_weidai

Blob gas price has dropped back to 0 after Pectra.

Uber doesn't charge $0 when there are more drivers than riders. Why would Eth charge $0 for a valuable resource?

What if EIP1559 is actually terrible for non-congested markets as it was designed for congested ones?

Theory crafting: SoV assets need *stability* of 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).

Compound 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.)

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.)

Theory crafting: SoV assets requires *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.)

It's wild that merchants are still paying ~2-3% from each sale to banks & credit card companies. How come crypto has not won yet in C2B payments?

Here're the necessary components:

For consumers: token incentives, payment app, tradfi-grade account statements, on-ramp from banks, stablecoin savings with yield

For businesses: point-of-sale apps on phones/ipads, stablecoin account with yield, off-ramp to banks, (+ token incentives)

Banks & credit card companies bootstrapped this in the 60s/70s, why can't crypto companies do this today?

True venture-scale outcomes require unlocks of latent markets.

Google unlocked targeted digital ads (w/ search monopoly).
Uber unlocked ride hailing.
Bitcoin unlocked digital store of value.

What latent market are you unlocking?

You don't need a single composable state machine to have a coherent ecosystem, i.e. send to and receive from any address and interact with any app seamlessly.

It was never about single chain vs. multi chain.

However, seamless interoperability and network effects will win.

Recommend no more news like "latency = xx ms", for the sake of the people, our industry (and your business).

Instead, quantity what type of latency:
- block/slot time
- inclusion or execution confirmation latency
- write-to-availability-of-effect latency
- network latency
- ...

Takeaways from zkSummit13:
1. War of zkVMs is still heating up. More new entrants & upgrades/redesigns will shake up the performance landscape.
2. VC attendance/attention on ZK has bottomed--someone (half jokingly) told me after the summit that I was the only VC in attendance (and they are not wrong).
3. Attention and stakes are moving up the stack: the zeitgeist is that the ZK adoption is no longer bottlenecked on cost or dev overhead, but onboarding more apps.

Some more subjective notes:
- Attention on proving delay (real-time proving for Eth L1) will shift back to proving cost overhead (kappa).
- We need more product-led companies building features with ZK (like Google wallet leveraging ZK for identity)
- We are more likely to see de facto standards in ZK than de jure standards as progress is simply too fast.

Finally getting around to finishing my slides for the zkSummit 13 talk on the Onchain Privacy Trilemma.

Most of the talk will be an objective exposition of the trilemma.

However, I will be proposing to prioritize programmable disclosure over self-sovereign privacy as the best solution to get around the trilemma.

This will probably be controversial, but I hope to move the onchain privacy conversation forward constructively.

Come in person on Monday if you are coming to zkSummit or watch the live stream on Monday May 12th at 1030am ET.

1/ Dankrad: "let's commit to scaling the L1 100x over 4 years."
Vitalik: "let's simplify the L1."

If you had to choose one, which one would you commit to?

These are surprisingly different approaches, in their underlying philosophy: research-led vs. product-led.

scaling, tokens, mcp

went from a solana event to an AI event but ended up talking about the same three topics

- Visa supporting stablecoins
- Google using ZK
- Apple unlocking crypto in-app payments

Either crypto disrupts Big Tech.

Or Big Tech adds crypto from within.

Crypto wins either way

Visa supporting stablecoins. Google using ZK. Apple unlocking crypto in-app payments.

Either crypto disrupt Big Tech.

Or Big Tech add crypto from within.

Crypto wins either way

Visa supporting stablecoins. Google using ZK. Apple unlocking crypto in-app payments.

Either crypto disrupts Big Tech.

Or Big Tech adds crypto from within.

Crypto wins either way

1/ Google announced that Google Wallet will be using "ZKP" to support "fast and private age verification".

But wait, what type of ZKPs are they actually using?