Founder @ tracingviolet We test whether agents can actually use your API or MCP server. Real models; real calls; fixes you can ship.
Denver, CO
Joined January 2010
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Early this year I set out to answer an increasingly-crucial question: as LLM-generated traffic replaces humans, how can publishers of agent-facing endpoints optimize for this new type of user?
Here's what months of testing taught me: agents fail much differently than humans do. Us meatspace-dwelling humans might hit a confusing API, get frustrated, file a bug report, or complain on X or Discord. An agent just…fails. No ticket, no telemetry you're watching, and no evidence of this interaction. And that, crucially, can be a lost opportunity for user growth and revenue.
tracingviolet makes this invisible traffic visible. We run real agents (across the current frontier models, and many more) against your MCP server or API and measure the whole path. Did the agent select you? Could it actually use your tools once it did? Where exactly did it stall, and what would have facilitated an elegant recovery?
Then we answer those questions and hand you the fixes. Not "improve your documentation," but verbatim descriptions, schemas, and error messages, tool by tool.
One finding from the research that I keep coming back to: the biggest gap between servers that work for agents and servers that don't isn't whether errors happen. It's whether your errors help the agent recover.
That's fixable! Most of this is fixable; that's the good news. You just gotta dig in and get visibility.
Do you have an MCP server or agent-facing API, or know someone who does?
I'm taking on a handful of launch partners right now: hands-on audits, direct input into what we measure next, and an invaluable first-mover advantage while your competitors' endpoints are still invisible to them. DM me and let's talk shop.
tracingviolet.dev
Agentic traffic will overtake human traffic.
If you publish an API or MCP server, the hard question is: when an agent shows up, does it succeed?
That's what we measure at tracingviolet. Then we fix what's broken.
Thanks @staaakeIN for the spotlight!
linkedin.com/pulse/staaake-c…
Kent Barton retweeted
Did someone say @EthereumDenver Alpha Party?
Excited to be joined by @seven7hwave @blondontherun @PallerJohn and other ETHDenver OGs on Dec 13th @VentureXUSA (3rd floor Milk Market) in LoDo.
RSVP: lu.ma/EthDen25
Kent Barton retweeted
holy fucking shit ENS has been on a tear this year. a recap for everyone who's been asleep:
- Google search recognizes ENS names
- GoDaddy supports DNS names in ENS
- Uniswap & Coinbase have issued hundreds of thousands of subnames each and growing
- and now fucking PayPal and Venmo support ENS names for sending crypto
and you call this a bear market, anon?
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Kent Barton retweeted
Web3 Gaming's Best Hidden Gem w/ @SolforgeFusion
If you were to tell me that the CREATOR of Magic: The Gathering designed a web3 game with a top ranked MTG pro & veteran game designer, I would say that is one of the most insane, deeply bullish things to happen in Web3 gaming. Ever.
This is me telling you exactly that.
TCGs are one of the easiest genres to show why blockchain enhances gaming. But it's no secret it's starting to feel a bit oversaturated.
How does SolForge Fusion stand out from other web3 TCGs?
- They're a hybrid TCG. Physical, digital, and web3 - with over a million physical decks already sold & an active playerbase.
- You're not just trading cards. You're trading decks, because every deck is a unique 1/1 collectible, that you can further alter by fusing them together.
- Over 20,000 unique cards already available!
- Massive free airdrop right now to over 70k web3 gamers, & 180k @solana holders
- & the best part? It's genuinely fun.
Listen to our ep with co-founder @Justin_Gary right now🥳
The top line of this propaganda poster is a quote from Mao during the Cultural Revolution - but it's equally at home in today's censorial environment.
""All wrong thoughts, all poisonous weeds, all demons and monsters, should be criticized. They must not be allowed to spread freely."
The Chairman would be proud of his ideological ancestors in the EU, Brazil, and throughout much of the western world.
Kent Barton retweeted
Almost every tweet in this thread is inaccurate. I'll respond and also provide a different framework for how people should think about scaling blockchains like Ethereum.
What is true
The rate of reward ETH validators earn has decreased over time because of 1. the continued rise of the ETH staking rate and 2. decrease in demand for mainnet tx's as activity moves to L2s. If you think that the reward rate that validators earn for securing the network is the most important thing, then stop reading now as we fundamentally disagree.
What Justin got wrong
1. There are many approaches in motion for how to fix liquidity and composability. Based sequencing, chain & account abstraction (Socket), reimagining key management and commitments (OneBalance), intent protocols, scaled rollups (MegaETH), etc.
The most obvious one is of course zk rollups with real time proving. This will give us immediate and seamless interop across L1, L2, and L3s.
2. Shared sequencing is not incentive incompatible - it would INCREASE the rate of reward earned by sequencers. Many L2s are working towards this.
3. All rollups are moving towards decentralization. Arbitrum is at stage 1 and already cannot censor or steal user funds, and Optimism and Base soon will be Stage 1. It should be no surprise that projects start off with training wheels and take them off as they become more secure and battle tested over time.
4. There is zero evidence to suggest that chains without onchain governance are somehow captured. If anything, the opposite is true - that things take too long because its hard to build rough consensus on major changes.
5. It is totally possible to also scale the L1. In fact, it's necessary! It doesn't kill the L2 value prop at all since no L1 will ever be able to handle all the worlds throughput on a single chain. For reference, just the NASDAQ does 25-50m trades per day.
How to think about Ethereum
Again, if all you care about is how much validators earn, then of course L2s sound terrible. But I think we should optimize for something different: for an ecosystem to support the maximum number of users while making it as inexpensive as possible for those users to transact.
