polynya

@polynya

127 Following

330217 Followers

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*December solstice Or, even better, Southern solstice

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A personal note on this: I spent the last year of my blogging career focusing on exploring from first principles the fundamentals of blockchains. It hasn't gotten much attention, but I still believe it's by far the most impactful writing on my old blog. Blockchains are only useful for strict global consensus, with the key overarching usecase being objective accounting. For everything else, there are far more efficient and more decentralized options available/to be invented. Being dogmatic about only using blockchains has actively hindered growth for years - to expand the onchain economy we must adopt & invent better solutions, even if its not technically "onchain".

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To everyone replyguying, relax, aphorisms are concise for effect, conveying a more complex meaning behind its simplified phrasing.

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Crypto's greatest contributions to humanity: 1) Adding an overwhelming body of evidence to the millennia old universal truth: money is the root of all evil [...] 2) Digital store-of-value commodity as an alternative to Gold 3) Stablecoins that make USD more accessible in countries with high inflation + it's restricted

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I haven't been following, any recommendations?

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My armchair showerthought is some of those upgrades should be delivered incrementally, sooner, like SSF, though I'm out of touch

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Beam Chain is basically the "zkEthereum" endgame I hoped for and wrote about in 2021, that plus the data layer and zkEVM upgrades. Back then, I had expected something like "about a decade", albeit delivered incrementally. So, anything sooner than early 2030s sounds like a win for Ethereum's Endgame. The one thing I'd like to see is what I called an "Enshrined zkEVM bridge" (a standardized in-protocol bridge for all "Type 0" zkEVM rollups) though maybe that's more suited for the EL, idk

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Sorry to disappoint!

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My favourite invention in crypto is Uniswap range orders. Most crypto apps are alternatives to stuff that have existed, but Uniswap range orders are largely unique, offers a great way to scale in and out of positions, and earn while you're doing it! That and ZKPs as a broader category, of course.

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As some of you have noticed, a big theme on this Farcaster profile is objectivity vs. subjectivity The human experience is extremely complex, multi-faceted, diverse, and thus deeply subjective Financialization is an attempt to dumb some things down into objective numbers. For some things, like capital allocation, exchange of goods, it works brilliantly. Blockchains are exclusively the domain of the strictly objective. But for almost everything else, forcing subjective matters into objective outputs leads to potentially catastrophic outcomes, and the root cause is plutocracy - determining governance by wealth, to the worst-case scenario, truth itself. I don't need to tell how that's peak dystopia and an affront to humanity. Fuck "info finance" with a bag of stale scrotums

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"Info finance" is pretty emblematic of financialisation gone too far to become outright dystopian It's happening, there's no turning back, but I'll personally avoid it like the plague

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Sadly, a lot of crypto people are like this, though yes, few say it out loud. I know from all the hate I got for merely saying "racist memecoins are bad"

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Over the last decade or so I've been commenting on crypto (different pseudonyms) I've noticed a very clear pattern - the reaction to my content is directly proportional to how bullish the audience perceives them to be for their bags. That makes me appreciate the few who react positively even if I'm being critical.

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Sure, we're all here to see ethereum thrive! But the magnitude and confidence, as you put it, is really important. It dictates what ethereum is good for, and where it is harmful. We've had so much toxic outcomes in crypto, we must do better. To say "governance" is inaccurate, however, to say "accounting in governance" - yes!

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Finally, of course I'm being extra harsh because for too long too many people have made all sorts of grandiose claims about blockchains which are completely detached from reality. Your writing is much closer to the reality, of course, which is why it's a good place for me to critique. I don't think we need any great stories, just understand the few usecases where blockchains are uniquely good, thanks to strict global consensus, and continue better understanding them and improving them. Indeed, the Ethereum whitepaper did this well a decade ago, and I'd like to see more like that.

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If we consider from first principles, a user sending a transaction to a blockchain is trusting that a majority of few thousand computers will come to consensus on including their transaction, alongwith an ordered list of others. There's no guarantee or "confidence in the future" that the transaction will be included, and indeed, some transactions are not, and in some cases, consensus is not achieved. But looking at the history of the specific blockchain, the user can gauge some probability of the transaction being included in the future. Once the transaction is executed, it'll be forgotten after a period of time (~18 days for L2s today, X days for L1 after expiry mechanisms from The Purge is introduced). The objective parts of "governance" or "law" - basically, accounting, are the easy bits. I would have no problems at all if you mentioned that specifically, or some of the awesome things enabled by blockchains - ETH as a SoV, stablecoins, collateralized borrowing etc. We need to be more honest and precise.

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Interesting take! Yeah, the modern world is extremely complex, and keeps getting more complex. The complexity does bring many rewards, so I don't think dumbing things down is a solution. The best outcome is to master said complexity, but yeah, some things may be too complicated in the short term

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A couple of years ago, I identified two main usecases for blockchains: objective money/finance and objective identity However, over time, I've warmed to the idea that objective identity does not actually require strict global consensus. A less strict, loosely ordered global consensus may be adequate Really, it's only money that requires strict consensus, or anything else of *temporal* economic value While identity does have economic value, it is in most cases non-temporal in nature, and can hence be achieved better with loosely ordered alternatives to blockchains

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That was the entire point, to your example, you can't do a an organisation or a legal system on blockchains. The only thing it can replace is the accounting (including stakeholder votes) - which is indeed a great usecase for strict global consensus.

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Haven't really thought about it, kind of just thought oracles are the interface between the objective and subjective worlds, and yes, improving by ZKfying them are the way to go I guess maybe a long way down the line, as AI develops to be more general, it can replace the whole blockchain+oracles apparatus to be directly more subjective

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