La gomme d'école

Financial market, tech, blockchain, DeFi … among others are my interests.

[Aztec @aztecnetwork]

This week on Aztec: new apps, new tooling, network growth, and governance live. Here's the recap.

[Aztec @aztecnetwork]

$AZTEC is now live.

This time next year, every smart contract will be private.

Aztec was built for this moment.

https://t.co/PbhwlH8QPn

[Aztec @aztecnetwork]

Buenos Aires, we're here.

The Aztec booth is located in the Privacy District at @EFDevcon.

Do a hot lap, get some merch, learn about our privacy tech, and come meet the team.

[sssngth pursues permit A38 @sssngth]

1/ Hello fellow aspiring @Dappnode @AztecNetwork genesis sequencers! I know you are worried to not be able to complete preparations in time for @AztecFND’s Ignition event. Here is my guide on how to generate your ETH/ECDSA and BLS keys even without a v2.1.2 based DN Aztec package

[La gomme d'école @rubberday]

@Voultar Hi, any change to get back on store some N64RGB soon with international shipping ? :) thanks

[sssngth pursues permit A38 @sssngth]

𝐀𝐳𝐭𝐞𝐜 & 𝐍𝐨𝐢𝐫 𝐄𝐜𝐨𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐄𝐩.𝟏 — 𝐙𝐊𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤

@ZKPassport is a privacy-preserving identity verification solution co-founded and developed largely by @michaelelliot and @madztheo.
https://t.co/W9Y5CyjoEO [1/41]

[Chris Dixon @cdixon]

We’re excited to share our 2025 State of Crypto report.

This year’s story: the maturation of the crypto industry — with growing institutional adoption, the rise of stablecoins, better infrastructure, new consumer experiences, and long-awaited regulatory clarity.

Read the full report → https://t.co/P3gzQphOEx

Here are the biggest trends of 2025…

[jaehaerys 🪽 @0xJaehaerys]

Goodbye EVM, Hello RISC-V

Ethereum is about to change its engine.

________________________
For Dummies:
If you’re an ordinary Ethereum user, here’s the key point: your wallet address will not change.

- Your 0x... address stays the same.
- Your ETH, tokens, and NFTs remain exactly where they are.
- Your MetaMask or any other wallet will keep working.

What does change is everything under the hood:
- Transactions become cheaper (up to 100× lower fees).
- Ethereum becomes faster (thousands of transactions per second).
- Rollup withdrawals become quicker (hours instead of a week).
- Security becomes stronger (fewer risks of protocol-level bugs).
_____________________________

For ten years, Ethereum has been powered by the EVM — the Ethereum Virtual Machine. It was revolutionary, enabling smart contracts, DeFi, and NFTs. But in a future built on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs), the EVM has become the bottleneck.

What’s wrong with the EVM?

- Slow in ZK: zkEVMs don’t prove the EVM directly; they prove an interpreter of the EVM that itself compiles to RISC-V. This adds an extra layer and results in a 50–800× slowdown.
- Overcomplicated: precompiles (hardcoded cryptographic functions) bloat the protocol and have caused near-consensus failures. Vitalik has called them “horrible.”
- Outdated design: a 256-bit stack-based machine, chosen a decade ago, is inefficient for most real-world and ZK operations compared to modern 32/64-bit register machines.

In short: the EVM was brilliant for its time, but it carries heavy technical debt that becomes unsustainable in a ZK-native world.

RISC-V

RISC-V is not a product, but an open standard for processors — a universal alphabet of instructions: simple, modular, and free. It already powers real chips and is the default backend for most zkVMs (9 out of 10).

Adopting RISC-V gives Ethereum:

- Massive speedups: direct proving without an interpreter layer.
- Cheaper fees: ~100× lower proving costs, making transactions far cheaper.
- Better developer experience: smart contracts in Rust, Go, C++, even Python, thanks to LLVM.
- Stronger security: backed by a precise, machine-readable spec (SAIL), unlike the ambiguous Yellow Paper.
- Hardware acceleration: paths for ASICs and FPGAs already being tested (Succinct SP1, Nervos, Cartesi).

