Web3 | Identosphere Blogcatcher

Argentine President Javier Milei's X account promoted the token and the project behind it.

The call for scaling the Ethereum mainnet comes less than two weeks after validators raised the gas limit by 20%.

Citi and State Street, leading financial institutions with assets of $4 trillion and $6 trillion respectively, are moving into cryptocurrency custody services as President Trump quickly loosens regulations, including the repeal of SAB 121 in January

Memecoins have evolved into a substantial sector within the cryptocurrency market, now accounting for one-third of all investor interest in 2024, with a total market capitalization of approximately $120 billion

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP gain as markets react to Trump's tariff update.

dTAO is here, and it's set to be a game changer for the Bittensor ecosystem.

Binance’s former CEO revealed his dog, leading to a spike in memecoin activity on the BNB Chain.

Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the founder of Binance, has confirmed that multiple wealth funds in Abu Dhabi, as well as other global sovereign wealth funds, are likely in the process of accumulating Bitcoin

Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange (DEX), has launched 'Unit', a decentralized asset tokenization layer that enables users to trade and hold spot Bitcoin (BTC) directly on-chain through a self-custodial BTC/USD spot market

The platform has advised users to exit their Earn positions on Liquity V2.

The cryptocurrency token $KAITO is currently trading in the pre-market at a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion

Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, has disclosed a $436 million investment in Bitcoin ETFs during the first quarter of 2025

The Meebits NFT collection has been acquired by the Meebit Company, a venture backed by 1confirmation, from Yuga Labs

The State of Wisconsin Investment Board has disclosed holdings of $321.5 million in a Bitcoin ETF

A Beginner's Guide to Robinhood's Self-Custody Wallet

The AI-powered "social intelligence" platform has been one of the more eye-catching opps for airdrop hunters.

The SEC’s move fueled investor optimism, pushing the token past $2.75.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Feb 7th, 2025 — Feb 14th, 2025)

Your weekly PIVX update is here! Get the latest on price, listings, and community news.

Top Stories

1. PIVX Labs Unveils 2025 Vision: PIVX Labs has announced its ambitious vision for 2025: building a global parallel economy powered by PIVX. This vision centers around empowering individuals with accessible and user-friendly technology, solidifying PIVX’s role in a decentralized financial ecosystem.

Labs’ efforts will focus on four key projects: My PIVX Wallet (banking), PIVCards (spending), PIVX Rewards (earning), and Vector (messaging), all working in concert to create a seamless experience for users.

2. PIVX Returns to Shopping.io: PIVX is back on Shopping.io, a platform that lets you shop smarter with the power of AI and cryptocurrency. This re-listing makes it easier to use PIVX for everyday purchases.

Market Pulse Masternode Count: One new PIVX masternode came online this week, increasing the total number of active masternodes to 2,019. Price Check: The Daily USD Value ranged from $0.17 to $0.2 this week, averaging approximately $0.19. This is down from $0.20 last week. Trading Buzz: Total weekly transaction value reached an impressive $18.4 million, a $2 million increase from last week. This was supported by daily trading volumes ranging from a low of $2 million to a high of $5.5 million, averaging $2.6 million.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Feb 7th, 2025 — Feb 14th, 2025) was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The decentralized computing marketplace plans to scale its GPU supply by targeting 11,000 professional data centers and 7 million edge data centers worldwide.

It appears that the Presidential election wasn’t the only cause of the prediction market’s spectacular growth, as sports betting draws more users to the platform.

Investor sentiment weakens as macroeconomic concerns weigh on Bitcoin ETFs and price action.

Transaction fees also plunged, with some bringing in just one satoshi.

Doodles will launch $DOOD memecoin, with 68% of the token supply to be allocated to the community.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has sparked controversy with a statement suggesting 'Make Communism Great Again

GHO is a top 30 stablecoin by market cap and enables lending/borrowing on Aave.

Bitcoin and Ethereum dip as stronger-than-expected wholesale inflation data raises doubts over Fed rate cuts.

Step inside the casino with 0DTE crypto options protocols.

Metaplanet, a Japanese firm, has raised ¥4.0 billion ($26 million) through the issuance of zero-interest, unsecured, and unguaranteed bonds from EVO Funds to expand its Bitcoin holdings.

Franklin Tempelton’s Benji money fund just launched on Solana.

Coinbase, the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange, is planning to re-enter the Indian market more than a year after it ceased operations there.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao posted a picture of Broccoli, his Belgian Malinois, and said BNB Chain would “likely” give some support to its top memecoins.

The EF allocated nearly 45,000 ETH to DeFi after calls for it show greater support to the chain’s dapps.

Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, has responded to predictions from JPMorgan analysts regarding the company's potential sale of Bitcoin

Deutsche Bank-backed Taurus has expanded its digital asset custody and tokenization services to include the Solana blockchain

NFT marketplace launches OS2 platform to the public, integrating token swaps and cross-chain purchasing.

MoonPay has announced the removal of transaction fees for users buying or selling cryptocurrency using their MoonPay Balance

Solana Validators will now receive 100% of priority fees under the new model rather than 50%.

Commissioner Summer Mersinger said in a policy seminar that the CFTC must take a more “pro-innovator” approach.

The team behind Axie Infinity is relinquishing control to increase ecosystem growth.

Experts say the surge is driven by BNB Chain growth and the unexpected popularity of the TST memecoin.

Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said he thought the SEC would at least start the clock on the change.

Can MegaETH's Vitalik-backed L2 unlock new use cases in crypto?

The movement to integrate BTC into state financial strategies gains momentum as Oklahoma joins Arizona and Utah in advancing SBR legislation.

The end of the second-day mint marks the conclusion of the first installment of MegaETH’s token sale, with a second installment planned for later in the year.

Pectra is the third hard fork of the Ethereum network since the merge in 2022 and will implement key features, such as account abstraction and improved staking.

Andreessen Horowitz scores a major win with CFTC nomination.

Ronin goes permissionless, unlocking new possibilities in and beyond gaming.

The U

Higher-than-expected US inflation figures sparked a brief sell-off in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and broader crypto markets.

The United States is releasing Russian national Alexander Vinnik as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia that secured the release of American teacher Marc Fogel

Offchain Labs has launched the Arbitrum BoLD protocol on the mainnet, enabling permissionless validation within the Arbitrum ecosystem

The Arc PMF Terrifying Questions Framework

By Team Sequoia

In Arc, our company building immersion for Sequoia’s pre-seed and seed-stage founders, we focus on the path to product-market fit. Using the Arc PMF Framework, we describe three distinct PMF archetypes, depending on how customers view the problem your product solves. This new companion framework is about application: Once you understand the three archetypes and your company’s place in the world, what steps can you actually take day-to-day to pursue PMF, and how do you know you’re on the right track?

Answer the Four Terrifying Questions

Achieving durable product-market fit requires tackling four terrifying questions that should keep you up at night as you build your business. Each terrifying question has positive indicators that mitigate your fear and indicate you’re headed in the right direction, and a resolution that confirms you’re ready to tackle the next terrifying question. As you build conviction in your answers to the terrifying questions, you get closer to PMF.

How to Answer Each Question 

The more overlap between your company and the market opportunity, the closer you get to resolving the terrifying question.

The Arc PMF Terrifying Questions Framework Your unique advantage What is my company’s right to exist? The opportunity

The first terrifying question to confront is: What is my company’s right to exist? Great companies are built on a founder’s authentic insight about a market opportunity. At this stage your work is to understand the category, the competition and your unique advantages as a founder. How clearly can you describe your founder-market fit? Pressure-test the originating belief behind your business. You want to understand if the TAM provides a big enough reward. As you refine your idea, there will be positive indicators that suggest you’re heading in the right direction.

You can articulate why it’s a compelling category and market, and why now is the moment to capture it Your wedge or entry point into the market opportunity becomes clearer You can articulate your unique advantage in seizing this specific opportunity—why you have founder-market fit Ideation compounds as you hone your direction—information and conversations result in “productive pivots” that build sequentially; you feel progress, not just motion 

Conviction in your originating belief should grow as you pressure-test your idea and see more positive indicators. You know that you’ve answered this question when you’re ready to marry the idea for the next decade-plus, and you’d recruit a best friend to work on it with you. 

For instance, when David Vélez was starting Nubank, he turned down an opportunity to join Sequoia as a partner in California. He had always wanted to start a company, and after finishing Stanford GSB he felt a pull back to Latin America. He then spent months pressure-testing his insight about the opportunity to disrupt Brazilian banking. The deeper he dug, the stronger his conviction in the idea became, and he identified his wedge: credit cards, which offered a lower regulatory barrier to entry. Once he was resolved and knew he was ready to commit, Nubank was born.

The Arc PMF Terrifying Questions Framework What you think matters Do people care enough? What customers think matters

You have an insight into a market opportunity, but the terrifying question remains: Do people care enough about the problem you’re solving? If people don’t care enough, you won’t be able to build a meaningful business by addressing it. They need to care about the problem not only in the abstract, but they need to be willing to pay for the solution. Speaking with potential customers gives you this information. You need a critical mass of conversations to produce enough evidence: We’ve seen companies conduct 50+ conversations in a week. Positive indicators that the problem resonates with customers:

High hit rate on cold outreach (which is more likely to reflect truth vs. warm leads predisposed to “be nice”) More people than you invited show up to calls and demos Customers’ eyes light up at your pitch and they lean in; your idea represents an unlock for them: “I want this now!” Customers express clear willingness to pay for the solution  Customer responses help you refine the idea and sharpen what a differentiated solution might look like

It’s important to be objective about how customers externalize these positive indicators, and not let confirmation bias cloud your judgement. If only one in 10 customer conversations lean in, the problem may not matter as much as you thought—but what matters most is the depth of engagement. You’re looking for a set of customers who respond passionately and feel your pitch really speaks to them. Dig deeper into what they have in common and laser focus on this segment. It can be easy to talk yourself into believing that customers are more excited about your idea than they are. The conversations that resonate most strongly will help you define your ICP, how they see the problem and why it matters to them. 

The ultimate resolution you’re seeking through these conversations is a set of design partners—initial customers who are excited to co-create the solution with you. If you’re seeing rabid customer interest and you’ve secured design partners, then you’ve successfully validated the problem and answered this terrifying question. 

Before launch, DoorDash’s founders spoke with “three or four hundred” small businesses. While their initial idea was about last-mile delivery, they weren’t initially targeting restaurants, since they thought Grubhub and others had already solved this problem. However, they discovered through customer conversations that competitors only routed orders, and left restaurants to make their own deliveries. Local restaurants that couldn’t afford their own delivery staff were the most passionate merchants DoorDash interviewed, with a burning unmet demand. Their first onboarded customer was a macaroon store in Palo Alto that had been turning down dozens of orders per week because they couldn’t deliver them.

The Arc PMF Terrifying Questions Framework Your roadmap Does my product actually change behavior? Customers’ established behavior

After you’ve validated the problem, there are still likely many different ways you could choose to build your product to solve it. At this stage, the terrifying question becomes: Does your product actually change behavior? It needs to not only work but to delight customers enough to transform their behavior. Your primary task at this stage is iterating on your product and evolving features to find positive indicators that users are consistently engaging with at least one feature. A product feature becoming “sticky” signals that it’s adding enough value to change users’ behavior, in addition to other positive indicators:

A clear “lightbulb” moment in your demo that makes your product click for people Short activation period: users are able to on-ramp and get immediate value from the product, which you can measure as engagement A specific feature in your product becomes durably sticky, even if it’s not the entire product surface Customers make nuanced feature requests, point to a compelling feature set Power user behavior emerges as an outlier pattern among a subset of customers  Evangelism and virality emerges—users start telling peers about a specific feature or capability

As you iterate on the product to move your metrics up, your North Star is engaged and retained users. A growing set of retained users, and a low churn rate, give you conviction that your product is indeed changing customers’ behavior. If your most engaged users match the ICP you identified earlier, it should strengthen your conviction in the problem. If not, this will help you refine your understanding of the problem and your ICP, and evolve your product to serve them. 

Drew Houston of Dropbox says product virality is “an exponential game, but also a game of inches.” As Dropbox came out of beta and opened to general availability, the team obsessed over every surface of the onboarding flow and feature usage. They soon figured out that users who shared files with contacts got the most value from the product. As they optimized for file sharing—even advertising on Craigslist to get users in the office to test new designs—the product began to spread virally, with high activation and retention rates, and low churn.

The Arc PMF Terrifying Questions Framework Your sales playbook Will customers pay enough to build a business? Customer spend

After finding product traction and building conviction in your solution, the next terrifying question to confront is: Will people pay enough for it to build a real business? Scaling a meaningful business requires an exchange of value: customers have to be happy to pay your asking price. Your initial beta customers likely won’t pay your ideal price point, and that’s OK—getting there is a process. As you seek to prove the hypothesis that your price target is realistic, you should iterate on your sales process just like you iterate on product features, testing how to demo, price, package, activate, onboard and support your customers. As you strengthen the value exchange with customers, you’ll see positive indicators: 

Discovery process confirms your assumptions about budget availability  Customers don’t balk at your asking price or slow roll the deal High ratio of engaged users upgrading from the free tier to the paid tier Contract reviews happen quickly; you don’t get stuck in procurement purgatory You don’t find yourself in a knife fight with competitors based on price

The ultimate answer to whether customers will pay enough to build a business is a list of paying customers who feel they get great value from your product at your asking price. But to achieve your ambition and build an important company, you need to grow. You should be able to chart a path to $500M in revenue based on your conviction in the problem, your assessment of the TAM and the strength of the value exchange.

When Block first introduced the Square mobile card reader, they intended to sell the hardware and software to merchants. The founders had answered the terrifying questions of whether people cared enough about the problem and whether their product changed behavior, but they were still iterating on the price point and how much people would pay. As Jack Dorsey explains, at one point they realized the best value exchange would be to give the hardware and software away for free, and charge a percentage fee on each transaction. The company would get recurring revenue rather than a one-time sale, and their customers would get immediate value without any capital outlay—a win-win, which quickly brought them to PMF.

Revisiting the Terrifying Questions

While the terrifying questions build on one another, you shouldn’t think of answering them in a strictly linear way. Practice is always messier than theory, and it’s possible you’ll confront multiple questions at once, and move fluidly between them over time.

For example: In 2022 Robinhood, already a public company with over $1B in annual revenue, made a profound realization about their ICP: their core customer was not the first-time amateur getting started with investing, as they’d thought, but rather the “active trader” making many trades per week or day. In our Crucible Moments podcast, founder Vlad Tenev describes how discovering this caused the team to revisit who cared most about the problem they were solving, whether their product was optimized to deliver those users the most value, as well as the value exchange with those customers. Over two years, the company radically evolved its offerings based on these insights and iterated to strengthen their answer to each terrifying question. The result has been dramatically increasing revenue per user (and Robinhood’s share price along with it).

