polynya

@polynya

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In 2021, I wrote extensively on this topic. On paper, purely technically, it was a no-brainer - greater performance, interoperability, secure access to ethereum liquidity, security & decentralization, significantly lower inflation for economic sustainability, etc. etc. Since then, all major new chains have been L2s - from DAOs (Unichain) to crypto corporations (Coinbase, Kraken) to tradfi (Robinhood), with the sole exception of Hyperliquid. There have been some L1 > L2 like Celo as mentioned. However, over 4 years, most legacy L1s have remained L1s. Potential reasons: - Application demand growth has been a fraction of expectations. Most L1s have barely any activity and have no need for the greater performance or interoperability of L2s - L2 & blob dev have slowed down since '22 potentially due to the above, with performance much lower than expected in '25 - Much of their token value is based on being an anti-ethereum cult - The industry has pivoted to degeneracy, decentralization/security matter less now

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This is actually happening, potentially before ~2031 that I expected at the time (though still years away). ~Infinite chains, ~infinite composability, ~infinite scalability, all verified on your phone with a single infinitely recursive ZKP - this remains the only way to global scale Of course, in 2025, this is not the bottleneck, this was going to happen anyway. The real focus must be on stimulating demand - Ethereum L2s are barely saturating 3 blobs for 15+ months, and for 3+ years the industry at large is severely oversupplying blockspace, and the gap is ever widening. Building an infinite ocean is useless if you have a swimming pool's water to fill it with. But hey, I've beaten that dead horse for 2-3 years, no one (or very few) cared. https://polynya.medium.com/fanciful-endgame-5e760d427076

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For my personal use, crypto is in a great place. Fees, speeds, wallet UX, applications are perfectly fine for my usecases, and they'll keep getting better. However, I'd like to see some things significantly improved, in order of importance: - CRITICAL: Configurable withdrawal rate limiting in Safe & smart wallets and indeed, in all smart contracts, should be a standard. Without this, I significantly limit my usage of crypto - Custodial standards for smart wallets - Stage 2+ decentralisation for L2s, complete overhaul for Tron (normies receive USDT on Tron) - EUR stables w/ liquidity - Better frontends & standards - More competition & options for minimal hardware wallets - Range order management for Uniswap V4 - Significantly less volatile, reliable, long-term sustainable and high liquidity SoVs (BTC and ETH are far too erratic) - Integration into widely adopted payment networks, both global and domestic - Some inaccessible assets tokenised as RWAs - Farcaster with bustling non-crypto content/discussions

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Uniswap v4 feels like crypto's first complete product. Uniswap v3 was already nearly there, which is one reason why while previous versions took ~1 year, v4 took 4 years. I can see additional functionality (e.g. unified liquidity) and responding to infra changes (e.g. quantum-resistant zkVMs) that will justify a v5, but the core purpose of this application now feels complete for the foreseeable future. What's remaining is now on the governance & social end. Aave v4 is the next candidate for a complete product. Interestingly, the applications are hitting final form years ahead of the infra they're built on, and in cases like Aave v4, being intertwined with infra itself. (Side-note: of course, simple "products" like memecoins or USDT are "complete")

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The darkest characteristic of the crypto industry is not all the harm (and evidently, death) it causes, but that no one cares

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Blockspace demand/supply graph, the current situation and what's happening (S*) What should happen: the industry must pivot completely to demand-side, instead of continuing to be all-in on the supply side

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Correction, as some point out: at least one person did die No silver linings I guess, cryptobro degeneracy remains a virulent affliction

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Checking in on my final blog post nearly one year on My only regret is it was not alarmist enough, should have gone harder & more brutally honest This was the most hate I've ever received, a little more wouldn't matter Silver lining, the memecoin bubble burst before we got into truly violent territory and someone died (that we're aware of) https://polynya.mirror.xyz/ptscXuh3J3KOj2uJAn0vrEanpn2nauwA7iytYZ4cM9U

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I'd like to see more sophisticated rate-limiting features on Safe and competing multisig wallets. Is it possible via transaction guards? How can non-coder users access it? So, for example: - Can only send $10,000 via the Uniswap contract per 24 hours - Can only send $1,000 to address X per 1 hour Nothing else can be sent from the wallet. Changing these requires X/Y multisig permissions, and takes 7 days to execute. Just an example, but the point is, the user can customise as per their needs. Rationale: User doesn't lose everything in one go if hacked - there's time and possibility to fix the situation.

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Alas, in the 2+ years since, the vast majority in crypto have pivoted sharply towards full on greed, degeneracy, nihilism, and crime. Of course, there's a small minority that continues working on useful sustainability, and I have the utmost respect for them, but that keeps getting smaller by the day.

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Finally, a good usecase for a memecoin Redistribute wealth from degenerate cryptobros to a LDC (corruption aside) https://x.com/FA_Touadera/status/1888722674265764017

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Quite amusing that a year after I quit CT, Elon gave my account a Verified tick for free, and another year after that I still have that tick, for free. Surely, at some point they'll realise the account is inactive and take it back?

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I haven't commented about rollups in several months, if not over a year, so I'm just a casual observer now... Native rollups are pretty cool, and what I meant by "enshrined zkEVM bridge" a couple of years ago (except they've got a wider scope than zkEVMs) However, they are not "enshrined rollups", as I wrote about them at least, which are in-protocol, L1 rollups Overarching thought on rollups: there simply has not been anywhere enough demand to saturate 1,000+ chains by 2025 like I had expected in 2021. Including all L1s and L2s, there's maybe like 10, at most. I'm sure demand will grow, but not to the magnitude anyone expected. It would be prudent to factor in this lower terminal demand in infrastructure designs, instead of just "build it they'll come" hopium. https://x.com/apolynya/status/1629651981768990720

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It is pretty clear that Bitcoin as a blockchain is a colossal waste of energy. As BTC custody continues centralizing to a few ETFs, CEXs, institutions, in the long term >50% of BTC will be held by a handful of organisations Might as well just cancel PoW and move to PoA at that point. It would actually be *more decentralized* as PoW will inevitably centralize over to a handful of industrial players and pools due to crippling economies of scale. Plus, it'll solve the security budget problem. As before, the full nodes will be there as the last line of defence irrespective The only thing matters for BTC is it remains a speculative store-of-value, doesn't matter the mechanism to achieve that https://x.com/i/trending/1885868663116296256

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I used to complain a lot about DeFi, L2 tokens etc. and their abysmal token distributions in 2021/22, to deaf ears That particular slippery slope has met its valley Just straight up criminal extortion, no filter 🤣

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It's surreal to see cryptobros cheer on blatant capture by 1 country, real or imagined, by heavily shilling "American coins", with very little resistance Just more evidence for what we all know - very few give a fuck about defending a neutral globally accessible system, it's all about greed & whatever pumps your bags

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While I mentioned academia specifically in my last cast about Bluesky, I've also noticed a lot of the cutting-edge discussions around finance, economics, markets etc. have steadily been moving to Bluesky. There's no reason Farcaster couldn't be a good fit for these communities, this is a once-in-a-decade opportunity. And no, none of these topics are about politics, since for some reason a lot of responses shoehorned politics into it.

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Lately, I've been more active on Bluesky (different topic, different anon), and it's growing pretty fast. Given Elon has oriented Twitter towards anti-intellectualism, certain communities have moved wholesale already, particularly academia related. It's basically just Twitter without the bloat, but slower still... Farcaster is more interesting to me, but Bluesky has won the attention game - no one knows Farcaster exists outside the niche crypto crowd.

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Vitalik discovering capitalism

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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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