By that metric, the Ethereum ecosystem is the healthiest it has ever been and has been dramatically outpacing all others in its traction. L2s also give the biggest bang for the buck in terms of scalability vs cost. In the next year or two, we'll see most rollups be at Stage 2 and be able to sustain 1k+ TPS. Some will be higher at 10k or even 100k TPS while maintaining extremely low costs.
Interesting how the Europeans are steadfastly adamant about standing up to Putin, while emulating Putin himself.
nytimes.com/2024/08/25/techn…
The community seems to desire more financial transparency from @ethereum.
This is not rocket science. The EF needs to communicate more often, and in more detail.
Then augment those communications with TXID's showing where the funds are going, and what they're going to be used for.
At @ShapeShift DAO we set a *gold standard* for transparency around financials. Of all the things I've worked on in crypto, this is the one I'm most proud of. The core components included:
- Weekly meetings about our budget. How much was in the treasury? What was the planned monthly spend? When would these funds be spent?
- Spreadsheets showing itemized expenses, monthly drawdown, and total runway.
- Constant references to our gnosis safe treasury and other on-chain data. "Don't take our word for it - look for yourself."
- Regular strategy discussions outlining the community's plans in a public setting.
Additionally: Remind everyone of why exactly the EF exists. This seems to have been lost over the years. That mission and vision shit is crucial. The community is eager for reassurance that the EF is pushing the ecosystem forward.
We can do better, EF. Nobody should ever be caught off-guard by what's happening.
JUST COMMUNICATE. Constantly.
The inflated egos, flaming tribalists, and incessant doomers of Crypto Twitter are a shoddy simulacrum of Crypto Reality. Much of what you see here is a distorted view of what's really happening, filtered through the lenses of influencers and the almighty algorithm.
To take a more unadulterated pulse of this social and technological movement, go to a local event.
Case in point: last night's Ethereum Denver / Future of Web3 meetup, where we heard from Josh of @Liberty_Rocks on the Cypherpunk and crypto-anarchy roots of crypto. Check out his site at liberty tools: (libertytools.io)
Also: special thanks to @renzoai for sponsoring!
These grassroots IRL events make me more bullish than ever for the future of crypto. The critical mass is here.
Kent Barton retweeted
Great intro by @seven7hwave into a talk about crypto-anarchy and cypherpunks delivered by @Liberty_Rocks.
@0xfw3 throws another fantastic meetup to connect the broader Colorado blockchain community.
Tons of great faces here tonight, great to see so many familiar BUIDLers!
Kent Barton retweeted
@VentureXUSA LoDo is lookin regal for the #Denver regens! ✨
Stoked for @seven7hwave and JDavid of @Liberty_Rocks—bringing us a special #cypherpunk edition of FW3 tonight!
Shoutout to our partners and sponsors: @renzoai @DIFA_USA @YoSnickerdoodle @standwithcrypto 🙏
Kent Barton retweeted
The anti-trans thing is a tremendous losing issue for the GOP.
Does it win them any votes? No, it does not; people who it resonates with would vote Trump anyway.
Does it win the opposition votes? Yes it does; it allows the Dem's to cast Trump and his party as bigoted, thus making that side more likely to turn out–and on the margins, even driving potential Trump voters into the other camp.
This campaign is headed south at a pretty damn rapid clip and in need of a pivot. Dropping cultural warfare messaging like this would be a good place to start.
The Ethereum Denver community turns 10 this year. What a ride! So...how'd we get here, and what's next?
In 2014 this community was founded on two fundamental assumptions:
1.) That Ethereum would expand upon what Bitcoin started, furthering the cause of global freedom and providing a platform on which to build decentralized tools to hedge against the rising tide of authoritarianism.
2.) That Colorado was well-positioned to build upon its tradition of independent thinking & its frontier mindset, becoming a hub for blockchain builders & thinkers.
A decade later, both these assumptions have been proven out beyond our wildest expectations. Ethereum Denver served as the grassroots foundation for ETHDENVER (@EthereumDenver), the world's most badass crypto gathering on the planet; Colorado's crypto-entrepreneur community is thriving and growing every year; and Ethereum itself has accomplished nearly everything it originally set out to do (plus much more), while adhering to its core value prop of maximal decentralization.
Alas, the authoritarians are winning too. From calls to limit freedom of speech here in the states, to the death of free expression in the UK, to strongman regimes expanding power around the planet, the cause of global liberty is on the ropes. In this moment, Ethereum's censorship-resistance and permissionlessness is more essential than ever.
With all this in mind, I'm super stoked to be relating the details of our next Ethereum Denver meetup, on August 20th. Your speaker: Josh David, of @Liberty_Rocks. The topic: The Cypherpunk and Crypto-Anarchy movement that big-banged the entire blockchain universe in the first place. You'll get a better understanding of this history, why these core values are so crucial to the future of this species, and how Cypherpunk principles can inform the next wave of building in the space.
RSVP here: meetup.com/ethereum-denver/e…
Many thanks to our sponsor @renzoai, who embodies the culture of building in Colorado. And mega-props to @taykendesign and our dear friends at Future of Web3 (@0xfw3), who are partnering on this event.
There's a lot of grousing lately because Number isn't Going Up. Zoom Out, friends. Look what's been accomplished in 10 years, both within this humble community and across the broader blockchain world. Imagine how things might look in another decade as this momentum continues.
Ignore the endless noise & shrill naysayers; the future is brighter than you can imagine.
Kent Barton retweeted
Excited to welcome @seven7hwave and JDavid of @Liberty_Rocks to a special #cypherpunk edition of FW3!
RSVP: lu.ma/cypherpunks
Shoutout as always to our partners and sponsors: @renzoai @DIFA_USA @YoSnickerdoodle @VentureXUSA @standwithcrypto 🙏