Every time you expand to a new customer or product line, you confront the same terrifying questions again. PMF is an ongoing pursuit, not a finite destination. But we believe that if you answer each terrifying question, the output is product-market fit.

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Artist Sam Spratt's digital artwork 'X. Masquerade', the sixth chapter in the story of Luci, was acquired by Kanbas for $3,000,000

The Liquity Protocol team is investigating a potential issue affecting its V2 Stability Pools

Franklin Templeton has launched its tokenized money market fund, FOBXX, on the Solana blockchain.

Episode 3: The Fallout

The news reports were relentless. Every channel, every website, screamed about the John Doe Wealth data breach. “Millions Exposed,” “Financial Chaos,” “Lawsuits Loom.” Mark stared at the television screen in his now-empty office, the vibrant city lights outside mocking his despair. His initial surge of ambition after securing Victoria’s investment had evaporated, replaced by a gnawing dread. Victoria’s words, “Trust is earned, Mark, and it’s a fragile thing,” echoed in his mind. He had earned trust, and now, through no direct fault of his own, it was crumbling.

The breach wasn’t just a headline; it was a personal catastrophe. Clients he had painstakingly cultivated, people who had entrusted him with their livelihoods, were now victims. He’d received frantic calls, tearful voicemails, and even a few angry threats. The weight of responsibility, heavier than ever, threatened to crush him.

He hadn’t slept in days, haunted by images of his clients’ faces, their anxieties mirroring his own. He knew he had to do something, anything, to try and mitigate the damage. But what? He was just one advisor in a vast, crumbling system.

Driven by a desperate need to understand how things could have gone so horribly wrong, Mark delved deeper into the breach’s origins. He spent hours poring over leaked internal documents, technical reports, and cybersecurity analyses. What he discovered was far more disturbing than he had imagined.

It wasn’t just lax security at the third-party vendor. It was systemic complacency within John Doe Wealth itself. The documents revealed a pattern of ignored warnings, budget cuts to cybersecurity, and a general attitude of “it won’t happen to us.” Mark found emails where his own concerns about the vendor’s data access had been dismissed by senior management as “alarmist.” There were memos detailing known vulnerabilities in the company’s systems, vulnerabilities that had been patched superficially, if at all.

He discovered that the data analytics firm, the supposed source of the breach, had flagged their own security concerns to John Doe months prior. They had even offered to implement enhanced security measures, but John Doe had balked at the cost. They had prioritized profit over protection, short-term gains over long-term security.

The picture emerging was one of gross negligence, a culture of indifference to client data security. Mark felt a wave of nausea. He had been part of this system, profiting from it, blind to its rot.

He thought back to his father, working tirelessly to provide for his family. He thought of his own struggles, his relentless climb to success. Had it all been for nothing? Had he built his career on a foundation of lies and deceit?

The phone rang, jolting him from his thoughts. It was Victoria. Her voice was grave. “Mark, I need to see you. Immediately.”

He knew what this meant. The fallout was reaching the highest levels. His carefully constructed world was about to implode. As he walked towards Victoria’s office, he felt a strange sense of calm. The fear was still there, but it was mixed with a newfound resolve. He couldn’t undo what had happened, but he could expose the truth. He owed it to his clients, to himself, and to the memory of his father, who had always taught him the importance of integrity. What could possibly go wrong? He was about to find out.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart call a Litecoin ETF a near-certainty.

WazirX’s founder said they would list the new crypto if users were interested.

The Uniswap V4-powered DEX all about optimizing LP earnings.

Powell seemed to signal interest in addressing crypto debanking after being pressed on the issue.

The Open Network (TON) has integrated with LayerZero, an interoperability protocol, to facilitate cross-chain asset transfers across more than 100 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, and Tron

The Ethereum liquid staking protocol’s RPL token has surged by over 50% in the last three days.

The Spark Liquidity Layer has been integrated with Fluid to enable the deployment of sUSDS liquidity on the Base network, with plans to extend this integration to Ethereum later this month

The liquid staking giant has some big upgrades in mind for its next iteration.

Ondo Finance has announced a strategic collaboration with World Liberty Financial Inc

In 2024, Michael Saylor's Strategy treasury operations have resulted in a gain of 18,527 Bitcoin (BTC)

Franklin Templeton has officially registered the Franklin Solana Trust in Delaware, marking its entry into the application process for a Solana spot exchange-traded fund (ETF)

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has expressed his support for the establishment of a regulatory framework surrounding stablecoins

Bitcoin and Ether declined 2% amid trade war concerns.

Designed with cheap transactions and block times of a second or less, Unichain is built on the Optimism Superchain for interoperability.

New stVaults feature introduces modular and customizable staking solutions.

The Popular DEX is officially stepping into the Ethereum L2 game.

Our chart of the week is ONDO.

Trends to Watch (AI Agents, RWA)

Privacy firm Proton has released a Bitcoin wallet that complements its popular end-to-end encrypted email service.

Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao shared his thoughts after inadvertently turning the $TST memecoin into a viral phenomenon.

Critical materials like copper, lithium, and gallium have been mined for decades, but their role in core technologies, geopolitics, and the energy transition have come to a height in recent years.

In this episode, a16z partner Connie Chan discusses how technology is changing the game of  identification and exploration, together with leading company KoBold and their VP of Geoscience, VP of Technology, and CEO of Africa.

Resources:

Learn more about KoBold Metals: https://www.koboldmetals.com/

Stay Updated: 

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

ETH investment products lead weekly inflows, surpassing BTC as total crypto fund investments climb despite market uncertainty.

Base employee defended moving sequencer fees to Coinbase Custody and said Coinbase and Base are likely the largest holders of ETH among all public companies.

With Trump in office, are crypto companies about to take the public debut plunge?

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) is considering classifying cryptocurrencies as financial products similar to securities, according to reports from Nikkei and other sources

A starter pack of 25 resources on Base that creators can tap into for all their project needs.

JAILSTOOL’s market cap briefly surged above $200 million after Portnoy posted about it on X.

Metaplanet, a Japanese hotel investor and the country's first and only publicly listed Bitcoin Treasury company, has reported unrealized gains of $36 million from its Bitcoin investments in 2024

Legislation aimed at regulating cryptocurrencies in the United States is set to progress, with all four congressional committees overseeing crypto regulation—Senate Banking, House Financial Services, Senate Agriculture, and House Agriculture—aligned on the issue

Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, has acquired an additional 7,633 bitcoins for approximately $742M

Did one of the poorest countries on earth really launch a memecoin to support economic development?

James Howells, a British man who lost access to a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins, valued at approximately £620 million ($768 million), is seeking to purchase the Newport landfill where the hard drive was discarded

Traders express frustration as BERA token plunges 63% following initial surge

Ripple has expanded its European presence by partnering with Unicâmbio, a leading currency exchange provider in Portugal, to facilitate instant cross-border payments between Portugal and Brazil

The $B3 token, developed by the team behind B3, has officially launched, marking a significant step in the gaming sector on the Base blockchain, which is associated with Coinbase

Trump's World Liberty, a cryptocurrency entity associated with Donald Trump, has made a substantial acquisition of 273,937 MOVE tokens for 156,667 USDC

The value of Donald Trump's memecoins has seen a dramatic decline, with $MELANIA dropping by 90% from its all-time high and $TRUMP falling by 78%

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana post slight gains, but overall market capitalization dips.

CoinShares has filed applications with Nasdaq for the listing and trading of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) focused on XRP and Litecoin

$VIRTUAL token has officially launched for trading on the Solana blockchain, as announced by Virtuals Protocol

A report said a token launch is coming soon and preparations are being made with centralized exchanges.

Florida is considering a new bill, SB 550, introduced by Senator Joe Gruters, which would permit the state to invest public funds in Bitcoin as a strategic asset

Ever wished for a messaging app that truly prioritized your privacy? Meet Chatstr, a new project designed with exactly that in mind. We chatted with one of the brains behind Chatstr, developer JSKitty, to get the inside scoop on this exciting new app.

Chatstr’s debut was rather unexpected. What’s the story behind the messaging app?

The concept behind Chatstr is something me and another community member have dreamt about for at least the last 6 years, but previously never had the skills or resources to achieve. I set out a personal hobby challenge in January to code one myself, mostly for learning and personal purposes, but I realized the idea could benefit far more than just myself, and we decided to make it a full venture.

What specific privacy challenges in existing messaging apps inspired you to create Chatstr? Were there particular use cases you had in mind?

The long answer is in our Purpose/Vision document, the short answer is: proprietary comms apps are full of backdoors, closed code, and sketchy encryption systems that compromise anyone looking for genuine security — while on the flip side, the world’s largest ‘privacy apps’, have a below-par user experience to the likes of Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.

Chatstr is designed to have solid vault-like privacy, without sacrificing the common, fun, enjoyable experience of a well-featured app — of which, many would rather sacrifice their privacy for that thread of convenience.

Chatstr aims to be a private messaging app. How does it differentiate itself from other secure messaging apps already available? What unique features or approaches does it offer?

One of the biggest private messaging ecosystems is Matrix. Although it has incredible encryption practices, it lacks massively elsewhere:

It scales awfully, with massive resource requirements for only a small set of users. It leaks metadata, and the only solution is to disable the nicer features. Its sets of clients are, generally, very buggy, feature-lacking, and inconsistent.

Chatstr’s design fixes all of this from the bottom up.

What are your primary goals for Chatstr in terms of user adoption and impact? Do you envision it becoming a mainstream messaging platform, or serving a more niche audience?

My personal goal for Chatstr is incredibly simple; become the new Telegram. Telegram’s user experience makes it undoubtedly my favorite messenger of all time. The app is efficient, fast, and contains dozens of useful and fun features by design. It is my #1 inspiration, but without encryption, their entire model relies on “trust me bro”, and that’s not good enough.

Although Chatstr isn’t designed for a niche audience — as it wraps its encrypted properties in a completely hidden, easy, seamless manner, it isn’t against having one. It’s just designed so that anyone can obtain privacy, easily.

Can you describe the technical architecture of Chatstr? How does it utilize PIVX’s blockchain and other technologies to ensure secure and private communication?

At the moment, the PIVX blockchain has no involvement in Chatstr — although some of the cryptographic parts of PIVX are supported (such as Login-via-Seed Phrase or BIP39), and potentially more in areas we find feasible, like in-app transfers of PIVX between users.

Chatstr’s networking is built upon Nostr Protocol, with zero centralised or proprietary components. Everything operates on community-ran Nostr Relays, everything is pure open-source, and Private Messaging contents are encrypted using the NIP-17 standard.

What were the biggest technical hurdles you encountered during the development process, and how did you overcome them?

One of the difficult things to get right in encrypted contexts is file transfers — which ended up being implemented as a two-layer encryption system in Chatstr. Cross-platform capability is also a difficulty. Chatstr aims to be usable on all major platforms, including desktop and mobile OSs. It took some work, but I managed it!

How does Chatstr handle key management and user identity? What security measures are in place to protect user keys and prevent unauthorized access?

Much like MPW’s diskless-key setup, Chatstr does not store keys on the disk until you’ve set a 5-digit pin — plus, Chatstr does not store Seed Phrases at all: only the nsec master key derived from the Seed Phrase.

Once a pin is set, ramped-up Argon2 is used to hash your pin, while ChaCha20 is used to encrypt your nsec keys.

Even if all of those security layers were broken via physical or remote access to your system, and an attacker accessed your raw nsec — your PIVX stored on the Seed Phrase would remain safe.

Sadly, your comms would be compromised in such a case; but eventually, a rolling-key exchange will be added to Chatstr, enabling the ability to destroy conversations on-the-fly, and make them irrecoverable, even if your private keys were to be obtained.

Scalability is crucial for any messaging app. How do you plan to address scalability challenges as Chatstr’s user base grows?

Nostr scales almost infinitely in parallel, thanks to its design and architecture. While users can optionally host their own relays to further improve privacy, it’s not necessary. I am personally offering multiple Nostr Relays for free to Chatstr users as well, and they can use various public-free and paid relays that offer bandwidth use to our users. There are already hundreds of relays, with millions of events handled. Chatstr will utilise this to the fullest.

In the extreme long-term, if we are truly to compete with Telegram’s size, then it’s possible we could enable a simple ‘Nitro-like’ payment model that grants users extra filesize, bandwidth, and features — while helping us cover the cost of ultra-large relays.

What programming languages, frameworks, or development tools did you use to build Chatstr, and why did you choose them?

Chatstr was built with love: a pure Rust backend with a WebKit frontend via the Tauri framework. Rust is efficient, secure, and modern, maintaining the horsepower of C/C++ without the drawbacks. WebKit is a powerful and efficient browser engine used as our frontend rendering engine in Chatstr. Tauri is the framework combining the two: enabling cross-compilable apps for all platforms, with an incredibly efficient footprint compared to Electron and its alternatives.

During the early test releases, Chatstr has consistently used less than 40mb of RAM, some users even reported less than 10mb, a stark contrast to Discord’s >300mb-2gb.

Chatstr uses hardly any power, and when idling, often near-zero CPU.

What future features or functionalities are you planning to add to Chatstr? Are you considering integrating other decentralized technologies or services?

At initial release, Chatstr aims to have the majority of non-voice/video features that all messengers have in common: full file transfers, in-app photos and video sharing, live statuses, a beautiful chat interface, and all with absolutely solid privacy and stability.

After initial release: this list could be unimaginably long, and I have some great ideas, but it’s too early to share them for now.

Technologically, I’ve been playing with the idea of integrating PIVX Shield in some manner — albeit, struggling with the idea of on-chain messaging, given the eventual possibility of those messages being decrypted, which is something Chatstr combats with its selective relay-based protocol.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

Uncovering Chatstr: An Interview with JSKitty was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Balancer V3 uses 100% boosted liquidity pools, deploying idle capital on yield-generating platforms like Aave.

The Giving Block’s report highlights both a surge in crypto donations and growing institutional adoption.

Weekly Recap: Trade War fears continue, Gov buying TikTok?

The asset manager projects Solana’s market share among smart contract platforms will grow to 22%, driving a $250B market cap.

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) has requested Apple and Google to remove apps of five unregistered overseas cryptocurrency exchanges from their app stores in the country

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed its decision regarding options trading for BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust.

