ens lost a lot of aura in this debacle

i really didn’t know that the protocol itself doesn’t enforce normalization

seems like a potential security risk

took me a few days to really go through the proposal and process my thoughts:

> i think the proposal itself points out the risk of cartelization, which this "tax" (i agree with many on here that this is a form of tax) will make feasible, further reducing the solo staker number. i think the proposal didn't address these issues adequately.
> i resonate a lot with zeroproof comment on the intrinsic values of contributing to ethereum driving conviction.
> i also see many on X talking about paying contributors as if ethereum is a company and its shareholders must be paying its employees. i disagree with this notion because ethereum protocol is not a company, the employment relationship exists between the lead of the client team with its members. ETH holders have little power to enact differences. validators are compensated to maintain security of ethereum (there already talks to reduce issuance) so why there needs to be a tax to subsidize ethereum developers/researchers, even the poor performing ones.

i believe the solution(s) to the funding problem on ethereum should revolve around 2 axis:

1. increase the intrinsic values of contributing to ethereum, so that more developers are attracted to get involved, more supply of developers that are competent on ethereum protocol
2. commercial entities that have products/services tied to ethereum funding/employing core developers, get involved with the infra that they are building on

now i think i have very little understanding of the responsibilities of an ethereum core dev (i'm just a pleb), so my opinion doesn't hold a lot of weight. however, i have high conviction in ethereum and i'm running services related to ethereum, so i should put my money where my mouth is...

i now start my journey of becoming an ethereum core developer. the process is still fuzzy but i have a rough understanding from following the recent EPF.

my goal is to both contribute to ethereum and operate my own commercial entity tied to ethereum that can sustain itself.

i will document my entire journey in public and will advocate for others to do the same

no hate here but these neobank offerings are not attractive

> my money is tied to my email which has fragile security
> my money is then tied to a hosted wallet service that has down time, can prevent access
> my money is then tied behind a neobank API, behind a an app/website that can disappear

things look slick until terrible things happen, non existent support, you can't hold anyone responsible, one provider blames the other, nothing resolved for months or years

so users inevitably just deposit like $100 at a time to use as needed, the infra + hosted wallet cost started to pile up, the neobank then shuts down, leaving users clueless. it's a vicious cycle.

I will build cool things on Ethereum, the blessed world computer, or die trying

crypto payment PROTOCOL

no more BANK please

incredible read

i love the EF substraction mentality when i heard about it around devcon bangkok

it allowed plebs like me to be able to contribute to ethereum independently, and on my own terms, my own creativity

for my work at @ethdotvn, i will go the more commercial route but CROPS centric. meaning proper monetization, sustainable revenue sources derived from the community/users rather than begging for grants

yes this is a major problem to solve

so i think truly defi protocols are very little and they has been (so far) ok with other cefi larps onboarding more assets, hence they don’t beef publicly, which i think is bad on their part. so it would be somewhat difficult but feasible to have them fund watchdog initiatives to detect cefi larps and warn people accordingly

the cefi larps would try to muddle the water by bribing some influencers

the bulk of funding should come from depositors, like a monthly subscription/service fees or so, with different tiers. some form of fiduciary financial advisor/robo advisor/etc.

solana is for security frauds

i think the biggest lesson every builder should be taking note from this whole debacle is that building truly cypherpunk and resilient system might not get you all the clout like those centralized VC slop garbage protocols

you won’t get invited to speak at conferences, no PR, no interviews, only a few of us would be cheering you on

but when things go wrong (which they will because murphy’s law), you will come out ahead

this is a take i agree. too many wallet teams have this thinking at some point that they need to build for “normies” and their product started “enshitifying” for their core user base.

i guess teams don’t want to build different product lines because they want to consolidate user into a single product for ops

chain abstraction doesn’t make UX less complex. treating every chain the same is not the right solution (risk). a stage 0 L2 with celestia has diff security property vs a stage 1 L2 using ethDA.

unintuitively, let it be. good chain ecosystem (apps) will attract liquidity and keep liquidity sticky. the rest will die. eventually we will only have a few L2s left that are worth it to use.

i have always maintained a stance that ethereum events MUST not have alt L1s

however, conferences are so expensive that it's hard to get only ethereum aligned sponsors. so either organizer must downscaling the conference itself, or they can consider what i'm attempting:

> an apple event style video production featuring only ethereum aligned sponsors

> From our experience with ERC-4337, the biggest hurdles to AA adoption come from two sources:
> Existing EOA users do not want to migrate to a new account, regardless of the UX benefits. > Wallets do not want to introduce new attack surfaces by relying on smart contracts.

