I can clearly recall Jordan once saying this to me: “It’s good for both of us that we’re friends. See, because being with you makes me seem smart, and being with me makes you seem cool.” It’s quite a thing for anyone to say out loud, let alone a 2nd-grader…

By Steven Goldfeder & Daniel Goldman One of the biggest challenges in the design space of scalable blockchain systems is the need to guarantee data availability. If some actor can advance the state of the system and publish the resulting state hash but withhold the underlying transaction data, then this…

When DeFi Meets Rollup (Bankless Newsletter) Ryan Sean Adams asked us this simple question: “Can we just put all of DeFi in a rollup?” Answering this involved delving into two questions that have been on our minds as we gear towards the release of a testnet demo: the user experience…

A technical overview of Ethereum’s emergent Optimistic Rollup ecosystem The following report was commissioned by MolochDAO. Input/review was provided by John Adler, as well as a number of others; however, all opinions expressed here, subtextual or otherwise, represent my own. Additionally, the assessment of projects should be taken as a…

A Handy Guide For Bitcoiners Tensions between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities have steadily risen over the years. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but my pet theory is that it has something to with the confluence of bear-market-blues, impatience with technical progress, and unusual weather patterns. For the…

Scalable Autonomous Systemic Risks Summary Plasma has proven itself a promising layer 2 blockchain-scaling approach; however, research has struggled with several obstacles, including linear growth of proof data, complications with arbitrary denominated payments, and the highly unnecessary inconvenience of researchers intent on doing actual technical work. Tether is a near-flawless construction…

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.” -Confucius Crypto discourse has gotten really angry. The good news, however, is that I don’t think this problem is necessarily reflective of personalities in the crypto community. I mean sure, crypto-folk can be hostile, argumentative, closed-minded, and tribalistic…

It was bound to happen eventually: economist and noted crypto FUD spreader Nouriel Roubini, aka “Dr. Doom”, testified to the US Senate Committee yesterday, trashing all things crypto and blockchain related. All in all, the presence of a ruthless critic like Roubini in front of the Senate is certainly a…

Understanding the next wave of Lightning Network innovations, and the obstacles they seek to overcome on the winding road to a scalable Bitcoin Lightning, it turns out, travels fast. It’s quite a thing to marvel that it’s only been a year since Bitcoin’s Great Block Limit Fiasco of 2017, when…