Migration Path

@VitalikButerin outlines a gradual 3-step plan:

- Precompile replacement — new cryptographic functions implemented as RISC-V programs, replacing fragile EVM precompiles.
- Dual VM era — contracts can be deployed as either EVM or RISC-V, with full interoperability via system calls.
- Rosetta strategy — the EVM itself becomes a contract running inside the RISC-V VM, ensuring backward compatibility while simplifying the core protocol.

What does this mean for the ecosystem?

- Optimistic rollups: break. Their fraud proofs rely on re-executing EVM on L1. Without the EVM, they must rebuild from scratch or change models.
- ZK rollups: win big. Already standardized on RISC-V, they can integrate seamlessly with L1. Polygon, zkSync, Scroll, StarkNet all benefit (though StarkNet continues with Cairo).
- Developers: no longer limited to Solidity and Vyper. They can reuse mainstream tooling, compilers, debuggers, and libraries.
Users: transactions become cheaper, rollups finalize faster (hours not days), and Ethereum scales to ~10,000 TPS (Gigagas L1).

Ethereum is evolving from a smart contract VM into a verifiable trust layer for the entire internet.

As Vitalik puts it:
“The finish line includes… ZK-snarking everything.”

By adopting RISC-V, Ethereum aligns with the ZK-proving ecosystem, eliminates long-standing inefficiencies, and unlocks a new era where developers can bring the full power of mainstream software to the blockchain — and users benefit from faster, cheaper, and safer applications.

[La gomme d'école @rubberday]

@tokyovisite Je découvre votre profil :) Dommage j'ai un enfant de 9 ans qui payerait comme un adulte (seul -7 ans est gratuit), sinon c'est tentant.

[La gomme d'école @rubberday]

@StaniKulechov Why only US national and federal banks ? It would be great to have at least the 29 gsib banks.

[La gomme d'école @rubberday]

@fabdarice Name one BTC maxi that turned ETH maxi.

. . . .

. . .

Exactly.

[Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas]

I wrote last wk that $IBIT could hit $100b this summer, but hell, could be this month. Thx to recent flows + overnight rally it's already at $88b. At only 1.5yrs old is now 20th biggest in US, 7th biggest for BlackRock (and their #1 most profitable ETF). Un-freaking-believable.

[Leo Lanza | Lanza.eth @leolanza]

🚨 HISTORIC MOMENT FOR ETHEREUM 🚨

@VivekVentures, CEO of @Etherealize_io, just delivered a powerful testimony to Congress:

✅ Ethereum is the most secure + decentralized settlement layer
✅ $140B in stablecoins + $10B in tokenized assets
✅ Time to 100x innovation with the Clarity Act
✅ Real-time payroll, DeFi, tokenization — all happening on ETH

“We are going to change history by embracing the next phase of the internet.”

📺 Watch it. Share it. Be proud.
Ethereum is the future. 🧱🌐🔥

[La gomme d'école @rubberday]

@GpsTraceGurtam what would be the best car tracker for you as of today ?

[StakeCat @Stake_Cat]

https://t.co/QndbGblHhR

[Gelato @gelatonetwork]

BREAKING NEWS 🚨

FOX Corp. launches the 1st enterprise L2 ⛓️ chain
On 🟠 Gelato, powered by @0xPolygon CDK

Fox Corp., a top US media company, launches Verify L2 to help media firms like @TIME track online content use

See how Verify modernizes brand trust & content licensing ↓

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

By popular demand, an updated roadmap diagram for 2023!

[Neeraj K. Agrawal @NeerajKA]

The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act is a direct attack on technological progress and also a direct attack on our personal privacy and autonomy.

Make no mistake, while proposed as a solution to potential money laundering and terrorist financing, the bill is in fact a repudiation of liberal values and a move towards the types of surveillance and control prized by authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un.

Unfortunately, the bill cannot be improved; it can only be opposed in its entirety. Coin Center will do everything in its power to protect the rights of Americans and defeat this unwarranted attack on individual privacy and autonomy.

[HashVortex @HashVortex]

Our Space Heater XL is available in our store !
Convert an old S9 to a whisper silent home heater.

Get yours and stay cozy this winter 🔥

https://t.co/1xbgwebd2G

[JosephC @josephch]

The Beacon Chain Ethereum 2.0 explainer you need to read first https://t.co/xLIuf6Diks