Depending on who you talk to, our industry growing up is either doom or glory. We are finally globally relevant and that necessarily means we are less insular. Because this industry was created by the stubborn resolute and unwavering conviction of contrarians, misfits, and fringe actors, we relished in the pirate mindset. We loved our insularity. (Tbh, I miss it too at times). The “web3” thesis where programmable blockchains are supposed to be decentralized computing infrastructure for many apps ultimately incinerated billions of dollars of venture capital because it led tech minded builders and their investors to prioritize app sovereignty over unified liquidity. This was wrong on first principles. As it turns out, blockchain has and always will be financial infrastructure. Finance superpowered by tech and programmability. Decentralization, neutrality, and censorship resistance have never been more important. Whether this excites you going forward depends on whether you’re more west coast or east coast; San Francisco or New York; more tech or finance minded. From the west coast crowd, I often hear disappointment (“oh in the end blockchain is only about finance?! That’s it?”) I couldn’t be more excited, and I think the mandate has never been more clear and also attainable. Capital formation isn’t an abstract thing that bankers do when you are ready to IPO. Capital formation enables innovation. It allows us to take big bets on the future. Liquid markets enable capital formation. Over the long term, there can not be a larger global capital market than the internet capital market. The biggest market to possibly unify is that of people on the internet who use money. Like all things the internet has ever touched, the online/onchain experience is never the same as the pre internet experience. Just as we needed network engineers to imagine and build blockchain networks, we need consumer tech minds to complement finance minds to deliver new ways of accessing finance. This is not and has never been a small vision for blockchain. In fact, I would argue that it’s a core intent of a “peer to peer electronic cash network.” We welcome those who want to double down on finance for the internet to come join the Solana ecosystem and make good on this mission. I think it’s fine and even great that the risk-on talent from blockchain is now expanding new frontiers away from blockchain. New frontiers are only ever explored by those with stubborn resolute unwavering conviction.

it’s about optionality and maximizing security, user experience and performance based on your preferences / requirements if you require absolute self-custody, an “imported key dWallet” beats a seed phrase on both security and ux if you are ok with requiring ika as the second signer (ika can’t sign by itself, and you can also become a signer on ika yourself it’s permissionless!) than a “zero-trust dWallet” beats any other mpc solution on security and ux and performance if you are ok with fully trusting ika so actions can be autonomous, a “public user share dWallet” beats any other custodial mpc network on both security and performance so it’s very versatile and flexible infra that you can use based on your specific requirements

number 8 is coming soon: decentralized mpc with @ikadotxyz + multisig policy on @solana + open source diy airgapped hardware wallet called [redacted]

HOLY SHIT. For crypto, this is one of the most insane posts of the year, but I'm guessing most people don't understand it. Let me explain... Bitcoin's accounts, and subsequently Ethereum's (and therefore every other EVM chain's), are built on a specific elliptic curve called secp256k1. secp256k1 is a different elliptic curve from the one used across nearly every modern hardware device, including iPhones. Modern devices mostly use a different curve called secp256r1, which is usually referred to as P-256 - one of the curves investigated in the article. This mismatch has made it sooo difficult in the past to integrate crypto accounts natively into the security systems of modern hardware. For example, Apple's Secure Enclave natively supports P-256, not secp256k1. This has prevented crypto accounts from being able to use the same hardware protection as things like Apple Pay. Same goes for the web with passkeys - WebAuthn uses P-256 signatures, which means Ethereum accounts using secp256k1 can't use them natively either. But why did Satoshi do this? The main theory for choosing secp256k1 was distrust of the P-256 curve - i.e. he thought there was an NSA backdoor. A "backdoor" here basically means a secret, intentional weakness in the curve that would allow the NSA to exploit it and access private keys. This was because P-256 was created with involvement from the NSA... And the NSA provided a mysterious "seed" used to generate one of the curve's parameters without explaining where that seed came from. This eventually transformed into a ~25-year-old mystery with a 5-figure reward for finding where this seed came from. Claude figured it out in less than 30 mins. And the best part is its internal thinking was: "Hmm wait... is it suspicious that such an obvious thing wasn’t discovered in 25 years?" The solution was stupidly simple - just the time the curve was created, put into a specific random number generator function. This doesn't 100% prove there's no backdoor yet, but it provides strong evidence that this seed wasn't secretly engineered by the NSA. And Claude did this with "just a simple prompt" in under 30 minutes.

Ranking crypto security setups, weakest → strongest: 1. Hot wallets (Phantom, MetaMask) 2. Exchanges 3. Hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor) 4. Dedicated crypto phones 5. Wallet cards (Tangem) 6. Air-gapped wallets 7. Hardware-backed multisig My rule: hot wallet for daily use, hardware for savings, multisig for big bags. Setup matters more than the devices. DYOR. NFA