I like ethereum
It has managed to capture my attention for nearly a decade. I suspect it'll easily do so for another
Thank you to everyone that has worked on the machine that is the sum of ethereum and everything built upon it
New paper & surprising result.
LLMs transmit traits to other models via hidden signals in data.
Datasets consisting only of 3-digit numbers can transmit a love for owls, or evil tendencies. ๐งต
Today, @coinbasedev is announcing x402: an open standard/protocol to bring onchain payments to the web. Join us in killing the API key, and making the agentic and payable web a reality. All in one line of code.
Imagine a future where crypto is the default to pay for *anything*.
Wake up, @Google is adopting ZK.
One reason ZK will be adopted is it reduces the security overhead of companies who manage large data sets of sensitive information. It is not uncommon for companies to spend 10s of billions a year protecting this data.
Reduce sensitive data -> Reduct costs -> Adoption
Weโve added /llms.txt and Markdown to @stripe docs: https://t.co/mG9FIaXLTS
Use the .md pages to quickly move Stripe knowledge into your LLM of choice. ๐
# the nightmare bicycle
imo, the most important idea in product design is to avoid the "nightmare bicycle".
imagine a bicycle where the product manager said "people don't get math so we can't have numbered gears - we need to have labeled buttons for gravel mode, downhill mode, ..."
this is a hypothetical "nightmare bicycle" that Andy diSessa imagines in his book Changing Minds.
as he points out: it would be terrible! we'd lose the intuitive understanding of how to use the gears to solve any situation we encounter. which mode do you use for gravel + downhill??
turns out, anyone can understand numbered gears totally fine after a bit of practice. people are capable!
along the same lines - one of the worst misconceptions in product design is that a microwave needs to have a button for every thing you could possibly cook: "popcorn", "chicken", "potato", "frozen vegetable" bla bla bla.
you really don't! you can just have a time (and power) button. people will figure out how to cook stuff.
good designs expose systematic structure; they lean on their users' ability to understand this structure and apply it to new situations. we were born for this.
bad designs paper over the structure with superficial labels that hide the underlying system, inhibiting their users' ability to actually build a clear model in their heads.
And now for some positive news: I'm excited to announce the publication of a new paper, co-authored with ECB director general (and noted Bitcoin skeptic) Ulrich Bindseil, on the utility of public crypto networks as financial infrastructure.
This is our best attempt to explain the unique attributes of DeFi for any asset, including RWAs, as compared to traditional market infrastructure.
We break those attributes down to unique time structures, streaming payments, omni-asset settlement, programmability, and disintermediation.
We also consider (and mostly dismiss) the utility of permissioned networks which seem to be popular with international orgs like the IMF and BIS.
The paper provides examples of unique DeFi primitives that could only exist on a public blockchain, and also considers their limitations.
So give it a read (link below) and let us know what you think. Some of you here gave Ulrich a lot of flack for his papers questioning the utility of Bitcoin and might be interested to see how he's a lot more bullish on DeFi.
Part of my motivation for doing this was to have a single point of reference to share with all the TradFi and government people who still ask "what is crypto good for?"