Enjoying l̵a̵t̵e̵ post capitalism | User

Joined September 2012
Pol Torrent retweeted
This case is being tried right now in the southern district of New York Two MIT graduate brothers, mega nerds, spent months researching and looking deep into ethereum's governance process to find the way to approve two blocks at once (equivocate) to sandwich a sandwich bot
waiting to read the coincenter amicus brief in the case of Peraire-Bueno brothers, but here is the gist: --> validators are neutral infrastructure they don't get to be prosecuted or convicted in any centralised court of law, slashing and penalties are meant to take care of that
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One year ago, I was talking in devcon about proving Ethereum in real time. piped.video/watch?v=boSCLHs3… Today it's happening. Thank you to all the @ziskvm devs for this year of hard work. This will change the way we understand blockchains.
ZisK has reached a major proving milestone for Ethereum. All Ethereum blocks are now being proven in real time, with an average proof time of about 7.5s
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🇬🇧👍Estonia won't be approving #ChatControl either. 👎But Germany's vote on Oct. 14th is still up in the air, risk of a dangerous coalition compromise. 💪28 days left to increase the pressure on your government and defend digital privacy and security: chatcontrol.eu
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🚨 Pegasus for everyone The EU is pushing for the return of #ChatControl, the proposal for automated monitoring of our private conversations. ✍️ Today @X_net_’s Simona Levi & Sergio Salgado publish in @diariARA @ara_cat @ARAopinio 🔗 en.ara.cat/opinion/pegasus-f…
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Pol Torrent retweeted
I decided to donate $500K to @rstormsf’s legal defense. Originally, we planned to give $50K, but after what happened to me, I need to take a clear position so everyone understands what @class_lambda stands for. I understand that the @ethereumfndn will be matching donations up to another $500K for Roman Storm’s defense, which means our contribution can have double the impact. Our team is currently moving money to execute the transaction. It should be done in the next few hours. I'm going to sleep after not sleeping for the last 48 hours. Open source and decentralization are not just philosophical ideals. They are practical necessities for building crypto. Success in this space comes from building in the open, onboarding others, and creating movements that grow beyond the original project. That is often hard to explain to people who do not share this ethos, because we are not optimizing for the same outcomes. Our mission is to help build the highways of the new internet in sustainable ways. Economic sustainability is one part of that, but not the only one. We also exist to counterbalance the natural pull toward centralization, a side effect of pure optimization. Centralization is easier and cheaper in the short run. If our only goal were to make money, there are far simpler ways to do it. But money, to us, is just a tool to reach our goals. Roman’s legal defense matters because builders everywhere need to know they can push innovation forward and that the community will stand behind them when they do. The West became powerful because it embraced freedom and its innovators. Progress came from protecting those who challenged the status quo and building systems that allowed their ideas to scale. When we stop defending our innovators, we stop building the future. The community can contribute to @rstormsf's legal defense here: freeromanstorm.com
Pol Torrent retweeted
Enguany fa vuitanta anys que la bomba atòmica Little Boy fou llançada sobre Hiroshima, arrasant 1,6 quilòmetres a la rodona del punt d’impacte. De resultes de l'explosió moriren 130.000 persones. La cúpula de Genbaku, avui convertida en Memorial de la Pau, va resistir l’explosió.
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I just want to say a huge, heartfelt THANK YOU to the amazing Ethereum Foundation for their incredible $500K donation to my legal defense—and for matching up to $750K from the community! 🙌 Your support means the world to me, especially standing up for privacy and the right to code. I’m so grateful to everyone chipping in—your generosity is truly inspiring! Thanks from the bottom of my heart! 💙
The EF is donating $500K to the legal defense of Roman Storm, and we will match up to a further $750K in donations from the community. Privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime.
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With only 42 days until my trial, it’s getting very real. I’m reaching out again for your support and apologize for asking repeatedly—I never expected this challenge. Please consider donating to my legal defense fund to help me through this fight. Https://freeromanstorm.com #DefendRomanStorm
Pol Torrent retweeted
My own current privacy roadmap (much lighter on L1 changes, but also more limited in its consequences): ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-m… Highly encourage people to read both!
"Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again" isn't simply a slogan for me — it's a statement of intent. This isn't branding. It's resistance. This isn't about playing nice. It's about reclaiming Ethereum's soul! Look it's very simple: Ethereum must provide privacy _unconditionally_. Today, it operates in a partial, opt-in model, forcing users to jump through hoops just to conceal their financial lives. That's not sovereignty — it's submission. Enough compromises. We need privacy by default. Over the past weeks, I've written a potential path forward — a vision for Ethereum as a maximally private, self-sovereign financial system. Read it. Challenge it. Improve it. Let's co-create it. Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again. hackmd.io/@pcaversaccio/ethe…
Pol Torrent retweeted
Time to move forward
"Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again" isn't simply a slogan for me — it's a statement of intent. This isn't branding. It's resistance. This isn't about playing nice. It's about reclaiming Ethereum's soul! Look it's very simple: Ethereum must provide privacy _unconditionally_. Today, it operates in a partial, opt-in model, forcing users to jump through hoops just to conceal their financial lives. That's not sovereignty — it's submission. Enough compromises. We need privacy by default. Over the past weeks, I've written a potential path forward — a vision for Ethereum as a maximally private, self-sovereign financial system. Read it. Challenge it. Improve it. Let's co-create it. Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again. hackmd.io/@pcaversaccio/ethe…
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Pol Torrent retweeted
Awesome! Welcome home Virgil Griffith!! For those that don’t know, Virgil, an ex-Tor developer, has long been a champion of privacy and censorship-resistance … and was the largest supporter of @nymproject at Ethereum Foundation.
VIRGIL GRIFFITH IS OUT OF PRISON!!! just released this morning! he'll be in a halfway house for a few weeks, and parole after that with work restrictions (so a pardon is still important), but HE IS OUT 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
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Pol Torrent retweeted
I was just told that @eBay is aware of this, but is choosing to not do anything about it. First time I have felt discriminated against since going free. Gee, maybe I should start my own ecommerce website. What'll I call it...?
Been trying to auction some personal belongings. @eBay wants to verify my ID. I provided all docs a week ago and still nothing. I've talked to several eBay reps & keep being put off. Today's the last day to start an auction before I leave town. Do you know someone who can help?
Today marks a huge victory for privacy, open source technology, and immutable, permissionless smart contracts. The U.S. Treasury Department has lifted the sanctions on Tornado.cash and the TORN token: home.treasury.gov/news/press… A heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported and tirelessly fought for this cause. The list is extensive, and this achievement belongs to all of us. Although Treasury's decision sets crucial precedent, the SDNY prosecutors still haven't dropped their case against me. So while we have won a big battle, the war is far from over. I look forward to the community’s continued support as I head to trial and my legal team seeks a dismissal from the judge or acquittal by the jury.
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Pol Torrent retweeted
The EF is donating $1.25M to the legal defense of Alexey Pertsev. Privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime. You can contribute to @alex_pertsev's defense here: juicebox.money/v2/p/713
Paradigm will be donating $1.25M to help fund Roman Storm’s legal defense The prosecution’s case threatens to hold software developers criminally liable for the bad acts of third parties, which would have a chilling effect in crypto and beyond We must stand with @rstormsf
Pol Torrent retweeted
Freedom is priceless, but my freedom cost a lot of money. My house arrest was only possible thanks to the work of lawyers, who were paid from your donations. My fight is not over yet and for a final and confident victory I still need your help. Please support our fight here ➡️codewithoutfear.eu #FreedomToCode
Pol Torrent retweeted
In a long enough timeframe, everything ultimately comes down to the idea of building the best form of internet-native money, as Justin puts it. Over 15 years of L1 wars, only two variations of this theme have emerged—BTC and ETH—representing two distinct approaches... 1/15
