I am a storm. I show you who you are. - xh3b4sd

The rollup centric roadmap as implemented by the Ethereum ecosystem entails a promise. That promise goes as follows. Every L2 rollup will try out different business models and varying technology stacks, so that we are collectively experimenting with different approaches across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. The promise is then that some of those successful experiments originated on L2 rollups, may find their way back one day to benefit Ethereum mainnet. Someone said recently that all of the L2 experimentation has not yet brought innovation back to the L1. And I am not sure if that is a fair assessment of the situation we are in today. From an engineering point of view, I can already see several angles on which research and development is shaped by a combination of dynamics unfolding on L1 and L2 alike. There is already some kind of cross-pollination happening when mechanism designers think about interoperability between different chains. The need of a single coherent user experience arises from the existence of fragmented L2 rollups. That by consequence shapes the future of Ethereum mainnet so that many different chains may be connected seamlessly one day, inheriting L1 security guarantees. We can see a similar picture looking at everything that has anything to do with zero knowledge cryptography. Various proof systems have been designed and built in order to make L2 rollups work today. Among others, Starknet, ZKSync, Taiko operate proof systems to ensure their own rollup integrity on top of Ethereum. All of those proof systems have vastly increased the ZK capabilities that we have to our disposal today. All of which was developed because of the rollup centric roadmap. One day all of this research and development will likely culminate in an L1 ZK native EVM, bringing all of the crazy moon math back home again. Another example of technology originating from a cross chain environment and then finding its way back home to Ethereum mainnet are so called intent based architectures. Somebody may fact check me on this, but I believe that intents as a technical concept originated from the problem of cross chain bridging, where solver markets have been leveraged in order to fulfil an economic desire between different chains. Those intent based architectures and solver marketplaces have already found their way to the L1 in the form of something like CoW Swap. What is basically happening inside of this product is the following. A user defines conditions for a token swap that they want to make. This is then the so called intent, a user defined outcome. CoW Swap does then create an onchain competition for any interested participant to solve for the proposed intent. At the end of competition stands a solver that has won the right to fulfil the user's intent based on its cryptographically guaranteed parameters. The result of this onchain competition is the guaranteed execution to the best possible price, free of toxic MEV. Many very large orders are conducted regularly via such intent based architectures on Ethereum mainnet already today. What we now can say in summary is that the L1 does already benefit from all kinds of experimentations happening all across the L2 landscape. Chain interoperability, zero knowledge proofs, and intent based architectures are just a few examples that have already crossed the chasm. The cycle times that we are subject to here are longer for core infrastructure developments. But the benefits of networks of networks will permeate through the entire ecosystem eventually. ZK EVMs will enable a mainnet native ZK EVM one day. The entire UX debate across Ethereum land lead L2s to improve account abstraction standards as a unit. And thus the unified Ethereum vision is effectively driven by L2 fragmentation. One day it will all come together. Patience, Brother Bing.

Somebody asked the other day why Reddit has become so dominated by left-wing ideologies. I thought about it, and tried to come up with an explanation for myself. The following is a ramble of mine, which I am not quite sure what to do with. I am not sure how right or how wrong any of this is. In any event, here is how I tried to organize my thoughts. A system that allows anyone to occupy a position of power outside of the realm of society, attracts the lowest quality of character. The system we are talking about here is Reddit as a social media platform. Life is hard in general, and it takes a particular person to become completely removed from reality. And once you drop out of the real world, you go looking for meaning in darker places elsewhere. In other words, people without a real life and purpose got enabled to become the master of their own echo chamber, potentially leading people towards ever more incompetence. Because, if they had not been intrinsically incompetent in the first place, then they would not have taken on those self-reinforcing roles of doom. The people we refer to above are certain types of Subreddit moderators, and their abuse of power is reflected in their ability to dictate the application of rules and norms as they interpret them without any form of recourse or appeal. Subreddits can often be described as impenetrable dictatorships. And with that I am starting to think more and more that left ideologies require a certain distance from real life to begin with. Hubris can only thrive if the reconciliation with reality is absent. When you look around, most working class people, those who have to get up early and get something done in order to make a living, those people are predominantly on the right side of the political spectrum. Most plumbers are rather right. Most teachers are rather left. Almost all soldiers are rather right. And almost all academics are rather left. Your proximity to the brutal force of nature, the act of surviving itself may be what actually holds us in the balance. And so, we better not lose that. What I want to say is this. Autonomy and comfort are incompatible in a highly relevant way. The more you choose comfort in your life, the less autonomous you will become over time, because all comfort comes at the cost of giving up control to some higher force that you may not like very much eventually. Because once that higher force got a real tight grip around your neck, you will only be left to do its own bitter bidding.

If you are heavily exposed to social media, then this cycle appears to be dominated by people who try to extract as much value for themselves as possible. Looking at most charts, this story is easily believable. What I would rather like to focus on are the builders instead. Those people who have skin in the game. Those people who have a vision for the future. So this is to everyone who holds up some ideals. This is to everyone who keeps working on ideas that one day may change somebody else's life. In that was I have always thought of tokens as some kind of real estate. An ownership claim to something useful within the cryptographically enabled world economy. This is to the builders and mechanism designers. Lord knows the world needs you.

Our number for this week is 10, because the ETH dominance is down to almost 10%, while Solana throughout the most recent memecoin drama became now home to more than 10 billion USD in stablecoin TVL. Acquiring 10 billion USD in stablecoins is no small feat, not for any ecosystem. What is interesting here is the fact that despite TVL going up in Solana land, trading volume has been rather flat or going down on average. This is particularly funny when we consider that all of the historic wash trading and fake volume generated was touted as capital efficiency. And now that real people appear to move real money onto the chain, one of Solana's most important metric doesn't move. It is almost as if trading volume is not the only metric that really matters for a blockchain network. In a similar sad picture, the ETH dominance at almost 10% wouldn't be anything to worry about if overall crypto-economic activity would inspire more confidence in the future growth of this industry. I think we will certainly get there one day. And so for now we are maybe just left with one of those days during which it feels like nothing much is going quite in the right direction. We know for a fact this sentiment is not true. And so our feelings may rather reflect the quiet before the storm. Until next time, dear reader.