UX benefits don't matter when you compare to security for wallets with large amount of funds. the red flag was no AA wallet can guarantee security compared to EOA (native to eth protocol), also they all want passkey stuffs, which is a no for me. i don't escape tradfi just to get gated behind big tech (passkey is tied to your apple account, google account, password manager account).

dumb and skinny wallet is cool. and we need to push for more open hardware and open firmware wallet like @Keycard_. we need to get away from our daily devices and opt for more cypherpunk hardware. big brothers will come to you via big tech proxy.

imagine this but apple complying with some gov request to deplatform all non custodial wallet apps.

maybe not today, but some day

tempo has barely any users compared to ethereum, most of their blocks are having one transaction.

they can mess with the chain in any way they want without caring about the consequences. any issues, one rollback away, one simple validator update away. albeit, they have assembled a team of very strong engineers but their problem space is different.

you can't compare apple and oranges; one is a DB, the other is a public blockchain securing hundreds of billions, with millions of people depending on it.

we are also over index on the topic of UX too much. i want whatever stores my money dumb, as dumb as a rock, not fancy spansy just to get rekt.

every project should set an ens address for their token at the very least. really easy to import token that way

it’s fun to shit on the EF for views.

the EF is already the most transparent org, telling people every time they move treasury.

what other foundations are doing this? they just shid on your head via back room deals and unmarked wallets.

I do find it kind of hilarious that the a main criticism of Ethereum has been that it remains laser focused on the reasons blockchains exists at all

respectfully disagree with you on this dankrad

i'm doing BD for ethereum in vietnam, i have my own interest, and that's precisely the point. i have my own interest to run a sustainable business built upon the ethereum platform.

i want to build integration solutions for L2s and for ethereum L1 so local corporates can consider. so i have to do lots of BD, advocating for ethereum adoption, building case studies for legal perspective and fight for all the values that we all hold dear. ethereum being cypherpunk and neutral mean that i can confidently pitch without having to "double check" someone or worry about "overstepping" some power tripped BD.

all other chains are doing BDs because they are much more centralized, with a massive war chest foundation. EF could never match that. your employer tempo is super rich with both paradigm (massive VC) and stripe (massive payment co) behind. and you here thinking that EF members could out-BD them, integration partners demand a couple millies for adoption and EF would drop out immediately, while tempo can easily afford that.

everyone building on ethereum today is doing BD for it, because it is in their interest to do so.

i don’t think “chain abstraction” makes any sense here

every one of these chains has different security properties, merging them all together is conflating everything is the same, which is not true. USDC and USDT are already different in terms of security properties.

abstracting complexities and risks don’t make them go away. at some point, that will come back and bite you in the butt.

besides, why are you on so many chains? maybe because you know what you are doing!? a less sophisticated user prob won’t use more than 3 chains.

i think across didn't do a public token raise hence not that unreasonable if they want to go equity route. major VCs were holders. however,

> But Across cannot directly enter these agreements as it has no legal entity: we need to route these agreements through our foundation

i find reason not sufficient. you can structure a lab entity to enter agreement and funnel the revenue back to the DAO.

i think DAO being entirely onchain with zero legal entity is preferable. what if person A were a major DAO delegate, but person A resided in France with a different legal expectation compared to a DAO legal entity based in the US. now, then how a DAO can own IPs like domain names, brand names. i think onchain ENS is a possible solution. DAO owns the ENS domain to be the resolver of name + website. there will need to be service providers that are registered private entities that take on the integration contracts but they operate on their own brands instead of the DAO.

i think account abstraction core primitives (the onchain part) should be enshrined or native in protocol.

too much VC driven competition in that layer and teams start locking people in

solana still doesn’t have slashing lmao

there is an $80B+ opportunity for any teams that can vampire all the USDT on tron to ethereum

DAOs are out

then what’s point of holding AAVE? labs now can win any proposals in its favour

they can suck the DAO dry, or vote again to not share any revenue. token holders now have to rely on labs generosity

top down can be great but this is backstabbing the token holders

Ethereum is going hard

power corrupts even the noblest of hearts

every cycle we have people coming and leaving, it's a no biggie.

just labour market doing labour market thing. people going to find their own greener pastures. we have plenty of talented unc still around, and the many recent gen z builders.

