”

Jensen Huang: “GPUs are just for video games.”

Steve Jobs: “Touchscreen? App marketplace? Smart?”

Jack Dorsey: “A 140-character social network? Why?”

These visionaries weren't crazy.
They were just early.

Bitcoin is a nascent industry exploding with growth.

Don’t be so quick to bet against technology.
Don't be so quick to count crypto out.

[rowie @rowiedev]

not sure if my portfolio is actually doing well or if sleep deprivation is just making everything look green. probably both. either way I'm not selling.

[CZ 🔶 BNB @cz_binance]

Our kids will judge us on how we regulate and progress AI and crypto innovations today.

[rowie @rowiedev]

$SOL ecosystem growing fast. Hard to ignore #Solana #Crypto