My bat signal 🦇🔊 will return when ETH is ultra sound again, soon enough™. ETH supply currently grows 0.5%/year. That's 1%/year of issuance minus 0.5%/year of burn. To become ultra sound again, either issuance has to decrease or the burn has to increase. I believe both will happen, let me explain :) ETH vs BTC Before diving into Ethereum's issuance and burn, quick interlude on ETH vs BTC. Internet-native money is an enormous opportunity, think tens of trillions of dollars. Monetary premium rarely accrues at scale. You need a truly attractive asset with outstanding properties for society to coordinate around. At first approximation moneyness is a zero-sum game. Gold is primed for demonetisation in the internet age. There are only two candidates to supplant it and win internet money—BTC and ETH. Nothing else comes close. IMO the determining Schelling points are credible neutrality, security, and scarcity. Since the merge, ETH is definitely scarcer than BTC. It's remarkable BTC supply grew 666K BTC, worth $66B, all while ETH supply stayed flat. Today BTC supply grows 0.83%/year, 66% faster than ETH. And for those looking ahead, as I explain below, ETH supply is poised to decrease again. Scarcity is important, but ultimately the fight for internet money will likely be settled by security. Ironically, the famous 21M BTC cap is to blame. BTC issuance is going to zero—that's Bitcoin's strongest social contract. In a few halvings, issuance will be so small as to be irrelevant. Here's a shocking stat: in the last 7 days only 1% of miner revenue came from Bitcoin fees. Yes, 99% came from issuance. And that's despite 4 halvings that reduced issuance by 16x, and despite 15 years of search for transactional utility on Bitcoin. IMO the Bitcoin blockchain is cooked. It takes roughly $10B and access to 10GW to permanently 51% attack Bitcoin. The cost is peanuts for nation states. As for the power, Texas—a single state of a single country—can produce 80GW. The BTC security ratio is 200-to-1, it's a $2T asset secured by $10B of economic security. Any shortable instrument correlated to BTC mining incentivises an 51% attack attack. There's $20B of Bitcoin mining stocks—those would insta-nuke. There's $40B of open interest on BTC perps—direct short exposure. Not to mention potential short exposure through the $100B in ETFs and the $100B in MSTR. Will BitVM solve the fee problem? Any BitVM bridge is an incentive to 51% attack Bitcoin. Indeed, a 51% attacker can censor fraud proofs over the challenge period and drain BitVM bridges. Ironically, BitVM is arguably a direct attack on Bitcoin. And no, Bitcoin doesn't have social slashing to recover from 51% attacks. What if the BTC price grows by 10x, flipping gold, is Bitcoin safe then? Let's say this happens in the next 11 years. BTC would be a $20T asset but issuance would shrink 8x because of the three halvings. The security ratio would grow beyond 1000-to-1. IMO this is untenable especially as BTC institutionalises, becomes more liquid, and ultimately become easier to short in size. Imagine $1T of perp open interest but just $10B of economic security. Can Bitcoin somehow fix itself before it's too late? Bitcoin is the epitome of blockchain ossification. Can it have 1%/year tail issuance? Ha, good luck fighting the 21M cap! Maybe Bitcoin can switch to PoS and rely on minimal fees? PoS is sacrilege. Maybe Bitcoin can change to another PoW algorithm? Nope, that nuclear option won't help. Maybe Bitcoin can have big blocks and sell data availability at scale? Ser, a holy war was fought over small blocks. If you made it this far and understood the above, congrats. Even today few appreciate how screwed Bitcoin PoW is long term and what the ramifications are for BTC the asset. This is a frontrunable opportunity but it requires patience. The time frame is not 1 month or even 1 year—it's 10 years. Talking about long time frames, the Lummis proposal to lock BTC for 20 years is kinda insane—Bitcoin will be smoked by then. Worse, if the US were to hold trillions in BTC it would directly incentivise US enemies to muster a 51% attack. Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin is not remotely resistant to nation states—China and Russia can pull off a 51% attack with ease. ETH issuance Ok, back to ETH :) The current issuance curve is a trap. Unfortunately, like Bitcoin's issuance, Ethereum's issuance was misdesigned. It guarantees 2% tail APR, even if 100% ETH is staked. Every rational ETH holder is incentivised to stake as staking costs are significantly lower than 2%. We all lose when most ETH stakes: → ETH displacement: Liquid staking tokens like stETH and cbETH displace pristine ETH as unit of collateral. This injects systemic risks—custodial risks, slashing risks, governance risks, smart contract risks—into the core of defi. This displacement also erodes ETH as a unit of account, with further knock-on effects to monetary premium. → real yields and taxes: Real yield, i.e. the yield adjusted for supply growth, decrease as more ETH stakes. When 100% of ETH stakes all ETH holders get equally diluted. Worse, income taxes are drawn on nominal yield. It would be a tragedy of the commons for no staker to enjoy positive real yield and for all ETH holders to suffer billions of dollars per year of tax sell pressure. IMO the issuance curve should drive discovery