I work in ‘web3’. What’s ‘web3’ ? It’s complicated, and something I can talk about for hours. In short, it involves removing intermediaries/gatekeepers and putting the user in the center through technology empowerment. So what is it I do? Well, mainly I focus on the technology, and related strategy work. How can you make use of Web3 technology to enable Web3 business? We’re still early days, with much technology still needed, and much understanding still missing. ...

A few days ago someone allegedly paid $1.3 million for a rock. It’s not even a real rock, or a picture of a real rock. And the underlying rock contract doesn’t even follow the NFT standard, as that was established in 2018, after this contract was deployed. But it’s not about the rock, and we’re now in some crazy bubble with lots of internal transactions to make it look like someone paid this much for something. If I’ve got $1.3 millions worth of ETH, and I sell this rock to myself, you know.. ...

Rarely do you find technology with so much hype as blockchain, where the best architectural advice is to avoid using it. Or, said with less hyperbole, to correctly minimize your direct dependency on blockchain. Why is that? Imagine software where thousands of processes all need to look at and verify the same state change. And imagine too that they all need to store a copy of the same information to ensure the state change is correct. ...

In “traditional finance”, we’ve got something called a derivative. In short, a derivative derives it’s value based on some underlying asset. In the “new finance” world of blockchain and DeFi, we’ve got something called a stablecoin, where the price of the coin is pegged to some underlying asset. So a stablecoin is just a derivative then, no? Usually people think of coins pegged to the USD when they hear stablecoin, but it doesn’t need to be. It could be pegged to anything, just like a derivative could use any underlying asset and definition on top. ...

While blockchain remains highly volatile, both as a technology and as assets tied to them, I’d like to take a step back and review the approach. What is a blockchain? It’s a linked list of events, linked together through some cryptographic hashing mechanism, that forever ties one block to another. And such a blockchain is helpful because it removes the need for a third-party to orchestrate the process. This construct is sequential in nature, and hence practically single threaded. While there are many very nice attributes tied to something which is single threaded, like the ease of reasoning on its current state, there’s also a lot of drawbacks. And while I think we’d all like to keep the benefits of having one smart contract call another, hence allowing for “DeFi Legos” and similar, it doesn’t allow us to solve for the scaling issues. ...

For a while I’ve wanted to write something about stablecoins, these tokens on the blockchains, that are backed by some underlying asset. Usually we associate stablecoins with those backed by a currency, like USD or Euros. But it doesn’t need to be backed by currency, it can be backed by commodities, stocks, bonds, etc. This gives you the benefit of having a token you can easily exchange, transfer and utilize in smart contracts, and also having it backed by more than just pure human emotions and speculation. ...

What would you do if you could borrow a near unlimited amount of money, only need to pay the interest, and not need to provide any collateral? Sure, we have something like that with credit cards, at an outrageous interest rate, and with fairly small credit limits. But what if I’d give you this non-collateralized loan for just 0.09%? Sure, you’d think, I’m happy to rip you off. But here’s the thing, you can’t rip me off, and I’m not scamming you. ...

Over the last few years we’ve been seeing an interesting case of The Innovator’s Dilemma playing out. The case is ARM, and how it through smartphones have grown from energy efficient but comparably slow CPUs, into something which is turning to an overall better choice for general use CPUs. Looking at how Apple is moving to ARM in its computers, not just the iPhone, and how Amazon are using ARM in their cloud servers, it is clear that we’re very close to having ARM replace Intel across the board. Intel, on its side, have not managed to keep up, which, when viewed from the top of the S-curve, fits perfectly with what we’d expect to happen. ...

Lately I’ve been slowly reading “Graffiti Kings: New York Transit Art of the 1970s” by Jack Stewart. I’m reading it because I’ve always been a fan of pop art, and as I’ve started to understand more about its context during its period, I also want to understand graffiti and street art better. For me this is personally linked to the demo- and introscene, which, as far as I’m concerned is art, and I think its context links pretty well into current digital art and scarcity which is now possible with blockchains, explored by, among others, async art and SuperRare. ...

Back in 2016 I mentioned that I started tracking my laptop battery statistics on my then new MBP. Well, now that laptop has reached EOL, with its batteries getting swollen and the fan often running a bit fast, probably due to all the dust inside it. While I didn’t have any complaints about the overall performance of my trusty old laptop, after 5-6 years of everyday use, I felt it was time to upgrade. And it didn’t feel safe with the batteries swelling either! I might look into refurbishing it, if the cost of new batteries aren’t too ridiculous. ...