Blockchain

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 We might all like to hate on banks for their shitty service, lack of clarity and outdated technology, and while that’s fair criticism, they have at least a little bit of an excuse given the regulatory requirements put on them.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. ...

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. ...