BlackRock has increased its ownership stake in Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, to 5%, according to recent SEC filings

Stablecoins, particularly those pegged to the U.S. dollar, are increasingly influencing global payments

The NEAR Protocol has launched a $20 million AI Agent Fund aimed at scaling decentralized AI applications, marking a strategic move to enhance on-chain automation

Dave Portnoy, a well-known internet personality, has come under scrutiny for allegedly engaging in a pump-and-dump scheme involving a low market cap meme coin

Backed by a16z and Polychain Capital, the intellectual property management protocol plans a staking fair launch beginning in March.

Three strategies for liquidity provisioning on Solana's Meteora.

Centralized exchanges recorded a 20% drop in trading volume in January amid market uncertainty.

The memecoin sector is down 40% since Trump launched his official memecoin on Jan. 17.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), under Acting Chair Caroline Pham, is hosting two major initiatives to address regulatory approaches in emerging markets.

Franklin Templeton, a multinational asset manager, has submitted an amended S-1 filing on February 6, 2025

Solayer Labs has announced the tokenomics for its upcoming $LAYER token, which has a total supply of 1 billion and an initial circulating supply of 220 million

Nobel Prize-winning economist Eugene Fama has expressed a bleak outlook for Bitcoin, suggesting that it could become worthless within the next decade

Maryland has become the latest state to file for a strategic Bitcoin reserve, joining a growing list of states advocating for similar measures

Bitcoin gains 1%, Ethereum slips, and XRP rises amid macroeconomic uncertainty.

As online content becomes predominantly AI-driven, intellectual property (IP) rights should not be neglected as (human) creators will heavily rely on them. While the main use cases for blockchains revolve around financial applications, one could argue that our everyday lives constantly intersect IPs in different forms. Although the legal framework is abundant, proper recording, monetization and disputes are often a burden for independent creators. Story Protocol aims to create a decentralised framework for IP management, tokenizing it both through NFTs and fungible tokens, allowing creators to register fully programmable IP, that is also recognized and enforced through the traditional judiciary system. Using smart contracts and programmable metadata, Story Protocol ensures proper monetization for creators whenever their IP is used.

Topics covered in this episode:

Jason’s background Current IP pain points Tokenizing IP Story Protocol blockchain Preventing IP infringement Story Protocol validators Interoperability Onboarding traditional IP to Story Protocol Story Protocol’s legal framework Enforcing IP rights on Story Protocol Hiding or demonetizing on-chain IP Governance & disputes Roadmap

Episode links:

Jason Zhao on X Story Protocol on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 31st, 2025 — Feb 7th, 2025)

Your PIVX fix is here! This week’s roundup has the scoop on everything PIVX, from market whispers and project progress to what’s buzzing in the community. Let’s jump right in!

Top Stories PIVX-Coinomi Alliance: PIVX has inked a strategic partnership with Coinomi, one of the oldest multi-asset wallets. This collaboration will bring several PIVX integrations along with new industry connections. PIVX Prizes Up for Grabs in SCUM Events: PIVX Labs is partnering with the FUN Server to bring a series of thrilling events to the brutal world of SCUM. Compete in PvP, PvE, races, treasure hunts, and more for a chance to win PIVX. Join the Discord and get ready! Market Pulse Masternode Count: The number of active masternodes is currently 2018, an increase of 36 from last week. Price Check: PIV’s Daily USD Value fluctuated between $0.17 and $0.23 this week, settling at an average of around $0.2. Comparatively, the daily average for the past week was $0.23. Trading Buzz: Even with the price dip, the PIVX market was active. Daily trading volume ranged between $1.9 million and $2.9 million, averaging a robust $2.3 million. Total weekly transaction value hit an impressive $16 million, a $1 million increase from last week.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 31st, 2025 — Feb 7th, 2025) was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Zcash Foundation is pleased to announce the release of Zebra 2.2.0. In this release, we introduced an additional consensus check on the branch ID of NU6 transactions, along with some important refactors and other improvements.

In order to support the new node and wallet stack that will enable us to deprecate zcashd, this release includes the ability to lookup transaction ids by their transparent inputs and revealed nullifiers. 

This release also includes a number of updates and enhancements to our JSON RPCs such as an updated JSON RPC crate, accessor methods to zebra-rpc requests and responses to enable Zaino to construct and deconstruct these types. We have also included fixes and updates to some RPC methods to closely match zcashd behaviour. The getblock RPC method now returns transaction details at verbosity level 2, the getblockchaininfo method will return the genesis block when zebra has an empty state, and the getrawtransaction output and RPC errors in general are now as close to zcashd we are able to at the moment. 

You can see a full copy of the included changes in the v2.2.0 Release Notes on GitHub.

The post Zebra 2.2.0 Release appeared first on Zcash Foundation.

We're inching closer to mainnet launch of Ethereum's next big upgrade.

The long-awaited L1 launch is full of opportunity.

Trump's eyebrow-raising entry into the memecoin game continues to trigger watchdog fears.

It's been a busy first month for Trump as both crypto regulator and crypto businessman.

The post The DeepSeek Moment appeared first on Greylock.

Fellow Panthers, 

January was a month of steady progress, marked by key technical advancements, advancing partnerships, and media coverage. With enhancements to the codebase, ongoing development of future versions, and continued media presence, Panther is gaining momentum and positioning itself as a leader in the privacy and compliance space for DeFi.

Here are the highlights from January.

Technical Progress

Panther Protocol’s development continues to move forward at a strong pace, with key enhancements made to the codebase based on external testing and audits from Veridise. These updates focus on improving performance, security, and scalability, ensuring a solid foundation for future releases.

Panther contributors remain focused on advancing the framework that supports Zone Managers, a critical component of Panther’s architecture designed to enhance compliance and confidentiality.

Additionally, preparations for the forthcoming Canary Network are well on track, with Panther Tech contributors focused on configuring and integrating PureFi, an official Panther KYC/KYT partner with EtherSpot’s bundler service on Polygon. 

The controlled testing environment provided by the Canary Network will allow for real-world experimentation with new features, reinforcing Panther’s commitment to innovation and resilience. The Canary Network will be owned and operated by the forthcoming Swiss-based Panther Protocol Foundation (the Foundation), which is expected to form soon.

With work accelerating, important technical announcements will be coming from the Panther ecosystem in the days ahead. Stay tuned for what’s next.

Ecosystem Updates

In December, the Panther Protocol Foundation secured agreements with Eurobit and PureFi to apply to become Zone Managers. In January, Panther’s ecosystem team actively worked with these partners to establish the necessary infrastructure to support their onboarding. At the same time, these partners worked to refine their own frameworks to effectively use Panther’s core privacy and compliance-enhancing features. 

As these partnerships continue to progress, Panther ecosystem contributors are also focused on attracting additional financial service providers as part of an ongoing effort to expand  Panther’s network of Zones.

Panther in the Media

Panther was recently featured on CNBC Arabia’s Crypto Weekly, where co-founder Dr. Anish Mohammed acted as spokesperson, discussing key aspects of Panther’s mission. You can catch the interview at 14:50 in the episode. Panther was also quoted twice by CryptoNews, highlighting the protocol’s growing recognition with news media. Later in January, Panther was featured on CryptoCoinShow, where Dr. Mohammed outlined Panther’s roadmap for 2025. Panther was also interviewed by Kirill Ivanov, which included a detailed explanation of Panther’s model and its potential impact on the DeFi space. 

Conclusion

January was a key month for Panther Protocol, with significant technological advancements, new ecosystem developments, and growing media attention. January saw updates to the codebase, along with the progress on future iterations and the Canary Network. Meanwhile, partnerships with Eurobit and PureFi continue to shape Panther’s role as a leader in privacy-enabled compliance for DeFi. As Panther gains momentum, the project is closer than ever to realizing its vision of a confidential and compliant DeFi ecosystem.

Two words have caught the Internet by storm. DeepSeek. 

The Chinese reasoning model r1 is rivaling others at the frontier with an open-source MIT license, methods that some claim may be 45x more efficient, an alleged $5.6m cost, the release of reasoning traces, a follow-on image model, and the fact that all of this was released by a hedge fund China.

Many are already referring to this as a Sputnik moment. If that’s true, how should we – whether founder, researcher, policy maker – not just react, but act? Joining us to tease out the signal from the noise are a16z General Partner Martin Casado and a16z board partner, Steven Sinofsky. Both Martin and Steven have been on the frontlines of prior computing cycles, from the switching wars to the fiber buildout, and have witnessed the trajectories of companies like Cisco to AOL to ATT – even Worldcom.

So what really drove this DeepSeek frenzy and more importantly what should we take away? Today, we answer that question through the lens of Internet history.

 

Resources:

Steven’s article: DeepSeek Has Been Inevitable and Here's Why (History Tells Us) Alex Rampell’s article: Why DeepSeek Is a Gift to the American People

 

Stay Updated: 

Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Partnering with Avelios: Healthcare for the Modern Age

Christian, Nicolas, Sebastian and their team are transforming hospital information systems—and improving the lives of doctors and patients alike.

By Anas Biad Published February 6, 2025 Avelios co-founders Christian Albrecht, Nicolas Jakob and Dr. Sebastian Krammer.

We’ve all been there. You book a medical appointment and fill out your forms online—but when you arrive, you’re handed a clipboard full of the same questions to answer all over again. And behind the scenes, doctors and staff are also spending valuable time copying and pasting, making their demanding jobs even harder.

It happens because the operating system most hospitals run on was developed in the ‘90s, if not earlier. Data is unstructured; interoperability is non-existent; UIs are anything but user-friendly. The consequences, in terms of both inefficiencies and patient outcomes, are severe. Yet despite decades of technological development, hospital information systems (“HIS”) remain undisrupted. Why? They are incredibly difficult to build.

The typical HIS is a complex and mission-critical web of modules, and the hospitals that run them are highly regulated and understandably risk-averse—which can make launching an HIS company just as grueling as launching the product itself. New companies in this space often revert to simple point solutions that try to integrate with a legacy HIS, instead of the ground-up overhaul healthcare clearly needs.

The team at Munich-based Avelios has seen the challenges up close. During the height of COVID, Dr. Sebastian Krammer spent valuable time counting patients by hand, then reported the results to authorities via fax. And when he and Nicolas Jakob, a software engineer and deep learning expert, tried to expand their promising research on classifying skin conditions with AI, they quickly discovered hospitals’ antiquated systems couldn’t provide the data they needed. 

So they teamed up with Christian Albrecht, a McKinsey alum and previous co-founder with Nicolas, to solve the problem. And instead of “treating the symptoms” by building on top of outdated legacy software, they decided to take the hard path of “treating the cause” and tackle the problem at its core, by building a completely new HIS. 

Over the last couple of years, Avelios built a full hospital information system, including documentation (e.g., EHR, medication, operating room management); administration (e.g., billing, staff, clinic management); patient portals; AI solutions, and more. They took a modular approach so they could land in hospitals with one offering before expanding to the full operating system. But then multiple sea changes in the market accelerated their plans: 

One of the leading HIS providers announced they would sunset their product in 2027, creating an urgent need for more than 1,000 hospitals to replace their systems. Regulators in Germany and elsewhere responded to problems revealed by COVID-19 with both fines for failing to digitize and funding for modernization. (Germany’s Hospital Future Act, for example, dedicates €4.3B to this.)  Demand for AI exploded, putting a spotlight on the difficulties of accessing data and integrating with legacy hospital systems—which are exactly the challenges that Avelios was designed to solve.

Avelios, in other words, is the right team, with the right product, at the right time. As a result, they have already won several of Germany’s largest public and private hospitals.

When we met the team, we were deeply impressed by their ambition, the depth and breadth of the product, the customers they’d won and their revenue growth—and more importantly, that they achieved all of this with just pre-seed funding (!). 

Fortunately for us, Christian, Nicolas, and Sebastian agreed to a partnership, and we are proud to lead this Series A round as they and their fast-growing team work toward their goal of revolutionizing healthcare. 

In an Avelios-powered future, doctors and staff will have the system of record and AI tools they need to make better, more informed decisions. They’ll be able to focus on the reason they got into medicine in the first place—helping people. And their patients will get not only a seamless experience but the best possible care.

Share Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this via email Related Topics #AI #Funding announcement #Healthcare Partnering with Veed: The Future of Video News Read AI in 2025: Building Blocks Firmly in Place By David Cahn Perspective Read AI Ascent 2024 Video highlights from our AI conference. Perspective Read JOIN OUR MAILING LIST Get the best stories from the Sequoia community. Email address Leave this field empty if you’re human:

The post Partnering with Avelios: Healthcare for the Modern Age appeared first on Sequoia Capital.

This is the 32nd post in an ongoing series describing new privacy features in Brave. This post describes work done by Pavel Beloborodov (Senior Software Engineer), and was written by Shivan Kaul Sahib (Lead for Privacy Engineering).

Starting with desktop version 1.75, advanced Brave users will be able to write and inject their own scriptlets into a page, allowing for better control over their browsing experience.

Customize a website’s appearance with custom scriptlets

Brave already offers the cleanest and safest out-of-the-box browsing experience of any Web browser. Users get best-in-class 3rd-party ad and tracker blocking, privacy protections, cookie notice blocking, and many other enhancements (read more on our privacy updates blog series). Most importantly, these features are enabled by default, so users get the best possible experience the moment they install Brave. There’s no need to manually install Web extensions (and take on the risk of malware) or worry about Google’s Manifest V3 changes. With Brave, things just work.

However, some users want the freedom to customize how ads and trackers are blocked in their browser. In addition to offering the ability to write custom filters and subscribe to community-maintained ones, we now support custom scriptlets that enable advanced users to write JavaScript and inject it into any website.

With great power comes great responsibility

Adblockers like Brave Shields, uBlock Origin, and Adguard already use scriptlets internally for extended blocking capabilities. For instance, they can load a harmless version of a tracking script instead of the real one, maximizing privacy while minimizing breakage. Custom scriptlets bring this same power to Brave users. However, this power requires extreme caution. Only scripts that are confirmed safe should be injected, and for this reason the feature is “gated” behind a Developer mode flag in Shields > Content filtering. 

Custom scriptlets are stored locally in your browser, and never leave the device.

How to use custom scriptlets On desktop, open the Settings menu. Navigate to the Shields section, then to Content filtering. (Or you can go directly to brave://settings/shields/filters.) Scroll down and enable Developer mode. Under Custom scriptlets, click Add new scriptlet and write your JavaScript. Give it a name (note that the custom scriptlet always gets saved with a user- prefix). Then click Save.  Finally, insert the rule by adding a custom rule for the website you want to modify, and press Save changes. Note that you must use filter rule syntax, which looks something like “example.com##+js(name-of-your-scriptlet.js)”. For more information, see the custom scriptlet technical documentation.

Once the scriptlet is done, you can visit the website you just modified to see the difference:

Before: stackoverflow.com without the custom scriptlet

After: cleaned up stackoverflow.com with the custom scriptlet which removed the sidebars

Editing or deleting a custom scriptlet

You can easily edit or delete your custom scriptlet using the buttons on the right.

