Towards the end of 2019 I started developing Sigbla. And just now, around half way through 2024, I released the first beta version. It’s a Source Available type of software, different from Open Source, but still developed in the open. But it wasn’t until towards the end of 2023 I even put it up on GitHub. In other words, a very slow process. And all just to be able to put some numbers in a table!? ...

Like I mentioned on LinkedIn a couple of weeks back, Dencun/4844 was Ethereum’s broadband moment. The blob transactions enabled by that hardfork network upgrade enabled a new type of storage space for unstructured data. Very soon after this change, we saw transaction prices on Layer 2s, like Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism drop significantly, often over 10x cheaper than prior to the upgrade. As Ethereum mainnet continues building on these new rails, additional transaction bandwidth will be unlocked, supporting further growth among the L2s. ...

I have over the last few years captured screenshots on my phone of quotes from the Economist Espresso news app. Whatever quote I liked at the time I took a screenshot of, and now I wanted to use those quotes for something. To do that I needed to get the quotes into a text file, which meant doing a few things: Download all the quotes from Google Photos, and crop out just the quote. These are stored in the quotes folder Use the tesseract command line tool to OCR the images into text, see quotes/ocr.sh Because OCR isn’t perfect, I needed to manually inspect and make some changes.. Point 3 is key for what this repo is about. I’ve been building Sigbla for a while now and this is the perfect tool for this task. ...

About 2 weeks ago I released my Sigbla framework for working with data in tables. As it also provides charting abilities, I now had the perfect tool to build myself a Raspberry Pi temperature dashboard. I have over the last few months been logging the temperature of my Raspberry Pi together with the room temperature (using an external sensor connected via USB). As my RPi is passively cooled, its idle temperature will depend on the room temperature. My always running, occasionally busy, passively cooled, Raspberry Pi 4 ...

I’ve wanted to write a post on decentralized delta neutral yield strategies for a while, and with the Shapella fork behind us, it finally compelled me to get going. If you don’t know, the Shapella fork enable staking withdrawals on Ethereum mainnet, and it makes the case for LSDs more compelling as their market dynamics have now been greatly improved. What are LSDs? It’s short for Liquid Staking Derivatives and is a way to create derivatives on top of staked Ether. Hence, if you take Ether, stake it, you’re not just participating in the running of the Ethereum network, at the cost of capital lockups, but you’re also able to leverage this capital indirectly through LSDs in the broader DeFi ecosystem. ...

It’s obvious isn’t it? That we’re heading towards a decentralized future? It might be that it’s just obvious to me, since I’m so deeply involved in this, but the signs are everywhere. From Meta and Twitter collapsing, to oil being replaced by renewables. This shift is aligning us for a new mega trend, one which has been underway in many areas for many years, but now, with improvements in technology, finally enable us to take it all the way. ...

Much is being discussed on Twitter and Reddit about the censoring of transactions on Ethereum. As can be seen on MEV Watch, around half of all blocks, as of right now, follow the OFAC recommendations, censoring transactions against Tornado Cash and similar. It doesn’t take much imagination among Ethereum haters and Bitcoin maxis to declare this as proof of the failure of Ethereum, but is it really? Instead, I believe we’re seeing two things play our here: ...

I’ve been in the financial services sector since around 2008, and at some point I was directly involved in the technology used as part of a banks regulatory reporting requirements. The amount of efforts needed in a bank to perform KYCs, AMLs, and trade reporting in general is immense. We might all like to hate on banks for their shitty service, lack of clarity and outdated technology, and while that’s fair criticism, they have at least a little bit of an excuse given the regulatory requirements put on them. ...

There has been much written, discussed and argued about what cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether are worth. And there has been much nonsense, much superstition, and flawed analysis. Since we’re back in crypto winter, I feel it’s possible to write this without drowning in spam, spam by people trying to pump and dump some coin. Let’s be clear on one thing first of all: There’s no lack of scarce assets. Just because Bitcoin is limited to a 21 million coin supply, does not imply any worth. ...

Not long ago I released the NuPoW Crystal tokens, an implementation of ERC-20 tokens utilizing the new Proof-of-Work algorithm called NuPoW for token minting. The contract has no admin, and there’s no premine on these tokens. The core thing about NuPoW is that it limits the amount of energy used for mining NuPoW tokens through a collective mechanism of reward reduction managed by a chain length run measurement. It might all sound a bit complicated, but its really not, all described in more detail in the NuPoW whitepaper. ...