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Exploring the scalability needs for blockchain apps

March 27th, 2023

When it comes to blockchain scaling, we have often ended up with reductive narratives like “TPS number go up gud”. Since then, we have evolved to care more about security properties as well, leading to the rise of rollups. However, even so, there’s great value to be had in granularly examining the actual scalability demands for each type of application and their potential respective product-market fit.

Assessing demand drivers for ETH

March 16th, 2023

I have discussed about the various demand drivers for ether on Twitter and Reddit many times before. There was never enough material to expand it into a blog post, but I have found a thought experiment that may be intriguing - how we can estimate what ETH’s demand profile looks like, i.e. why people are buying ETH, and how much for each reason. Unfortunately, I have zero programming skills and have no idea how to analyse on-chain data, but perhaps others can. Looking at you, Data Always! It is important to note that it’s not just Ethereum L1, but also L2s, sidechains, alt-L1s - all chains with ETH bridged count. There’s a fair bit of forensics involved, and it’ll never be perfect - but that’s alright we’re only estimating. There are many nuances here, and I’m simplifying it to 10 categories, leaving out some niche ones. Feedback welcome, as always! Here goes the list, in descending order of quality, in my subjective opinion out of 10:

Governance and DAOs

March 9th, 2023

I haven’t written a blog post about DAOs since 2016 or 2017. Unlike my rants about blockchain scalability, this is a discipline I do have expertise and professional experience in, so I won’t play the “just an armchair hobbyist” card. DAOs aren’t useful in most scenarios - traditional models like cooperatives or public companies serve the goal of public ownership or “decentralized organizations” far better. However, there are some niches where DAOs do innovate - particularly when the organization is a) digital and b) global, or certain niche things like a necessity for transparency. To be clear, traditional organizations like cooperatives can leverage blockchain and smart contract tech to improve their processes, without becoming a DAO.

Blockchain apps - take two

March 1st, 2023

I wrote a post in September about where blockchain apps make sense. A few months after that, Vitalik wrote a detailed post about a similar topic, which pushed me to realize my initial model was incomplete. So here, I’ll attempt to expand on it.

TAM for "decentralized blockspace"?

December 12th, 2022

Prompted by @dankrad, it's worth looking at the type of blockchain applications that make sense, and what sort of demand we're looking at. I largely agree with Vitalik's blueprint (minor disagreements noted, and also my post on the topic), so this is the template we'll follow. As always, my blog posts are pure rambling, and I have thought and searched about this topic for less than an hour since that tweet.

Premium execution layers

December 12th, 2022

In a recent tweet thread, I showerthought about “premium execution layers”. Let’s take the thought experiment further…

Sustainability

November 22nd, 2022

Sustainability can simply be defined as the protocol remains online, resilient to attacks, and usable under all conditions. Arguably, it also needs to be relevant and keep up with contemporary demands.

Rollup minimum viable decentralisation aka "Stage 1"

November 6th, 2022

I wrote a bunch of posts & comments on Optimism forums about first steps toward decentralizing and minimum viable decentralization earlier this year, but never posted them here on this blog or on Twitter (Edit: I forgot that I had a Twitter thread about this just 4 days ago lol). Recently, Vitalik wrote about the topic. Basically, what Vitalik calls Stage 1 is what I’m looking for. But here’s my opinion of Stage 1:

Variable security data sharding

October 11th, 2022

Disclaimer: everything here is pure speculative showerthought with many oversimplifications, none of this is to be taken seriously, I only hope there’s some food for thought…