Another way Brave makes the Web user-first

By default, Brave prevents fingerprinting while ensuring functionality on websites by randomizing the output of many Web APIs. But with custom scriptlets, you could completely disable a Web API on a website you don’t trust. You could also inject a scriptlet to prevent websites from disabling right-click. The possibilities are endless.

Brave prioritizes the user first, in line with the W3C’s priority of constituencies. Our bet on best-in-class 3rd-party ad and tracker blocking reflects this user-first approach. We initially built custom scriptlets to help us with our own adblock-related debugging, but decided to release it as a feature because it proved so useful. Please give it a try, and tell us what you think on community.brave.com, GitHub or social media.

We break down DeFi x AI and chart where the burgeoning sector is headed next.

The Democratic Senator finally calls out debanking as bad.

Michael Saylor makes his aims clear with Bitcoin-flavored company rebrand.

The SEC's crypto cops are getting reassigned elsewhere.

Berachain, a hotly anticipated L1, is blending DeFi innovation with a thriving NFT scene.

Charting Michael Saylor's plans to leverage MSTR to get his hands on more BTC.

EVM-equivalent L1 Berachain comes to mainnet Thursday with its Proof of Liquidity model and tri-token economy.

Cloud computing hasn’t seen a fundamental upgrade since Amazon launched EC2 in 2006. Software development is fundamentally changing in the wake of breakthrough LLMs and generative AI. As software development is democratized, deployment and management must follow. We’re excited to be backing (together with USV) veteran open source infrastructure developer Evan Phoenix on his journey to change this with Miren.

Miren is building a modern cloud operating system, purpose-built for this new environment. Miren’s software will allow for hybrid deployments across home/office computers, data centers and existing clouds, creating an integrated, modular ecosystem which gives customers flexibility and reduces lock-in to vendors. This not only increases flexibility and reduces cost but gives customers the ability to easily integrate compute over private & sensitive data without compromising ease of management.

Our Thesis

AI changes deployment needs from two directions: 1) to train/fine-tune models, companies need to run compute workloads on sensitive private local data and 2) with generative AI, development is democratized but deployment is not. Miren meets both these needs with a flexible system that is both designed for scale and is opinionated enough to provide extremely simple deployment & management of code. With genAI apps and individual developers as an initial GTM, Miren can gain adoption from the bottom up and work its way into startups and then large enterprises with promise of easy compliance, lower costs, and maximum flexibility.

—

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article has been prepared solely for informational purposes and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase an interest in any entity managed by BlueYard Capital (“BlueYard”). Any reference to a specific company or security does not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell, hold, or directly invest in the company or its securities. It may not be modified, reproduced, or redistributed in whole or in part without the prior written consent of BlueYard. Portfolio company information presented herein is for informational purposes only and not intended to be a guarantee of certain investment results. BlueYard does not represent that the information herein is accurate, true, or complete, makes no warranty, express or implied, regarding the information herein and shall not be liable for any losses, damages, costs, or expenses relating to its adequacy, accuracy, truth, completeness, or use. All other company, product and service names or service marks of others and their use does not imply their endorsement of, or an association with this program.

The post Ramp’s Quest to Automate the CFO Suite appeared first on Greylock.

The new memecoin launcher taps Uniswap v4 to enable fairer types of fair launches.

WLFI may soon be pursuing token swaps as a path toward diversifying its treasury and boosting fees.

Some buyers believe a major player or fund was liquidated, triggering the price drawdown.

Frames v2 turns Farcaster posts into full-fledged mini-apps, unlocking streamlined DeFi, NFTs, and more.

Michael Saylor hits pause on his BTC accumulation.

The European Union has long championed itself as a global leader in data privacy, setting stringent standards with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, a recent court ruling has exposed a glaring contradiction: the European Commission, the body responsible for enforcing these rules, has been found guilty of violating them.

This “privacy paradox” raises serious questions about the EU’s commitment to its own principles and the effectiveness of its data protection framework.

The Case: A Breach of Trust

The case, which made headlines at the beginning of the year, involved a German citizen who, in March 2022, visited the now-inactive “futuru.europa.eu” website, a platform run by the European Commission. While registering for an event, the individual used the “Sign in with Facebook” option. However, this seemingly innocuous action resulted in the Commission transmitting the individual’s personal data, including their IP address and browser metadata, to Meta’s servers in the United States.

This data transfer violated EU data protection laws, specifically Article 46 of Regulation 2018/1725, which governs the transfer of personal data by EU institutions to third countries. The court found that at the time of the transfer, the US did not ensure an adequate level of protection for EU citizens’ personal data. Moreover, the Commission failed to demonstrate the existence of any appropriate safeguards, such as standard data protection clauses or contractual agreements, that would have legitimized the transfer.

The Ruling: A Landmark Decision

The General Court of the European Union ruled against the European Commission, ordering them to pay the individual €400 in compensation for the non-material damage caused by the data transfer. This landmark decision marks the first time the Commission has been held liable for infringing EU data protection laws.

The fact that the very institution tasked with upholding data privacy standards has itself violated them undermines public trust in the EU’s ability to protect personal data. It raises concerns about whether other EU institutions and bodies are also flouting these rules.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

The EU’s Privacy Paradox: Commission Busted for Breaking Its Own Rules was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

ECC is committed to deliver digital cash through privacy protocol (Zcash) and product innovation. We believe this is the best strategy to support our mission of economic freedom, including the […]

Source

This week, a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz had a rare and invaluable conversation with Dr. Clarence B. Jones, a pivotal figure in American history. 

Dr. Jones, who served as speechwriter, attorney, and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shared his personal insights on race, inclusion, and the lasting legacy of the civil rights movement in 2025.

In their wide-ranging discussion, Dr. Jones reflected on the timeless wisdom of Dr. King, quoting one of the most enduring lines from the "I Have a Dream" speech: “I want my four children to be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.”

“That, to me, is still, that’s the template,” Dr. Jones said. “That still remains a template.”

Their conversation covered critical themes in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, delving into the history of the movement, the lessons from "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and the profound impact Dr. King’s work continues to have today.

It was a rare opportunity to hear directly from someone who not only witnessed history but played a key role in shaping it, and we hope you enjoy it.

 

About Dr. Clarence B. Jones:

Dr. Clarence B. Jones served as legal counsel, strategic advisor, and draft speechwriter to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1960 until Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. During that time, Dr. King depended on Dr. Jones for legal and strategic counsel and assistance in drafting landmark speeches and public testimony. He is credited with writing the first seven paragraphs of the iconic I Have A Dream speech. 

Across the decades following Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, Clarence B. Jones worked to carry on Dr. King’s legacy, to continue the nonviolent struggle for social justice, voting rights, and democratic inclusion. He is the founder of the Dr. Clarence B. Jones Institute for Social Advocacy, and also serves as the Founding Director Emeritus of the Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Jones is also the author of three acclaimed books "What Would Martin Say?", "Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation" and "Last of the Lions".

 

Stay Updated: 

Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z

Ben on X:  http://twitter.com/bhorowitz

Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

Weekly Recap: DeepSeek causes panic, Trump keeps shipping.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 24th, 2025 — Jan 31st, 2025)

Get your weekly dose of PIVX! This update covers everything you need to know, from recent price movements and exciting project developments to key happenings in the PIVX community. Let’s dive in!

Top Stories CoinRabbit Listing: PIVX has maintained its streak of weekly exchange listings and integrations. The leading privacy-centric project has been integrated into CoinRabbit, an instant cryptocurrency lending service that allows users to borrow digital assets without the need for credit checks, monthly payments, or maximum loan sizes. Price Actions Masternode Count: 1,982 As with previous weeks, the daily USD value of PIV experienced some fluctuations, ranging between a low of $0.21 and a high of $0.23. This translates to an average daily value of approximately $0.23 per PIV over the past week. Despite the decline in prices, trading activity saw significant movement over the past week, with daily volumes ranging from $2 million up to $2.5 million. This resulted in a healthy average daily trading volume of $2.2 million. Overall, the total value of transactions during the week reached $15 million.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 24th, 2025 — Jan 31st, 2025) was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hot new features in v4 and hot new experiences that leverage them.

Happy 9th Birthday to US, PIVX!

What an incredible journey it’s been, and this past year has truly showcased the passion and dedication of our team.
We’ve achieved so much together:

Innovative Development:
~ Core Wallet v5.6.1 was a significant step forward, introducing lock shield notes and an improved GUI for a smoother and more secure user experience.
~ PIVX Labs rolled out PIVX Promo, enhancing our visibility and community engagement. ~MyPIVXWallet.org v2.2.1 has brought even more user-friendly features to the table.
~ One can now use #SHIELDed PIV to buy PIVCards (cards.pivxla.bz) gift cards from over 3000+ stores, blending privacy with everyday utility.
~ Recently, Chatstr — secure messaging ignited the world of #PIVX and #Nostr by making every mypivxwallet.org a unique identity, further enhancing privacy and connectivity.

New Listings:
PIVX has grown its presence with listings on additional exchanges like MEXC, ChangeNOW, LBank, MeileDVPN, and CoinRabbit. Additionally, we’ve secured perpetual listings on WEEX, MEXC, and http://XT.com, solidifying our position in the cryptocurrency market.

Community Growth:
Our community’s expansion continues with new community accounts on Twitter in PIVX Portugal, PIVX Turkey, PIVX Africa joining PIVX Espanol and PIVX Germany, fostering a more inclusive and diverse global community. Our community account PIVXcommunity on Twitter, bringing the community together with contests, memes and community members posts.

All in all, our past year was good to us. We are so thankful to everyone that continues to believe and support PIVX.
Just wait to see what we have planned going into our 9th year!

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

Happy 9th Birthday to US, PIVX! was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While AMMs (automated market makers) represent a DeFi innovation in themselves, research and experimentation have pushed the possibilities well beyond the limitations of the classic x*y=k constant product formula originally used by LPs. One of the main innovators in this field remains Balancer - from multi-token pools with different weights replicating TradFi indices, to dynamic ratios that can be changed under certain conditions preventing further imbalances, Balancer set in place user protection measures. With the recent release of Balancer V3, developers get more freedom to experiment with AMMs, introducing features such as hooks that enable limitless pool customisation, boosted pools that combine LP fees with yield farming from money markets, and many more.

Topics covered in this episode:

Balancer’s inception The evolution of AMMs Balancer vs. other AMM competitors Fungible vs. non-fungible liquidity Balancer v3 Boosted liquidity pools DevEx and hooks in Balancer v3 Preventing stablecoin depegs MEV mitigation & CoW AMM Scaling to L2s Gyroscope & QuantAMM Balancer’s B2C & B2B solutions

Episode links:

Fernando Martinelli on X Balancer on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

Blast Mobile's eye-watering APYs pin your dreams to a BLAST comeback.

The Fed delivers on analyst expectations despite Trump calling for further cuts.

The exchange's new offering goes the non-custodial route.

The long-time researcher earned support in an informal onchain vote from wallets holding over 50K ETH.

Matt Prewitt and Gary Zhexi Zhang discuss Chinese cybernetics, focusing on pioneer Qian Xuesen and how the field developed differently in China versus the West. They explore how Chinese cybernetics emerged as a practical tool for nation-building, examining its scientific foundations, political context, and broader cultural impact. Together, they discuss key concepts like information control systems while highlighting the field's interdisciplinary nature and its evolution from thermodynamic to information-based approaches.

Links & References: 

References:

The Critical Legacy of Chinese Cybernetics by Gary Zhexi Zhang | Combinations Magazine  Cybernetics - Wikipedia Norbert Wiener ("Father of Cybernetics") Whose entropy is it anyway? (Part 1: Boltzmann, Shannon, and Gibbs ) — Chris Adami Collection: Norbert Wiener papers | MIT ArchivesSpace Relationship between entropy of a language and crossword puzzles (a comment from Claude Shannon) - Mathematics Stack Exchange A Mathematical Theory of Communication BY C.E. SHANNON | Harvard Math A Mathematical Theory of Communication - Wikipedia Cybernetics - MIT Brownian motion - Wikipedia Intercontinental ballistic missile - Wikipedia AKA “ICBMs” Summary: The Macy Conferences Warren Sturgis McCulloch (Neuroscience), Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (Cultural Anthropology) Claude Shannon (Mathematician) The Bandwagon BY CLAUDE E. SHANNON From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner, introduction From Cybernetics to AI: the pioneering work of Norbert Wiener - Max Planck Neuroscience Marvin Minsky | AI Pioneer, Cognitive Scientist & MIT Professor | Britannic

Bios:

Gary Zhexi Zhang is an artist and writer. He is the editor of Catastrophe Time! (Strange Attractor Press, 2023) and most recently exhibited at the 9th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung.

Gary’s Social Links:

Gary Zhexi Zhang (@hauntedsurimi) / X 

Matt Prewitt (he/him) is a lawyer, technologist, and writer. He is the President of the RadicalxChange Foundation.

Matt’s Social Links:

ᴍᴀᴛᴛ ᴘʀᴇᴡɪᴛᴛ (@m_t_prewitt) / X

Connect with RadicalxChange Foundation:

RadicalxChange Website @RadxChange | Twitter RxC | YouTube RxC | Instagram RxC | LinkedIn Join the conversation on Discord.

Credits:

Produced by G. Angela Corpus. Co-Produced, Edited, and Audio Engineered by Aaron Benavides. Executive Produced by G. Angela Corpus and Matt Prewitt. Intro/Outro music by MagnusMoone, “Wind in the Willows,” is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

The forthcoming HyperEVM launch is attracting a wave of new DeFi players looking to tap into Hyperliquid's success.

Robinhood readies more sophisticated crypto trading tools for retail traders.

The Trump Media & Technology Group christens a new crypto-related fintech venture.

The Plomin hard fork will introduce some long overdue governance upgrades.

The highly-anticipated Abstract mainnet has arrived. Here's a quickstart guide on how to dive in.

Coin Burn: Understanding PIVX’s Deflationary Mechanism

Many cryptocurrencies have a fixed maximum supply, creating an artificial sense of scarcity. For instance, the maximum supply of Bitcoin is 21 million. PIVX, however, operates differently. The leading privacy-centric crypto does not have a cap on its max supply.

It’s easy to see why that might seem counterintuitive. After all, what would happen to the value of gold or diamonds if their supply were infinite? However, PIVX maintains a deflationary mechanism through its “coin burn” system to ensure that the value of PIV does not go into a free fall. Here’s all you need to know about PIVX’s coin burn.

What is a Coin Burn?