of a fair issuance rate through staker competition—no arbitrary 2% floor. This means the issuance curve must eventually decline and return to zero with increased ETH stake. My suggestion is "croissant issuance". Croissant issuance is a simple half-oval with two parameters: → soft cap: The staking fraction where issuance returns to zero. To me a 50% staking soft cap feels credibly neutral and pragmatic. In particular it's large enough to address discouragements attacks. → peak issuance: The theoretically-maximal issuance borne by ETH holders. An arbitrary round number like 1%/year will do as ultimately the equilibrium rate would be market-set. EF researchers have studied issuance for years—IMO there's rough consensus the current curve is broken and needs to change. Navigating the social layer to change issuance won't be easy. This is an opportunity for a champion to rise to the occasion and coordinate change to mainnet over the next couple years. ETH burn IMO the sustainable way to burn vast amounts of ETH is to scale data availability. It's much more lucrative to have 10M TPS with each transaction paying $0.001 in DA than it is to have 100 TPS at $100/tx. Yes, the data availability supply shock from EIP-4844 that introduced blobs temporary lowered total burn. This is the nature of supply and demand. When demand for DA catches up expect the blobs to burn hard. The Pectra hard fork, in a couple months, will double blob count. The short-term goal is growth and I expect lots of it. For the next couple years it will be a cat-and-mouse game between supply and demand as full danksharding is deployed. I wouldn't be surprised if this year we see hundreds of ETH per day of blob burn, and then that burn suddenly collapsing again with peer DAS in the Fusaka fork. Zooming out, we're here to build infrastructure for the next decades and centuries. Fundamentals will play out over years. Whether it's Bitcoin security, ETH issuance, or the ETH burn, stay patient and have conviction :)
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Pol Torrent retweeted
Summary on Ethereum roadmap: - Heavy focus on data availability moving from 3 blobs per slot to 128 blobs per slot to support L2s. - L2s should focus on becoming Stage 2 rollups w/ multiple proving systems for increased security. - Define a concrete Interop Standard for L2<>L2 communication. - The first mention in a long long time on ETH value accrual (very important signal). Focusing on the Triple point asset thesis (capital asset, SoV, consumable). - Have L2s utilise % of fees to a burning of ETH or staking ETH permentanly. If L2s are ETH aligned they will certainly do this atleast major ones like Optimism, Arbitrum and Base. Rollup-centric roadmap isn't going anywhere and this is a double down (largely agree this is correct). Primary focus is on DA and ETH value accrue in a world where ETH hosts 100s of rollups.
Scaling Ethereum L1 and L2s in 2025 and beyond vitalik.eth.limo/general/202…
Pol Torrent retweeted
My name is Roman Storm, and I am one of the founders of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial privacy protocol. I am being prosecuted for writing open-source code that enables private crypto transactions in a completely non-custodial manner. This prosecution represents a terrifying criminalization of privacy. The charges against me threaten to criminalize software development itself. If successful, the implications could extend far beyond the crypto industry, impacting every software developer. I face up to 45 years in prison on charges including operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and sanctions evasion. This case has already had a chilling effect on developers working on software tools. Recently, a developer filed a lawsuit against the DOJ, seeking relief because my case has made them fearful of releasing new software. x.com/lewellenmichael/status… Additionally, there is significant confusion around the 1960 charge (operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business), as different government agencies have conflicting interpretations of the law. x.com/amandatums/status/1863… “This prosecution threatens to criminalize software development itself,” said Keri Axel of Waymaker LLP, my legal counsel. American entrepreneur and politician @VivekGRamaswamy commented, “You can’t go after the developers of code. What you actually need to do is go after individual bad actors who are breaking the laws that already exist.” x.com/benzingacrypto/status/… Multiple amicus briefs have been filed in support of my defense by the DeFi Education Fund (@fund_defi), Coin Center (@coincenter), and Blockchain Association (@BlockchainAssn): defieducationfund.org/_files… coincenter.org/app/uploads/2… theblockchainassociation.org… The 5th Circuit Court has already ruled that Tornado Cash sanctions were unlawful: x.com/AlexanderFisher/status… However, the DOJ has dismissed this ruling as irrelevant: storage.courtlistener.com/re… My trial is set for April 14, 2025.