IRL still matters but IRL is expensive, so you only host once in a while (not endless conferences like right now)

i have been delivering workshops to students in vietnam, i did it like a pop up on their campuses, it's free, educational and fun for everyone involved. i hosted meetups for 2 years as well, now the local community has picked up the torch so i can focus more in building the online channels.

there are different types of events, not just conferences with expensive booths, organizers milking the shid out of sponsors, paying people to attend, while not delivering anything, not even brand value. why only mention the good part while leaving out all the negative things with conferences.

i also detest ETH events that ask alt L1s to sponsor. that's bad imo. and i don't believe EF needs to fork out money, maybe a small donation once in a while as a gesture of good will. they should focus on making devcon/nect the best event of the year.

the zealot keeping us straight on the path 🙏 we need more tim-clancy not less

lmao

if an L2 can’t survive being an L2 with low consensus overhead and native bridging to ethereum liquidity, it would just die, not trying to become an L1, because they would die even faster

the network functions exactly as intended, high demands = high gas fees. people are willing to pay that much to have their txs included because their activities are more valuable.

the normal gas price is less than a cent

of course, the fud comes from a corpo chain in zombie mode.

wallets should never become app store

wallets should be boring and commoditize

otherwise the walled garden would get even higher

when i graduated engineering school in canada, i had to enroll in ethics class. i was taught in great details about my responsibility as an engineer and the potential damages if we were to make mistakes (human lives at stake). even the practice of wearing the iron ring on the pinky is to remind engineers about their duties.

in my latest lectures to students, i have included slides to touch on ethics. although we as an industry hasn’t gotten together and discussed what it was. i include common sense for now.

respect to the people who know their responsibilities on what they have built, in an industry full of people with short attention span and commitment issues

how many of you actually finish a duolingo language track?

gamification is just part of a product. slapping gamification in doesn’t make people automatically want to use your bs app

p2p stablecoin transfer has been pitched to reduce fee for merchants. however, demands are generated from consumers, in which all types of payment are free (or ultra low fee in the form of gas) so it makes zero difference for them.

merchants would support any types of payments that the consumers demand. at the moment, card payment because of the incentives attached to it (points, perks, rewards), and little regulatory hurdle.

jokes aside

as long as consumers still choose their fiat cards (because the merchant fees -> issuer -> card holder perks), merchants won't care enough to take action

the merchants are indirectly incentivizing consumers. stablecoin payment needs to take this into account

i like how @motypes summarized this

the upside of taking risk on being an L1 (your token might be valuable) is large enough that teams would choose that option no matter how miniscule the chances are

this

i took on this quest in vietnam. sick and tired of influencers regugitating “web3” and “blockchain”. so i use ethereum in all my communication

say the name

for a "cypherpunk" industry, i think we should do more online events/conferences. all my frens are in the pewter. not all of us are from the west with passport that can go anywhere.

@EFDevcon is ok tho. once a year to arrange logistics.

the fear of losing assets with self custody is overblow, over sensationalize by the media

then the over reliance on hot wallets

then "non custodial" solutions larping as "safe" and "self custodial"

it's hard to change this but i believe it's not impossible. however, more people will lose money before they realize this

because scamming people on solana is a celebrated activity, approved by the high council of bundlers and endorsed by the foundation insiders

AA researchers and builders completely missed the point. i appreciate their efforts tho.

> smart contract wallets carry additional smart contract risk (also many are upgradable) -> EOA is proven
> what do i use to sign my smart contract wallet now? passkey is not as secure, email is garbage -> so back to an EOA again
> apps don't support as well -> can't use for anything, super clunky
> batch txs sound nice, sure, but who cares about UX when one mistake means losing money -> keep my main wallets dumb, the loose change wallets can be smart
> if you don't like me, can your bundlers censor my txs? oh not that many bundler options like RPCs -> back to EOA

so...

native AA, built into the protocol, robust, censorship resistance, capable to host trillions.

In the world computer, there is no centralized overlord. There is no single point of failure.
There is only love.
Milady.

choose self custody and be free

starknet has good tech, apps on there are good, i use them, same as many others

that’s already better than many chains, and many L2s.

but they constantly have this desire to find validation from others. should be announcing bridged SOL liquidity on starknet chain and show them who is boss

because there are still plenty of people believing in self sovereignty of their assets

all these account abstraction wallets/mpc wallets require you to believe in some centralized entities to maintain service

an EOA is freedom until maybe native AA on ethereum

vietnam law forbids social media from asking for user gov ID starting 2026

very interesting given what’s going on in europe and australia

tbf, for age verification, the gov might expose a verification api from the citizen ID app (VNeID) for companies to use. at least with the gov, they already had your ID.