Imagine burning a portion of your cash — it’s essentially destroyed, removed from circulation forever. A “coin burn” in the cryptocurrency world operates similarly. It involves permanently removing a portion of a cryptocurrency’s existing supply from the market, making the remaining coins inherently scarcer.

How Coin Burning Works in PIVX

Every transaction on the PIVX network incurs a small fee. Unlike many cryptocurrencies where these fees go to miners or nodes, in PIVX, all transaction fees are permanently removed from circulation. They are effectively “burned” by being sent to an unspendable address.

By removing coins from the circulating supply, transaction fees create a deflationary pressure on PIVX. This helps to counteract the inflationary effects of newly minted coins, which are generated as rewards for network participants (stakers and masternodes).

PIVX employs a “tail emission” model for block rewards. This incentivizes network participants to maintain and secure the network without imposing high transaction fees on users. The network’s static emission rate currently results in an annual inflation rate of approximately 12.68% (as of January 2024), which gradually diminishes towards zero.

In the absence of any coin loss or burning, it would theoretically take roughly 20 years to double the current PIVX supply. But due to PIVX’s built-in deflationary mechanism — coin burning, the actual time to double the supply is likely to be significantly longer.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

Coin Burn: Understanding PIVX’s Deflationary Mechanism was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

MOVE prices climbed 20% Tuesday as Trump's World Liberty Financial made a buy and Elon's D.O.G.E. partnership rumors circulated.

French regulators renew interest in Binance money laundering allegations.

Trump's string of successful Senate confirmations of his cabinet picks continues.

Crypto's latest AI coin, $VVV, arrives with a billion-dollar bang on Base.

How is AI reshaping modern warfare? 

Speaking with a16z Growth General Partner David George, Anduril cofounder and CEO Brian Schimpf discusses how AI helps humans make better strategic decisions by sorting through the enormous amount of data collected from modern battlefields. Schimpf also discusses navigating the US government’s complex procurement processes, using commercial technologies to kickstart their own product development, and the growing opportunities for startups in defense. Throughout, Brian offers a deep dive into the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and the future of defense.

This episode is part of our AI Revolution series, where we explore how industry leaders are leveraging generative AI to steer innovation and navigate the next major platform shift. Discover more insights and content from the AI Revolution series at a16z.com/AIRevolution.

 

Resources: 

Find Brian on X: https://x.com/schimpfbrian

Find David on X: https://x.com/davidgeorge83

 

Stay Updated: 

Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

OpenSea just added a fresh wave of users to its OS2 private beta. Here’s a quick look at what’s new.

Crypto's latest SocialFi trend looks to pump memes and pump the conversation.

The Chinese AI startup's advances that rival OpenAI has sent shivers down America's capital markets.

The penthouse apartment, a testament to his success, felt strangely alien. Mark paced the plush carpet, the city lights a shimmering backdrop to his anxieties. Tonight, he would pitch his investment strategy to Victoria, a pivotal moment in his career. The pressure was immense, a weight that had been building since his childhood.

He remembered the worn kitchen table, the smell of his mother’s cooking, and the constant worry etched on his father’s face. His father, a blue-collar worker, had always dreamed of a better life for his family, a life free from the anxieties of financial instability. Mark, the eldest son, had felt the weight of those expectations heavy on his shoulders.

There had been lean years, times when his father had worked two jobs, his mother scrimping and saving every penny. Mark, instead of playing with his friends, would spend his evenings helping at the local grocery store, and the sting of cold coins in his pocket was a stark reminder of their financial realities.

He’d vowed to break the cycle, to build a life of security and comfort for his family. College had been a relentless pursuit, fuelled by scholarships and late-night shifts at the library. He’d interned at a small hedge fund, spending his days glued to the Bloomberg terminal, devouring every financial news article he could get his hands on.

He’d faced setbacks, rejections, and the constant fear of failure. But he’d never given up. He’d learned to navigate the cutthroat world of finance, honing his skills, building his network, always pushing himself harder, always demanding more.

Tonight, he wasn’t just pitching an investment strategy; he was pitching his own story, a story of resilience, of overcoming adversity, of turning his childhood struggles into a powerful driving force. He would prove to Victoria, to himself, and to his family that he was worthy of his success.

He took a deep breath, the city lights a reflection of the ambition burning within him. He was ready!!!

To be continued…

Read episode 1 here.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

Episode 2: The Weight of Expectations was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Weekly Recap: Trump takes action the first week back as ETFs are filed amidst the potential for a Digital Asset Stockpile, not a Strategic Reserve.

The regulatory tides just shifted in a major way.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 17th, 2025 — Jan 24th, 2025)

Welcome to the PIVX weekly update!

Dive deeper into the world of PIVX with this weekly update. We’ll explore recent price actions, discuss exciting project advancements, and highlight key community developments.

Top Stories New Listing on SuperEx: You can now trade the PIVX/USDT pair on SuperEx! PIVX has added a new exchange to its growing list of crypto platforms. The latest addition, SuperEx, has more than 10 million registered users across 160+ countries. Secure Messaging with PIVX: PIVX Labs has unveiled a new independent project, Chartstr, a secure messaging platform that integrates seamlessly with the PIVX ecosystem. Leveraging the Nostr protocol, Chatstr allows users to utilize their existing My PIVX Wallet seed phrases for login, fostering a decentralized and private communication experience.

Future plans include integrating PIVX features like Promos and Shield profiles directly within the Chatstr platform, further enhancing the user experience and solidifying PIVX’s position as a leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency. Note: “Chatstr” is a temporary codename.

Price Actions Over the past week, the Daily USD Value was between $0.23 and $0.3, averaging $0.25 per PIV. The Daily Trading Volume fluctuated between $2.3 million and $3.29 million, with an Average Daily Volume of $2.76 million. The total transactional volume within the period in review was around $19 million.

PIVX. Your Rights. Your Privacy. Your Choice.
To stay on top of PIVX news please visit PIVX.org and Discord.PIVX.org.

PIVX Weekly Pulse (Jan 10th, 2025 — Jan 17th, 2025) was originally published in PIVX on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

TRUMP's first onchain liquidity hub surges on memecoin excitement.

CZ is done sitting on the sidelines after his brief prison term.

Trump's latest executive order tasks czar David Sacks with creating a working group to tackle regulation.

David Balland had been taken from his home in France on Tuesday.

A new paper on stablecoins and the singlness of money discussing:

How different forms of money have evolved over time; How singleness is defined, its history, and the distinction between singleness in theory and in practice; The implications that the interplay of stablecoins and traditional forms of money may have for singleness, including the nature of stablecoins; The implications for the integration of stablecoins into the financial services ecosystem; The mechanisms by which singleness in practice is currently achieved today; and Recommendations for the role of policy in preserving singleness.

The post Single-minded? Rethinking our approach to the ‘singleness of money’ could help to reap the benefits of stablecoins appeared first on GDF.

Kiln operates as a staking-as-a-service platform, primarily focused on Ethereum, enabling users to stake assets programmatically, managing validators, rewards, and commissions through an API-first approach. In addition, it offers white-label solutions that allow institutional clients to integrate staking functionalities into their own offerings, with unified API for all assets and rewards, making it easier for businesses to provide staking services without developing the infrastructure themselves. With more than $13bn worth of assets secured, Kiln has proven its reliability, having no slashing events thus far. Moreover, Kiln widget offers a no-code experience for launching custom earn options, integrated with every major wallet and custodian.

Topics covered in this episode:

Laszlo’s background Founding Kiln Enterprise-grade validators and slashing DevOps & infrastructure maintenance ETH staking and custody Liquid staking and restaking The evolution of staking providers and requirements DeFi yield Institutional investors Kiln roadmap

Episode links:

Laszlo Szabo on X Kiln on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst.

Today we’re excited to announce Rerank on Brave Search, a simple yet powerful feature to customize search rankings by boosting or removing domains from search results.

Rerank allows users to tweak the one-size-fits-all ranking of search engines with their own explicit input, providing a more transparent personalization compared to other more opaque forms of personalization that neither help with algorithmic transparency nor user privacy. Rerank is available for free and available for all searches made on search.brave.com.

Make Brave Search your own with Rerank

The new Rerank feature introduces a panel on the search results page to give individual users more control over the presence and ranking order of the websites they see in Brave Search. The panel lists domains, each with the option to thumbs up (raise) or thumbs down (discard) the domains from the results. From that point forward, raised domains will be boosted higher up in the rankings a user sees, while discarded domains will no longer be included among the results. A domain’s up-rank or down-rank can be adjusted or undone at any time.

“Rerank enables users to easily adjust search results according to their preferences, explicitly, while being in full control. No opaque personalization is done by unknown algorithms, as Rerank puts users in charge of their search experience.”

– Arjaldo Karaj, VP, Brave Search

Use of Rerank will not change domain presence or ranking for other users or on Brave Search as a whole—Rerank only applies for the users who choose to use the feature, and only on that user’s device. Rerank does this while upholding Brave’s industry-leading privacy promises. Rerank does not track users 1, and modifications can be cleared at any time in the search settings.

When and how to use Rerank

Rerank expands Brave’s mission of a user-first Web. Use of a search engine is personal and a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t always best. Consider a professional interior designer who scours the Web for inspiration to support their work. They may not get much value from sites that publish content for personal DIY projects. Thanks to Rerank, they can now discard unwanted sites and curate a more tailored set of domains for their professional needs. If that same interior designer is a paid subscriber to some online decor magazines, they could use Rerank to boost results from those sites.

Answer with AI, the Brave Search generative-AI feature that provides concise answers to question-like queries, will also benefit from Rerank modifications. When changes are made to the user’s own search rankings, Answer with AI will source some (though not all) of the information it uses to generate answers from these newly-modified search results.

Personalized search at Brave offers multiple options

Goggles, the technology powering Rerank, were first introduced to Brave Search in June 2022. Goggles gives you a way to create, apply and share custom filters that change the way results are ranked. Examples of Goggles include  “News from the left,” “News from the right,” and “Tech blogs”.

Goggles are one of several ways Brave ensures algorithmic transparency and openness in search. We don’t editorialize Brave Search, but all search engines have unique intrinsic biases that result from data and algorithmic choices. Goggles empowers users to counter any intrinsic biases in the algorithm and allows anyone to create search use-cases that may be niche for an all-purpose search engine. The community of Brave Search users can create a Goggle, and “publish” it for any other Brave Search user to use, or even copy-and-modify for their own preferences.

Rerank isn’t a replacement for Goggles, but rather a faster, more accessible way for individual users—regardless of technical ability—to achieve a similar result.

For those interested in switching between pre-made reranking configurations, default Goggles can be applied by navigating to the Goggles tab alongside Images, Videos, and News tabs on the search results page (SERP). Brave also lists popular Goggles, surfaces an open repository of Goggles made by the Brave community, and has guides for users to make and submit their own.

About Brave Search

Brave Search is the fastest growing independent search engine since Bing. Unlike Big Tech search engines, Brave Search doesn’t profile its users. And unlike supposedly alternative engines, Brave Search serves results from an independent index of the Web. This means Brave Search can offer both industry-leading privacy and an effective counter to the bias and censorship prevalent in Big Tech’s personalization.

Brave Search also offers “Answer with AI,” a real-time answer engine which provides AI-powered summaries at the top of the search results page whenever a question-like query is detected, giving users quick, concise information.

Brave Search continues to reach new highs, serving more than 38 million queries per day (and more than 1.2 billion queries each month). It’s the default search engine for most new users of the Brave browser, which now has over 75 million users worldwide.

Brave Search also offers a Search API so that other companies can power their search and AI apps.

Technical note: Rerank changes are stored locally in your browser’s cookie storage (which can be manually cleared at any time) and passed to search via a cookie. Similar to a user’s IP address and any other personally identifiable information, Brave Search does not use this Rerank cookie to track user queries. Learn more. ↩︎

The Base DeFi protocol looks to level up margin trading.

A federal court in Texas knocks down the contentious smart contract sanction.

Trump fulfills another campaign promise to crypto voters.

Kim Asendorf's PXL DEX is an onchain art collection that links NFTs and ERC-20s in a way we've never seen before.

Circle pushes forward as it acquires USYC issuer Hashnote.

The Stochastic Mindset

AI tools will change the way we work by changing the way we think.

By Konstantine Buhler Published January 22, 2025

Most descriptions of AI’s potential to change how we work are by now familiar: AI will automate repetitive tasks, increase worker impact, improve job satisfaction and disrupt entire industries. But how will using AI tools change the actual experience of work? Will AI change the way we think?

AI is the next era of computing, and one of its hallmarks is moving from deterministic to probabilistic or “stochastic” outputs. As AI spreads, workers are engaging with a new software paradigm that calls for a new mindset. In a recent episode of Sequoia’s Training Data podcast, Dust co-founder Gabriel Hubert introduced the concept of the “stochastic mindset” as “the biggest shift in the use of the tools that we have since the advent of the computer.”

Randomness and uncertainty are a part of life, but in the context of modern knowledge work we have been trained to optimize for certainty and predictability. The stochastic mindset invites us to move from rote workflows to iterative development of tools, content, strategy and more.

The stochastic mindset moves us from having minimal leverage on a task and 100% certainty of its outcome to 100% leverage on a task and far less certainty on the exact manifestation of its outcome. This transition is the difference between doing something yourself and delegating a task to someone else. 

AI as exoskeleton for work

The shift to the stochastic mindset shows how the impactful productivity gains from AI will actually be achieved. By making it easier to access and synthesize information, workers will consume and produce  much more information. OpenEvidence, Harvey and Dust are examples of products that take the friction out of accessing and making use of relevant information in the context of doctors, lawyers and knowledge workers more generally.

AI expands information through generalization. But it also reduces by summarizing information. In the AI age, there is uncertainty in exactly the message being delivered in exchange for speed and leverage. The quantity of information itself requires probabilistic approaches to manage and infer simplifications.

Age of AI (Circa 2023)

AI tools provide drafts or suggestions, not definitive answers. They will improve—but always to the point of some probability. Those reading—especially the quantum and stats enthusiasts—will be quick to assert that everything is probabilistic. Fair. But the history of computing has been one darn near determinism. AI is reaching a threshold of scale where being probabilistic is more efficient than being deterministic. 

What this means for us as workers will be seismic. Our tools imitate us and then we imitate them. If our predominant model of a machine becomes stochastic—embracing randomness—our minds will follow suit. We will adopt a more questioning stance toward the data at hand, realizing it is infused with randomness. Perhaps most importantly, the stochastic mindset can accommodate change and is adapted specifically for change. 

Whether you’re a founder or a knowledge worker or a student, your future prospects will have a lot to do with how well you adapt to change. Engaging with more uncertain outputs from AI systems, workers will need to strengthen their critical thinking skills. This is not just a short term adaptation resulting from the tendency of LLMs to hallucinate. Our demands on these systems will continue to outstrip their abilities, and for some use cases may become more variable over time, not less. As Ilya Sutskever said about AI reasoning systems in his recent talk at NeurIps 2024, “the more it reasons the more unpredictable it becomes.”

