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In 2023, OpenAI changed the world by releasing ChatGPT, the first AI that’s actually intelligent. Technology aside, ChatGPT shifted attention in the tech world away from crypto and NFTs to AI, resulting in capital and talent flight. The prices of cryptocurrencies going down and increased regulatory hostility from the SEC were the icing on the cake. In this historical context, it’s easy for people still working in crypto (like yours truly) to start asking themselves: why not switch to working in AI? Is what we’re working on really valuable? Is working on crypto the best use of our time, despite all the amazing breakthroughs in AI? This isn’t a new phenomenon. When I first got into crypto back in 2017, AI was a hot topic much like today, and all the college kids were aspiring to become machine learning researchers at Google/DeepMind (remember them?) and HFT traders at Jane Street. I still vividly remember talking to an upperclassman who interned at Jane Street. When I mentioned that blockchain was the field to get into, his response was an unironic “You must be kidding, right?”. AI has always been more high-status than crypto, and ChatGPT has changed nothing in this respect. ...

Foreword I am writing this essay for the same reason I do most of my writing: to jot down a self-consistent framework for thinking about a certain topic that I can later refer to and rely upon, so that I can avoid being hoodwinked by the often chaotic and contradictory discussions surrounding said topic. Censorship and freedom of speech are certainly one such topic. On one side of the planet, totalitarian regimes are throwing people in jail for the most miniscule slight against the government; on the other side, presidents are getting unilaterally banned by social media platforms, to the cheers of some and the lament of others. If you simply believed every demagogue online, you would simultaneously believe that everyone has a natural right to make their voice heard, and that we should silence anyone who is Russian/transphobic/Republican/Muslim/[insert your favorite bogeyman here] because they’re unequivocally evil and nobody should ever listen to their words. ...

Genesis Using Ethereum is expensive. Us smart contract developers are eternally doomed to the fate of locking ourselves in dank dark basements every day to optimize gas usage, so that our fancy DeFi protocols won’t make our users bankrupt. Of all the operations done by smart contracts, storage writes & reads usually take up most of the gas usage. EVM storage is made intentionally expensive, because it’s expensive for Ethereum nodes to store data for the rest of time. ...

The origin of value, what NFTs are, and what comes next I was baffled by the rise of NFTs for quite some time. Why would people spend such exorbitant amounts on jpegs? The art is not even that good most of the time. If people wanted beautiful art, isn’t it more sensible to spend far less on local artists who will most likely produce much better art? Physical art, that is, not jpegs that anyone could “right click and save”. ...

Recently, I have realized that all the mistakes I’ve made in the past, and is still making, have been caused by a single type of error: mistaking expedience for desire, for a call to action. When I am looking to make a purchase, say a toaster, I look for a “good deal”. The toaster can’t have a significant number of bad reviews. The price can’t be too low, such that the toaster is bound to break down in a month; but it also can’t be too expensive, such that the purchase becomes exorbitant. It should have many features: a timer, different modes, bagel compatibility; but it’s okay if it’s missing a few as long as the price is lower. Might seem reasonable to try and find a “good deal” like this, but if one thought it through, one would find that it’s a recipe for mediocrity. ...

The privileged don’t need DAOs As someone who’s spent months thinking about DAOs and governance, I knew there was a problem when I asked myself “Do I, personally, have need for a DAO today?” and answered “No”. To me, DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, are tools for collaboratively producing work. For instance, a software development startup could set up a DAO to handle its finances and decision making, in place of a corporation or a Limited Liability Company. ...

Or: World Wide Web for a collaborative economy 1. Intro Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are organizations where members collaborate through a smart contract enabled blockchain. Compared to traditional organizations, DAOs are much cheaper to create, their immutability and transparency makes them more trustworthy, and their programmability enables a wide variety of features. It is possible that DAOs are the next evolutionary step for corporations, which makes up most of today’s world economy. ...

When I first read this tweet thread about the Aragon governance proposals voting on a rainy afternoon walk a month ago, my first reaction was blurting out “I’m sorry, but what the actual fuck?” Were I not in public, I would’ve bursted out laughing. Aragon is one of the most promising governance projects in the space, with more than 20k token holders, 70k Twitter followers, and a $14M token market cap. Guess how many people voted in their first round of proposals. ...

I believe one of the most, if not the most, important applications of blockchain and smart contact technology will be the establishment of self-sufficient organizations that are completely virtual: They will use virtual currencies like Ether and ERC-20 tokens to handle all transfers & storage of value. Their collaboration & making of crucial decisions will be handled by smart contacts. Their members will consist of pseudo-anonymous individuals from around the world who collaborate mostly remotely. They will produce products that are purely digital in nature, and use the profits to cover their operational expenses, as well as provide their members with a non-negligible salary so that they may work for the organization on a part/full-time basis. The main challenge of accomplishing such a feat is this: how may we replicate the highly complex, fuzzy, and subjective business logic needed for most organizations using immutable, simple, strict, and objective smart contacts? ...

Disclaimer: No one in the world wants what I said in this post to be false more than I do. One ConsenSys is not all rainbows, sunshine, and unicorns. (to the surprise of no one) The flat governance structure is something that definitely makes ConsenSys unique and enjoyable to work at: everyone treats you as equal, snobby dicks are rare, and no one tells you what to do at work everyday or when you go to work. It would be hard to go back to the traditional hierarchical world. ...