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Maersk/IBM to discontinue TradeLens, a blockchain-enabled global trade platform
A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) and IBM today announced the decision to withdraw the TradeLens offerings and discontinue the platform.
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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism
On 2/2/2022, I reported a critical security issue to Optimism—an "L2 scaling solution" for Ethereum—that would allow an attacker to replicate money on any chain using their "OVM 2.0" fork of go-ethereum (which they call l2geth).
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In defense of cryptocurrency
Last week a group of technologists, including Bruce Schneier, sent a letter to Congress outlining their concerns around cryptocurrency and urging Congress to regulate the space. Now let me be the f…
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Algorithmic stablecoins are provably impossible without continuous funding
Financial theory demonstrates that the concept is fundamentally flawed
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The Sam Bankman-Fried empire crumbled. What happened?
Shorter title: SBF, FTX, WTF?
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Crypto trading firm Alameda Research might be insolvent
The hedge fund's finances appear to rest on the same scheme that destroyed Celsius Network. Will it work out any differently for Sam Bankman-Fried?
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Bitcoin's fungibility graveyard
Where the pipe-dream of Bitcoin’s real-world fungibility goes to die.
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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake
Explaining Ethereum's consensus mechanism after The Merge
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I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To
I looked at 34 projects listed by the top Google result for “real-world blockchain projects”. 33 of these are either dead, pivoted away from Blockchain, use Blockchain in a (sometimes dangerously) bad way, or are have no real-world utility.
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On anti-crypto toxicity
Crypto is known for its toxicity towards outsiders. Similar attitudes are emerging from some who oppose crypto.
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I was wrong, we need crypto
To say I've been skeptical about Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto universe would be an understatement of epic proportions. Since the early 2010s, some of my most ferocious Twitter battles have been against the HODL army with the laser eyes. There's just so much to oppose: Bitcoin's grotesque energy consumption, the…
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The Merge
Learn about The Merge, when Ethereum Mainnet moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in September 2022, cutting its energy use by about 99.95%.
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Is “acceptably non-dystopian” self-sovereign identity even possible?
In the recent paper about "soulbound" tokens, Vitalik Buterin et al. write that they aim to build technology that is "acceptably non-dystopian". Do any of today's self-sovereign identity projects fit that bill?
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Blockchain Is Dangerous Nonsense
I’ve been concerned about the excesses of the blockchain industry and their spread into all parts of society for some time now. Here I’ve summarized my thoughts regarding the subject.
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Plausibly deniable encryption (2020)
It is safe to assume that in any useful cryptosystem C k there exists at least one person with access to the key k . An adversary with sufficient leverage can bypass the computational cost of a conventional attack by exerting their influence on this person.
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Why I’m Cryptophobic
Adam Fisher’s exegesis on why he believes that despite the recent crash, crypto will rise again to the detriment of society.
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David Rosenthal on cryptocurrencies
I was asked at short notice to fill in for a speaker in Stanford's EE380 course who had to cancel. Below the fold is a hastily updated vers...
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Bitcoin is not a store of value
Before we begin, I’m not just some crypto FUDster.
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Web3: A VC-funded gig economy of securities fraud
If you look at a “Web3” offering and just think of it as a pump-and-dump onto retail investors, everything will make much more sense.
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In Response to My first impressions of Web3
This a response to Moxie Marlinspike’s “My First Impression of Web3” Both gave me a feeling for how the space works. To be clear, there is nothing particularly “distributed” about the apps themselves: they’re just normal react websites. The “distributedness” refers to where the state and the logic/
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Elliptic Curve Cryptography: A Basic Introduction
Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a modern public-key encryption technique famous for being smaller, faster, and more efficient than incumbents. Bitcoin, for example, uses ECC as its asymmetric cryptosystem because it is so lightweight. The mathematical entity that makes all of this possible is the elliptic curve…
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Re: Moxie on Web3
On decentralization, servers and cryptography
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Web3 doesn’t care about privacy
In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still…
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SourceHut terms of service updates, cryptocurrency projects to be removed
sourcehut is a network of useful open source tools for software project maintainers and collaborators, including git repos, bug tracking, continuous integration, and mailing lists.
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Dark Moon: The Inevitable Collapse of Luna
Luna/UST went from a collective market capitalization of ~$50 billion to now down 99%. The collapse of the Luna/UST Ponzi scheme occurred even faster than anyone expected, but this implosion was perfectly predictable.