Dust is an example of a platform making custom agents accessible to non-technical workers. They aim to build “horizontal sandboxes” where workers can create their own agents, assistants and tools. Over time, teams will manage AI agents. As Jensen Huang put it at his CES Keynote this month, “IT teams will become HR departments of AI.” These systems are the record of management and action. Companies like Factory will enable management of coding agents, XBOW will be the management of cybersecurity agents and Rox will provide management of selling agents. 

Instead of thinking about AI purely in terms of how much opex it will save companies, the stochastic mindset focuses our attention on AI as a power assist—an exoskeleton for work.

Adapting to 21st century realities

We can see the stochastic mindset as an evolutionary and adaptive response to the reality of the world in the 21st century. Humanity is faced with increasing levels of social, political, economic and environmental uncertainty. The accelerating speed of change (models/robot/rockets keep getting better/faster/cheaper) also means accelerating volatility.

Fast iteration and execution favors small teams with AI superpowers. The stochastic mindset is also the builder mindset: iterative, experimental, skeptical and data-driven. An intriguing detail that Gabriel reports is that the patterns of usage of Dust within organizations becomes a heat map for identifying builders. 

The stochastic mindset is also the scientific mindset: forming hypotheses and seeking to prove or disprove them. Promoters of AGI and superintelligence (including Vlad Tenev at Harmonic) have science firmly in their sights. But the bigger consequence of the diffusion of stochastic AI systems may turn out to be the increasing prevalence of scientific thinking among humans.

Founders need the stochastic mindset

When people say that product-market fit is as much art as science they are perhaps thinking of science in deterministic terms. Founders have a stochastic learning problem that they confront every day: the changing needs of their customers in a changing world.

Among other things, contemporary founders need the stochastic mindset to take advantage of assumed but unpredictable improvements in AI models. Their teams need to plan product roadmaps in anticipation of what may be possible soon. Founders also now need to engage with research in an open-ended way—uncertainty can also be opportunity.

Part of the stochastic mindset is the ability to understand constraints. Any process has to run in a limited time. Compute resources are limited and so is communication within a given system. All of these factors lead to non-determinism, but the constraints on human cognition are notoriously more stringent than those of machines. 

Most importantly, by developing their own stochastic approach, founders can solve their customers’ problems too. By infusing the stochastic mindset into their products, founders can help users take advantage of these new capabilities:

Help workers become builders Help students become researchers Help consumers make good choices among complex offerings Help everyone learn to consume AI services productively Giving humans more time to think

A central problem in making AI agents reliable is endowing them with the right guardrails, but their unpredictable nature is also a feature, not just a bug.

Indeed, one of the big takeaways from the story of AlphaGo turned out to be its effect on human Go players. A 2023 paper on the effect of superhuman artificial intelligence on human decision-making concluded that the novelty in moves by human Go players increased significantly after AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol. As Garry Kaspirov put it, “I was the first knowledge worker whose job was threatened by a machine.” That was back in 1996. Yet the game of chess is far from a relic of the past, it has wider adoption than ever and new techniques. AI is used both as a sparring partner and a coach.

The stochastic mindset is not actually a new way of thinking—though the adoption of AI tools is about to make it much more prevalent. Less line workers and more creative artists and strategic managers. Less programming and more teaching. The stochastic mindset will help make us all more comfortable at a higher level of abstraction. From there we can see AI as both an executor of our intentions and as a teacher. In a world where nothing is certain, adaptability becomes even more valuable, allowing us to navigate through the unpredictable and embrace new possibilities with self-determination and creativity.

Share Share this on Facebook Share this on Twitter Share this on LinkedIn Share this via email Related Topics #AI #Inference Dust Co-founders: Multiple Agents to Get the Most From AI hosted by Konstantine Buhler and Pat Grady Podcast Listen AI Recruits a New Hybrid Workforce by Konstantine Buhler Perspective Read AI 50: Companies of the Future Konstantine Buhler on the 2024 AI 50 list Perspective Read AI and the Frontier Paradox By Konstantine Buhler Perspective Read JOIN OUR MAILING LIST Get the best stories from the Sequoia community. Email address Leave this field empty if you’re human:

The post Stochastic Mindset Perspective appeared first on Sequoia Capital.

The Zcash Foundation is pleased to announce the release of FROST v2.1.0. This release includes a number of important changes and improvements to the FROST reference implementation.

This release  includes the frost-secp256k1-tr crate, which allows the generation of Bitcoin Taproot (BIP340/BIP341) compatible signatures and will be useful for ZSAs also, since BIP340 signatures will be used for issuing ZSAs.

Other notable features in this release include improvements to the distributed key generation (DKG) protocol to support refreshing shares in the case where you want to remove a participant (e.g. due to key loss). It is worth noting that in this case, should the key be recovered, it is still possible for the original participant key set to be used in a FROST signature round. For more details, check out the Refreshing Shares section in the FROST book. We have also added the possibility to identify which participant sent an invalid secret share, during the third DKG round. Finally, it is now possible to serialize DKG secret packages to allow for asynchronous key generation.

You can see a full copy of all of the included changes in the v2.1.0 Release Notes on GitHub.

The post FROST 2.1.0 Release appeared first on Zcash Foundation.

Intelligent automation is transforming industries by tackling messy, unstructured workflows that traditional Robotic Process Automation (RPA) couldn’t handle. In this episode, a16z partner Kimberly Tan discusses the shift from rigid RPA systems to AI-powered agents and why this evolution unlocks massive opportunities in legacy markets.

Drawing on her article "RIP to RPA: The Rise of Intelligent Automation," Kimberly shares real-world examples of companies revolutionizing referral management, and highlights how startups can build impactful solutions in this space.

Resources:

Find Kimberly on X: https://x.com/kimberlywtan

Read Kimberly’s article: https://a16z.com/rip-to-rpa-the-rise-of-intelligent-automation/

Stay Updated: 

Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

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Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

The post Welcome, Mor Chen! appeared first on Greylock.

A Robust Safeguard for Generative AI Published January 21, 2025 By Lacy Warner Lacy Warner is an Epic Story Hunter, documentary director, and nonfiction writer who contributes regularly to Vogue, as well as NY Magazine, Guernica, The LARB and Longreads. Photography: Katie Thompson How a former Harvard professor left the security of the Ivory Tower in order to keep AI secure. Published January 21, 2025 By Lacy Warner Lacy Warner is an Epic Story Hunter, documentary director, and nonfiction writer who contributes regularly to Vogue, as well as NY Magazine, Guernica, The LARB and Longreads. Photography: Katie Thompson

In January 2023, Yaron Singer woke up in a suburban Las Vegas Airbnb with the feeling that things were finally on the upswing for his company, Robust Intelligence. The startup was gaining traction as one of the world’s top AI security firms, having developed the industry’s first AI firewall—a model engine that exposed AI safety failures and inaccuracies, protecting AI technology from malicious external threats, and also from making critical mistakes. 

Singer believed he was crossing T’s and dotting I’s away from landing one of his biggest clients yet: A leading consulting and systems integration company looking to ink a seven figure, multi-year deal. To celebrate, he was treating his team to a performance of Cirque Du Soleil’s ‘O’ that evening as part of their company offsite. Unfortunately, those death-defying, aquatic acrobatics wouldn’t be the day’s only brush with mortality. 

Emerging from his room, Singer got a call from the managing director of AI for the consulting company—to tie up loose ends, he assumed. Instead, the manager shared the news that their CEO had just returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos where one new technology had dominated the conversation: Large Language Models (LLMs). AI was heading in a new direction—from predictive to generative—and the CEO was worried that Robust’s offerings were no longer relevant. 

Singer quickly realized that this wasn’t about losing one client, this was about potentially losing every client. And yet, in spite of the existential threat this posed to his business, underneath it all Singer felt stirrings of excitement. He had been anticipating an AI watershed moment like this all the way back since his graduate studies at UC Berkeley. If LLMs were about to change the world, Robust Intelligence had the potential to play a meaningful role as a safeguard for the technology. 

Now in order to make that happen, Singer and his team needed to adapt their offerings. And they needed to do it quickly. 

Singer is the youngest in an Israeli family of academics where everyone—Mom, Dad and sister—have earned PhDs in computer science. There was something of an unspoken expectation that Singer would follow in his family’s well-trodden path, so much so that Singer remembers asking his mother at age six if he too had to get a PhD when he got older. (She laughed and said no. He remembers not being convinced.) 

His ambivalence about following in his family’s scholarly footsteps remained until he had an epiphany about academia’s appeal as an undergraduate. “I learned about all these beautiful constructs and systems all the way from math, to theory, to computer science,” Singer says. “To imagine that I could make an everlasting contribution to one of those fields—there’s nothing like it.” 

Singer enrolled in a PhD in computer science at UC Berkeley, which is where he first grew curious about startup culture. “I was doing this work on algorithms but what I wanted to do was apply it to the real world,” Singer says. “As an academic, nobody would talk to me, and I needed data. So the only way I could think of was to start a company, implement my algorithm and collect a lot of data.” 

His company, BIDWAVE, used machine learning and algorithms to determine how users should be compensated for posting ads on social media. But once the system was built, he kept getting wrong answers, revealing a very inconvenient truth about AI: “Everywhere that we have algorithmic decision-making that is taking AI input is extremely vulnerable,” Singer says. The algorithms, he concluded, were in trouble. 

Singer uses the example of Google Maps: You put in your destination and it finds the fastest route. It does this in two steps: the first relies on machine learning predictions about how long it will take to get to each location, and then once it has that information, it runs an algorithm. “The problem is that the times from one street to another—they’re not the real times, they’re predictions by some AI model, but the algorithm treats that as the truth,” Singer says. If the machine learning models are not exact—“and they’re never exact”—they undermine the quality of the algorithms making decisions. 

As he dug in further, Singer saw that there wasn’t just a hole in the market for a product that could keep businesses safe from these issues—there was no market at all. 

Meromit Singer, Yaron’s wife, a computational biologist who also completed her PhD in computer science at UC Berkeley, puts her husband’s insight plainly. “He was really the first to realize how dangerous it can be to have all these companies running their machine learning and assuming that the parameters are correct—but they’re not completely correct,” she says. “There’s some error there. And then what guarantees do you have and what vulnerabilities do you have?”

For some, stumbling upon this realization would have been enough to drop out of grad school and immediately pivot into startup mode, but Singer still felt the pull of the ivory tower—this time to the East Coast to teach at Harvard. Ironically, thousands of miles from Silicon Valley, Harvard is where he wound up meeting his future cofounder, Kojin Oshiba, an undergraduate seated in the front row of his graduate seminar.

“As an academic, nobody would talk to me, and I needed data. So the only way I could think of was to start a company, implement my algorithm and collect a lot of data.” 

Yaron Singer

While Singer was brought up in a household dedicated to computer science, Oshiba was raised in Tokyo by two serious bibliophiles: His father was a librarian and his mother worked in a bookstore. (In fact, Oshiba’s first name comes from the novel, The Wayfarer—which translates in Japanese as Kōjin—after his mother completed her thesis on the book.) 

For all of the ways their childhoods were different, Oshiba and Singer shared one very specific experience in common: Both are considered Third Culture Kids, a term coined by the American sociologist Ruth Useem which defines the experience of expatriate children who spend their formative years outside of their passport country. Singer had spent part of his childhood living in Colorado where his father was on a teaching sabbatical, while Oshiba spent three years in Canada where his father worked in the East Asian studies department at the University of Montreal. 

The move to Montreal got off to a rocky start. “I went there and I spoke zero English, so I struggled quite a bit for the first year,” Oshiba says. “But after three years I came back, and from there onwards, I felt like I didn’t exactly fit into the Japanese society.” Having had a taste of the wider outside world, Oshiba wanted more—he decided to attend university in America at Harvard. 

As the novelist Graham Greene famously wrote, “There is always one moment in childhood where the door opens and lets the future in.” For Oshiba, this was when he received special permission to take Singer’s graduate seminar and found himself in the front row, staring at the man who would eventually become his cofounder of a company valued at almost a half-billion dollars. 

Singer first took note of Oshiba when Oshiba led an impressive workshop on TensorFlow, the open-source software library for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Shortly thereafter, Singer and Oshiba began to co-write and publish papers. For his part, Oshiba always felt that Singer respected him as a true collaborator in spite of their gap in experience. “I felt like I was working on a problem with someone who’s obviously very smart and who’s accomplished a lot in his life, but it wasn’t like ‘Kojin, go and implement this.’” Oshiba says. “It was very much incubating ideas together and ‘what do you think? And why don’t we do this?’”

On his end, Singer was coming around to the notion of a life outside of academia. He had been granted tenure early, and with this goal achieved, realized how eager he was to see the practical applications of his research. The time felt right to build a company. 

At the end of the semester, Singer invited Oshiba into his office to ask him if he wanted to co-found a startup. Oshiba was equally excited by the prospect of collaboration, wherever that might take them. “Before asking any details,” Oshiba remembers, “I said, yes.” Partnership confirmed, Singer and Oshiba were just left with the question of what exactly they wanted to co-found. 

The pair kept coming back to the inconvenient truth about algorithms Singer had stumbled upon years ago at Berkeley—that AIs were fallible, resulting in vulnerabilities and inaccuracies in any algorithms that rely upon them. This led them to a simple, novel concern about AI security: “AI and machine learning, they’re glorified algorithms—like algorithms on steroids,” Oshiba says. “So the activity of identifying limitations in algorithms is identifying limitations in AI.” 

They set out creating a series of axioms they believed gave their company a purpose: the first, that AI would continue grow at an an exponential pace; the second, that with everything they knew about AI, there was no responsible way to grow the field without developing a way to secure it; and third, the corollary of these would lead the AI security market to eventually evolve into a multi-billion dollar market. 

It was nearing the end of 2019 when Singer created a pitch-cum-pilot program for JP Morgan Chase that revealed the weaknesses in the bank’s use of predictive AI. But Chase turned them down after an engineer on their team concluded there was currently no need for a product like theirs. 

“AI and machine learning, they’re glorified algorithms—like algorithms on steroids. So the activity of identifying limitations in algorithms is identifying limitations in AI.”

Kojin Oshiba

Around the same time, Singer went to San Francisco to meet with investors, including Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia Capital who had been a VP of Engineering at Google. If anyone was going to get the importance of their idea, Singer hoped it would be Bill. “Coming from his role at Google, I felt like Bill knew more about AI than I did,” says Singer, “He didn’t need to be convinced about our assertions that AI will be eating the world, and that it’s a vulnerable technology.”  

