Wei Dai (weidai0)

Why I'm excited about investing in crypto infra 🧵 Crypto and trust-minimizing technologies will transform foundational infrastructures across industries. As an ex-academic and now investor, I strive to find, fund, and partner with 0-to-1 innovators and 10x disruptors. At @1kxnetwork, our thesis is that crypto will disrupt sectors with high costs of trust. We believe that new digital infrastructures will be built to be resilient & trust-minimized, while being interoperable, scalable, and user-empowering. Unfortunately, crypto infrastructure today is simply not yet robust, scalable, interoperable or private enough for billion-user super apps to fully operate on top of. We don't need more infra. We need better infra. We need 0-to-1 innovators and 10x disruptors. If you are working on something that fits that description--whether it's rigorous academic research, novel application of existing tech, or even moonshot ideas that simply compel you--please don't hesitate to reach out. DM's open.

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Blockchains don't need to be transparent, they only need to be accountable! Transparency => accountability + absence of privacy Accountability is main property we want, not the absence of privacy. Example: a zk validium can be accountable but not fully transparent.

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There is going to be a new class of software enabled by ZK--verifiable source software. Verifiable source software is closed source software with publicly available code commitments and publicly verifiable claims (e.g. audits or proof of code properties). Verifiable source software adds key properties of open source software to closed source software. Why open source? - Auditability - Verifiability & reproducibility - Facilitates fast innovation Why closed source? - Ability to maintain competitive advantage - Additional security benefits from "obscurity" Verifiable source software: - Audits can be conducted on verifiable source software - Binaries can be cryptographically tied to committed, audited source code and compiler (this is especially important for TEEs) - Properties of software can be proven (formally leveraging programming language research, or heuristically via language models). (Illustration co-created with ChatGPT o3.)

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Theory crafting: SoV assets require *stability* of their cashflow/REV, rather than the lack of it. =========== If BTC (or Gold) started to generate cashflow, it won't stop being a SoV asset, at least right away. But, if this cashflow ever decrease, the valuation would drop in response. Plus, markets may over-index on cashflow falling: a SoV asset with falling cashflow is less appealing than another SoV whose cashflow is not falling (could be due to it being zero). Compounds that with the fact that SoV relies on network effects, which means that relative marketshare movements could get amplified (a winning SoV can win harder). =========== In upshot, the downside of cashflow/REV for a SOV asset is that it makes the asset less appealing when cashflow falls. Therefore, what's really important for SoV assets is the *stability* of cashflow/REV, rather than the lack of it. (All of this is mostly empty speculation from first principles and not backed by any real data btw. So take it with a grain of salt.)

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