Singer was right. Coughran not only became Robust’s first investor, but he also introduced Singer to Chase’s head of AI and Quantum Security, who recognized that even though there might not be an immediate need for an AI firewall, there would be far sooner than most were expecting. In February 2020, he told Singer that he’d have the budget to kick off a program in six months. One month later, Covid-19 shut down the world.

Now, in addition to getting his company off the ground, Singer was also learning how to run it fully remotely, trying to land his first customers in a market besieged by high interest rates and inflation. Finally, in September of 2020, Robust Intelligence landed the first sale of their AI firewall product to Expedia after a cold outreach on LinkedIn. 

Expedia’s VP of data science was sold on the promise of how Robust’s product could be used for quality assurance, perhaps even more than its value as a security tool. At the time, he had a lot of PhDs in his organization who were terrific researchers but lacked coding expertise, and he believed Robust’s technology could help identify the issues in the models they were building. The only problem—Robust still didn’t actually have a product. They’d used Figma to create a mock-up of the product that looked real. Expedia was willing to partner with Robust despite their product’s nascency because there was simply nothing else like it in the market. “I was like, ‘Shit, now we have to make this work,’” Oshiba remembers. 

Expedia had given Robust sample data that allowed them to test their technology, but not enough to get it working at scale. This left Robust hoping for something that few other startups ever would: a lengthy contract process so that their engineers had runway to perfect the firewall.

At the time, Expedia’s AI models were predictive, or discriminative in nature. They would show a consumer the cost of a hotel or flight, and the prediction of whether or not they would purchase the room or the ticket was AI driven. Robust’s firewall needed to analyze the accuracy of Expedia’s AI’s predictions, while also testing it for vulnerabilities. Thanks to an intensive push, the fledgling startup looked like it was on track to deliver a functional product by the time the contract was signed, but three months before their planned delivery to Expedia they hit another snag. Seven of Robust’s twelve staff members left the company, discouraged by the fact that they’d only managed to win a single customer a year and a half in.

Other founders might have thrown in the towel after this setback, but Singer knew in his core that the AI revolution was just on the horizon. At a picnic table near Robust’s San Francisco office, Singer sat down with Oshiba to confirm whether or not they wanted to recommit to their vision for the company, or if they were going to return money to investors. Both remained all-in.

So with a ‘streamlined’ team of just five employees, Robust Intelligence pushed forward and managed to ship to Expedia on time. Chase soon returned from their pandemic reticence, and then other customers followed suit, including Deloitte, Intuit, the US Government and a certain consulting and systems integration firm who were interested in inking a seven-figure deal. Singer decided it was time to take the team to Vegas to celebrate.

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The fateful Vegas phone call finally confirmed the AI inflection point Singer had been waiting for. AI’s ubiquity—and a corresponding uptick in desire to keep it secure—had finally arrived. Up until that point, Robust had been securing predictive AI, like the work they did for Expedia. ChatGPT (and LLMs more broadly) didn’t predict, they generated—creating images and text based on prompts issued by a user. According to Singer, this ultimately deepened AI’s security risks in profound ways. “The leap to extracting personal medical records or tax information is short,” Singer says. “The privacy breach is unprecedented.”

This threat also created an unprecedented opportunity for Robust, assuming they could figure out how to update their offerings fast enough to keep the company afloat. “All the customers were on hold because they weren’t going to be putting any money on non-generative AI and they didn’t know what their product roadmap was going to look like,” Singer says. 

He proposed a tiger team of two engineers that Oshiba would lead, with the goal of having a working generative AI Firewall prototype within six weeks. Then they would implement a constant six week release cycle, adding more and more test cases, protection mechanisms (and staff) with every new iteration. Within six months, the entire company was focused on building the guardrails that could keep LLMs safe for companies to implement.

Singer met their first paying generative AI customer, a Fortune 100 company, at a Cisco conference where they had been invited to speak after word got out about their latest AI firewall. The company signed on for a pilot, which revealed major vulnerabilities in their system. It also led to a discovery: Companies that were deploying generative AI applications were often fine-tuning existing foundational models in an effort to improve accuracy and cost effectiveness, but in the process, they were exposing those models to new security risks. After Robust presented their findings, the company immediately extended their contract. 

On December 27th, 2023, The New York Times further corroborated Robust’s value proposition. They sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that their published work had been used to train chatbots. In 2024, Robust was invited to advise on the lawsuit, and helped to demonstrate the simplicity with which LLMs can be trained on copyrighted materials from the internet, which in turn can make that content accessible to a tech-savvy bad actor. “What our team discovered is that anyone can actually extract complete articles from models like ChatGPT,” Singer says. “Which shows that not only can someone with malicious intent get access to copyrighted material through these models, but that they can also access the data that was used to train these models, which then becomes a huge privacy concern.”

Around the same time, President Biden signed the Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, a growing awareness of what Signer had known for the better part of the last decade: In order to harness the power of AI, you first need to understand its risks and how to keep it secure. 

Robust Intelligence began 2024 very differently than 2023. Instead of losing a major client and having to change their entire product and technology, they were approached with a new opportunity. 

Despite their increasing success, Singer could see that LLMs were scaling faster than his company possibly could. In order to have the impact he aspired to, he would have to partner with a larger company. So in the summer of 2024, after receiving three other offers, Singer accepted Cisco’s $400M bid to acquire Robust Intelligence.  

He views Cisco as precisely the kind of company that can give Robust the necessary support and infrastructure to secure an ever-expanding AI landscape. That infrastructure, powered by a workforce of twenty-five thousand people, creates a step change in terms of Robust’s reach and opportunity. “AI is now being put at the front of Cisco’s focus,” Singer says. “And Robust Intelligence now has the opportunity to lead the charge.”

They are already seeing the returns of this partnership, landing new clients like BMW, who came to Robust for help securing their AI-powered concept car, Dee. This is a security challenge on a completely different scale than, say, securing a travel platform trying to predict if a customer will buy a ticket. As the founding team puts it, “the initial problems we were focused on were these small errors that AI models make that were bad for business but not the end of the world. But a car crashing into a wall—or even companies who are using AI to decide whether to hire someone or not—these really impact people’s lives.” 

For the man who once dreamed of what it would feel like to make a lasting impact in his field (albeit, originally in a more theoretical realm), Singer can’t help but be compelled by Cisco’s centrality in the technology landscape. “Cisco runs the internet, and if every AI application that is running through the internet can be secured through a Robust Intelligence AI firewall, what bigger impact could we have on the world?” he says, adding, “this is the definition of the dream.” 

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The post Robust Intelligence Spotlight appeared first on Sequoia Capital.

Agents are making a splash across tech, but what does crypto bring to the table?

Could the Ethereum Foundation become a cultural steward of fine art?

Will Trump's inauguration trigger a golden bull market?

The Zcash Foundation is committed to transparency and openness with the Zcash community and our other stakeholders. Today, we are releasing our quarterly reports for the second and third quarters of 2024.

As with our previous quarterly reports, this report describes our financial inflow and outflows, with a detailed breakdown of our expenses, and we have included a snapshot of the Foundation’s financial position, in terms of liquid assets and liabilities that must be met using those assets.

These reports also provide our regular overview of the Zcash Foundation engineering team’s work, and other activities the Foundation undertook during Q2 and Q3.

You can download the Q2 2024 report here and the Q3 2024 report here.

Our previous quarterly reports can be found here. 

 

The post The Zcash Foundation’s Q2 and Q3 2024 Reports appeared first on Zcash Foundation.

Empeiria 2024 — From Vision to Reality

Last year was nothing short of transformative for Empeiria. We took bold steps to lay the groundwork for what’s next, turning our vision into reality. Here’s a snapshot of what we achieved:

16 Global Events: From conferences to key summits, we brought our ideas to the world stage. 300+ Meetings: Strategic conversations with industry leaders and innovators. 2,000+ Handshakes: Forging connections that will shape the future. 1,000,000+ Transactions on the Empe Blockchain Testnet: A testament to our technology’s readiness. 150+ Validators: Building decentralized trust, one block at a time. 900,000+ On-Chain DIDs: Enabling trusted, decentralized digital interactions.

On top of these major milestones, Empeiria was recognized by OKX, one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges, as one of the top 5 transformative crypto projects based in Dubai for 2024.

And this is only the start. With the imminent Mainnet launch, token listing, and other groundbreaking developments on the horizon, we’re not just building — we’re reshaping how trust functions in AI and beyond.

Don’t watch from the sidelines — this is your moment to join us and be part of the transformation.

Follow Empeiria on X, or LinkedIn for the latest news & updates. For inquiries or further information, contact Empeiria at media@empe.io

Horizen 2.0 升级进展顺利，关键技术里程碑已经达成，时间表也十分明确。$ZEN 迁移到新网络的准备工作已经完成，确保 2025 年 6 月主网启动时持有者可以无缝领取代币。Horizen 2.0 目前正在内部 Devnet 上运行，同时团队正在进行各种质量保证和测试，为公开测试网的启动做准备。

我们希望提供 Horizen 2.0 升级时间表的摘要，包括我们目前所处的位置以及准备过程中已达到的各种技术里程碑。最近发布了修订后的 Horizen 2.0 白皮书，其中包括 $ZEN 的新代币经济学细节。

Horizen 2.0 升级时间表

Horizen 2.0 内部开发网：12 月 15 日

Horizen 2.0 公共测试网 – Scout：2025 年 3 月

Horizen 2.0 激励测试网启动时间：2025 年 3 月

Horizen 2.0 主网启动时间：2025 年 6 月

Horizen 2.0 技术里程碑

将 $ZEN 迁移到 Horizen 2.0 的所有准备工作都已完成，确保新链上线后持有者的代币申领流程顺利进行。持有者目前无需采取任何行动；主网启动后，他们将能够通过专用系统申领代币。

Horizen 2.0 的共识和质押机制已经准备就绪。新的基于 PoS 的系统将使用 AURA 共识算法，该算法决定如何选择收集者来生成区块，并支持 $ZEN 的代币经济学和网络安全。

Horizen 2.0 上启用 EVM 功能的工作已经完成。这使开发人员能够用 Solidity 构建智能合约并移植基于以太坊的应用程序，从而增强 Web3 生态系统内的互操作性。

Horizen 2.0 平行链的测试版本已成功与 zkVerify 的测试中继链集成，实现了两条链之间同时生成区块和通信。这是将 zkVerify 的验证功能纳入 Horizen 2.0 的一步。

Horizen 2.0 Devnet 是一个内部测试网，现已启用。它用于测试关键功能，并确保在激励测试网和公开推出之前一切按预期运行。这个内部网络可帮助团队在公开之前完善系统。

Horizen 2.0 白皮书

除了 Horizen 2.0 技术升级里程碑之外，Horizen Labs 团队还发布了 Horizen 2.0 白皮书，概述了 Horizen 生态系统的重大进步和战略升级，旨在增强其功能、可扩展性、安全性和互操作性。

这篇论文讨论了 ZK 应用目前面临的挑战，包括成本高、网络拥塞和有限的证明机制。这篇论文还介绍了 $ZEN 的新代币经济学细节。

Horizen 2.0 通过针对 ZK 应用优化的 EVM 提供解决方案：

以最小成本实现更快的 ZK 证明

灵活的证明系统

高效的网络设计，具有原生 zkVerify 集成

增强的安全性和可扩展性

本白皮书将 Horizen 定位为 ZK 领域的领导者，为未来更高效、更可扩展的区块链应用铺平道路。

通过 Horizen 2.0 深入了解区块链的未来，并了解它将如何推动下一波创新！在此处阅读完整的白皮书。

与往常一样，我们仍然可以通过Horizen Discord为用户解答任何问题、提供所需的支持或其他信息！

  订阅Horizen 将最新更新直接发送到您的收件箱。

The post Horizen 2.0 升级时间表 appeared first on Horizen Blog.

Why AI agent infra projects are the picks and shovels trade of the AI x Crypto meta. 

Dig into this DeFi lending app traders keep flocking to.

This post describes work done by Anirudha Bose (Staff Engineer, Web3) and Michele Ferri (Search Engineer).

Today, we’re excited to introduce on-chain capabilities to Brave Search, enabling users to receive better results than traditional search engines and blockchain explorers by delivering live data with privacy protection. Available today for all Brave Search users around the world, this feature lets users look up any Ethereum address, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain, or Solana account, and view their entire portfolio of token balances.

We deliver these results with a real-time guarantee and uncompromising privacy. Traditional block explorers can link wallet addresses to IPs and later send this data to those interested in removing the pseudonymity of blockchains. Brave has a long proven history of caring for the privacy of your browsing and searching, and now it can also maintain the privacy of your on-chain lookups.

Brave Search as a blockchain explorer

A search engine is the first place we go to for answers. This is true for simple informational queries, and also for much longer, more specific ones. For example, the Brave Search team noticed a larger-than-expected number of queries that were 40 characters long. While these weren’t typical search queries, they clearly served a purpose to the user. We realized our users were looking to access blockchain data, and specifically, to check token balances associated with these addresses. This insight led us to enhance Brave Search with integrated functionality that instantly surfaces valuable on-chain data directly in search results, without requiring users to visit external websites.

Token balances of vitalik.eth ENS domain on OP Mainnet

Token balances of a canonical EVM address on Ethereum

Token balances of a canonical Solana account

Real-time results

The nature of on-chain data is such that it needs to be current in order to be useful. Search engines that surface rudimentary on-chain data typically rely on third-party indexers, which can introduce lags and inconsistencies between what is shown and the current chain state.

EVM address balances on Google can often be outdated

Based on our experience building Brave Wallet, we took a different approach to on-chain searches that guarantees results have real-time accuracy. This means you can trust that the information you’re seeing is accurate at the moment of your query, not what it was minutes or blocks ago.

Having real-time querying capability is particularly important for handling rebase tokens that automatically adjust their supply and holders’ balances. For example, Staked Ether (stETH) by Lido Finance uses a rebase function in order to maintain price parity and pay out staking rewards. While traditional indexers only refresh balances when triggered by external transactions, our approach ensures that token balances are correctly captured even if elastic supply mechanisms cause them to change between transactions.

Privacy preserving

Brave Search does not profile you, or retain your IP address. This eliminates scenarios where blockchain explorers could potentially aggregate and analyze patterns in your address lookups, and thus build a comprehensive profile that’s linked to your IP address.

Such information, if shared or breached, could be exploited by entities seeking to unmask the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions. By choosing Brave Search for your on-chain lookups, you can protect yourself from surveillance and potential deanonymization attempts.

Feature comparison Brave Search Google Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Yes (6 networks) Yes (5 networks) Solana Yes No Native asset balances Yes Yes Token balances Yes No Ethereum Name Service (ENS) support Yes Limited Rebase tokens support Yes No Real-time results Yes No Pricing data Yes No Privacy preserving Yes No Available now for all Brave Search users

Starting today, on-chain address lookups for EVM and Solana are available to all Brave Search users worldwide, regardless of what browser they are using. ENS domains are also supported, making it easier to look up EVM addresses using human-readable names.

This feature represents a significant first step towards helping users search on-chain data in Brave Search, and we’re committed to innovating on this front in the future.

About Brave Search

Brave Search is the fastest growing independent search engine since Bing. Unlike Big Tech search engines, Brave Search does not profile its users; unlike supposedly alternative engines, Brave Search serves results from a truly independent index of the Web. This means Brave Search can offer both industry-leading privacy and an effective counter to the bias and censorship prevalent in Big Tech’s personalization.

Brave Search continues to reach new all-time highs, serving more than 42 million queries per day (and more than 1.2 billion queries each month). It’s the default search engine for most new Brave browser users, which now has over 77 million users worldwide.

CryptoPunks just surged amid swirling rumors of a Yuga Labs sale, which Yuga has denied.

The heavily hyped L1 is almost here. Here's how to get involved with pre-launch opportunities.

Healthcare is a $4 trillion industry, making up nearly a fifth of the U.S. economy—but despite having some of the best doctors and advanced technology, the system often delivers poor outcomes at skyrocketing costs. Why is this the case, and what will it take to fix it?

In this episode, a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen and General Partners Vijay Pande and Julie Yoo tackle some of the biggest questions shaping the future of healthcare:

Is the solution to our healthcare crisis a policy, technology, or competition problem? Will AI and technology transform the industry, or are regulatory and structural barriers too entrenched? Who will crack the code—healthcare incumbents, tech giants, or AI-native startups?

From chronic care to cost curves, from disruptive technologies to shifting patient agency, this conversation offers an unfiltered look at what’s broken in the healthcare system and how it might finally change.

Resources: 

Find Marc on X: https://x.com/pmarca

Find Vijay on X: https://x.com/vijaypande

Find Julie on X: https://x.com/julesyoo

The Biggest Company in the World

Why Will Healthcare be the Industry that Benefits Most from AI?

Grand Challenges in Healthcare AI with Vijay Pande and Julie Yoo

Stay Updated: 

Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z

Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z

Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/

Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio

Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

2024 年：Horizen 的变革之年

2024 年对于 Horizen 来说无疑是一个变革性的一年。从突破性的升级到增强的代币经济学和大胆的品牌更新，这一年标志着我们旅程中的决定性时刻。

以下是今年一些最重要的成就：

Horizen 2.0 升级和 ZEN 的新代币经济学：升级准备工作正在全速推进！

删除屏蔽池：降低 $ZEN 的监管风险，以便我们可以通过创新实现隐私。

Grayscale 向美国证券交易委员会提交了 Horizen Trust 的 8-K 文件： 让合格的合格投资者更容易获得 ZEN

通过了 7 个 ZenIP：包括可扩展性和治理方面的关键更新。

品牌更新：揭晓新的视觉形象。

全球增长：$ZEN 实现新交易所上市，举办了众多活动，并获得了媒体的广泛认可。

让我们深入了解 2024 年的完整回顾，反思我们的里程碑并为下一步做好准备！

Horizen 2.0：为未来铺平道路

2024 年 6 月，Horizen 社区以压倒性多数投票决定将 Horizen 主链和 Horizen EON 升级到新的、更先进的区块链架构Horizen 2.0。

这次重大升级解决了遗留系统的局限性，并使 Horizen 成为 ZK 技术中心的愿景保持一致。

已实现的关键里程碑

迁移准备：$ZEN 迁移的准备工作已经完成，并且已拥有无缝的代币领取流程，可供主网启动使用。

共识和质押机制已准备就绪：使用 AURA 共识算法的新型 PoS 系统将增强网络安全性并支持 $ZEN 的代币经济学。

EVM 兼容性就绪：EVM 功能支持 Solidity 智能合约和以太坊应用程序的互操作性。

zkVerify 集成就绪：Horizen 2.0 测试平行链成功与 zkVerify 的测试中继链连接，为先进的 ZK 证明系统铺平了道路。

内部开发网络已启动：内部测试网络已上线，正在完善公开发布之前的关键功能。

了解有关 Horizen 2.0 升级的更多信息：

  Horizen 2.0 | 下一代第 1 层平台 探索 Horizen 2.0 的 ZK 优化平台，使开发人员能够使用先进的证明系统构建创新应用程序…… www.horizen.io Horizen 2.0 白皮书发布

Horizen 2.0 白皮书概述了 Horizen 生态系统的重大进步和战略升级，旨在增强其功能、可扩展性、安全性和互操作性。

白皮书讨论了 ZK 应用当前面临的挑战，包括高成本、网络拥塞和有限的证明机制。

Horizen 2.0 通过针对 ZK 应用优化的 EVM 提供解决方案：

以最小成本实现更快的 ZK 证明

灵活的证明系统

高效的网络设计，具有原生 zkVerify 集成

增强的安全性和可扩展性

通过 Horizen 2.0 深入了解区块链的未来，并了解它将如何推动下一波创新！阅读完整的白皮书：

下载.horizen.io   下载.horizen.io ZEN 的新代币经济学

ZenIP 42407 的通过正式为 Horizen 2.0 引入了新的代币经济学。这标志着 Horizen 生态系统发展的关键时刻，为长期增长和稳定奠定了基础，使网络的财务模型与其成为 zk 领域领导者的长期愿景保持一致。

这一变化是 Horizen 更大目标的一部分，旨在增强其去中心化应用程序生态系统，尤其是那些使用零知识技术的应用程序。这些代币经济学变化解决了剩余 ZEN 代币的分配、归属时间表和奖励系统，以确保可持续增长、网络安全和生态系统参与者的激励。

以下是 $ZEN 新代币经济学的摘要：

在我们的博客文章中详细了解已实施的变更以及它们对 Horizen 生态系统的意义：

  Horizen 2.0 的新代币经济学：向前迈出的重要一步 新的代币经济学标志着 Horizen 生态系统演变的关键时刻，为长期增长奠定了基础…… 镜子.xyz ZEN 第二次也是最后一次减半

2024 年 12 月 12 日，Horizen 在其代币经济学发生突破性转变之前，通过最后一次减半事件达到了一个重要里程碑。

这不仅仅是又一次减半——经过八年的增长、技术进步和社区合作，这一事件标志着一个新时代的开始——标志着向更平滑的排放曲线的转变。

这一里程碑增强了 ZEN 的稳定性，促进了生态系统的发展，并为 Horizen 在 2025 年即将到来的权益证明 (PoS) 转型做好了准备。

在我们的博客文章中了解有关第二次也是最后一次 Horizen 减半的更多信息：

  ZEN 最后一次减半：Horizen 进入新时代 2024 年 12 月 12 日，$ZEN 将经历最后一次减半，之后该项目的代币经济学将迎来重大转变。这一里程碑意味着…… 镜子.xyz ZEN 可访问性和交易所列表

2024 年，$ZEN 显著扩大了其可访问性，标志着其在获得全球认可的道路上迈出了重要的里程碑。

新交易所上市

值得注意的成就包括gTrade和Bitvavo上的新上市，使 $ZEN 可供更广泛的受众使用，并为交易者提供更多使用该代币的机会。这些新增功能提高了 $ZEN 在知名平台上的知名度和可访问性，巩固了其在市场上的地位。

Binance 删除了 ZEN 的监控标签

今年早些时候，币安取消了之前对 $ZEN 的监控标签，此举反映了该项目在加密货币领域的增长、合规性和增强的声誉。

Grayscale 向美国证券交易委员会提交了Horizen Trust的8-K 表格

此外，当 Grayscale Investments 向美国证券交易委员会提交 Horizen Trust 的 8-K 表格时，实现了一个重要的监管里程碑。

该文件强调了机构对 Horizen 的兴趣，并表明生态系统的合法性和信任度有所提高，进一步将 $ZEN 定位为区块链领域的可靠资产。

这些发展进一步证明了 $ZEN 的持续增长及其在市场中的认可度不断提高。

ZenIPs：管理和推动创新

Horizen 社区于 2024 年对 7 项 ZenIP（ZEN 改进提案）进行了投票，其中包括：

ZenIP 42207：从 Horizen 主链中移除屏蔽池 – 99.97% 赞成

ZenIP 42400：通过模块化证明验证层实现 Horizen 技术的现代化 – 100% 支持

ZenIP 42401：更新提案和法定人数门槛 – 77.34% 赞成

ZenIP 42404：EON 上的委托质押奖励机制 – 99.87% 赞成

ZenIP-42405：指示 Horizen 基金会请求 $ZEN 和 EON 的迁移提案 – 99.99% 赞成

ZenIP 42406：$ZEN 和 EON 迁移的技术路线图 – 99.87% 支持

ZenIP 42407：Horizen 2.0 代币经济学 – 100% 支持

在此处查看所有 ZenIP 的完整详细信息和投票细目：

快照.box   快照.box Horizen 品牌更新

今年早些时候，Horizen 推出了全新的品牌形象，开启了激动人心的新篇章，标志着其使命发生了重大转变。

这不仅仅是一次视觉上的更新，更是一次让我们更接近实现使命的进化，团结所有相信由隐私保护技术和可验证信任驱动的未来的人。

我们有目的地创建了我们的新品牌，以体现我们的使命并与所有与我们有着共同愿景的人产生共鸣，即建立一个安全、去中心化和可验证的世界。

查看下面的新 Horizen 网站和品牌！

  Horizen | 隐私新时代 Horizen 的 Layer 1 平台可让您使用先进的零知识技术构建安全且私密的应用程序。选择… www.horizen.io IRL 全球活动

2024 年期间，Horizen 团队参加了许多全球加密 / web3 活动，与全球的开发人员、建设者和爱好者建立了联系：

丹佛理工学院

巴黎区块链周

以太坊基金会

共识

ETHCC + Polkadot 解密

Coinfest 巴厘岛 + 韩国区块链周

Token2049 新加坡

米兰理工学院

zkSummit12

币安区块链周

德文康

媒体报道

在整个 2024 年，Horizen Labs 团队和 Horizen 贡献者参加了许多不同的采访、播客、思想领导力文章等！

以下是今年的一些最佳作品：

社区 AMA 和播客

Horizen 的未来：ZK Apps 的下一代 EVM 的 AMA

Rob Viglione – House of ZK 电台节目

与 Rob Viglione 就 ZK 的所有事宜进行加密预言机通话

zkTalk 1 与 Gevulot – Horizen Labs 的 John Camardo 讨论了 Horizen 和 ZK 以及其他事项。 

绝对零知识播客第 11 集，由 Horizen 联合创始人 Robert Viglione 主持

更快更便宜的证明验证将如何促进 ZK 的扩张？Rollupco 采访 Rob Viglione 和 John Camardo

新地平线品牌外观和感觉流

媒体与思想领导力

StealthEX 关于 Horizen、Horizen Labs 和 zkVerify 的 AMA

zkTalk 与 Gevulot 讨论 zkVerify、zk Tech 和 Horizen

联合创始人 Rob Viglione 为 CoinMarketCap 词汇表撰写了“模块化验证证明”

联合创始人 Rob Viglione 在 Cointelegraph 的一篇文章中评论了基于区块链的选举的潜力

利用 ZK 克服障碍

Rob Viglione – 加密货币塑造全球经济 

Rolf Versluis 的 zkVM 基准测试标准小组

Rob Viglione 谈 AI 模型

什么是数据完整性？为什么它如此重要？

展望 2025 年：Horizen 的新时代

2025 年对于 Horizen 来说将是开创性的一年！

激励性公共测试网

今年第一季度，备受期待的 Horizen 2.0 激励性公共测试网将正式启动，让社区有机会参与、测试并提供反馈，为正式发布做好准备。除此之外，还将引入治理支持，让社区能够更加积极地参与塑造网络的未来。

Horizen 2.0 主网

在第二季度，我们正为 Horizen 2.0 主网的发布做准备，这是一个重要的里程碑，它将为扩展和去中心化开启新的可能性。

zkVerify 代币申领

此外，在第二季度，符合条件的 ZEN 持有者将在主网启动时被纳入 zkVerify 的预期初始代币供应量中。

Horizen 特别理事会选举

别忘了二月！我们很高兴地宣布 Horizen 特别理事会选举，7 个席位中有 4 个将进行选举。这是一个激动人心的机会，社区内的领导者可以站出来帮助指导 Horizen 的未来。如果您有兴趣了解有关这一重要举措的更多信息，请前往我们的公告：

  Horizen DAO 特别委员会将于 2 月 15 日投票——谁想出面？ Horizen 特别理事会由 7 人组成，他们为 Horizen DAO 提供安全保障。具体角色和职责如下： horizen.discourse.group

未来的旅程充满希望和进步。我们将携手并进，继续建设、创新，突破一切可能的界限。

敬请期待充满动感的一年——2025 年对于 Horizen 来说将是重要的一年！

The post Horizen 2024年年度复盘报告 appeared first on Horizen Blog.

Sui continues to earn new converts. Where is it headed next?

Throughout the years, there were many attempts of tapping into Bitcoin’s liquidity and security, but almost all of them came with different caveats. Most notably, wrapped BTC (wBTC) depended on the wrapper contract security. However, the recent surge in research and development for native solutions has led to breakthroughs previously thought impossible. Babylon launched native BTC staking and plans to further expand this to secure other blockchains, in a model similar to that of mesh security. This would not only help secure other networks, but it would also unlock liquidity from the mother chain through liquid staking derivatives.

Topics covered in this episode:

David’s background The evolution of Babylon The Bitcoin Renaissance Technical challenges of implementing Bitcoin staking The OP_CAT upgrade Babylon’s Bitcoin staking & Bitcoin-secured networks Bridging liquidity & LSTs Securing multiple chains and slashing Babylon chain - aggregating Bitcoin-secured networks Could Bitcoin become a POS chain? Babylon upgradeability

Episode links:

David Tse on X Babylon on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sebastien Couture.

在隐私、安全和效率日益重要的世界里，零知识证明（ZKP）正在成为一项革命性的技术，有可能改变我们的数字生活。

ZKP 不仅仅是一个小众加密概念——它们有可能改变我们在线互动、处理敏感数据和在数字经济中交易的方式。

什么是零知识证明？

零知识证明是一种加密技术，允许一方（“证明者”）向另一方（“验证者”）证明某个陈述是真实的，而不会透露除了该陈述本身的真实性之外的任何其他信息。

这里有一个简单的类比：假设你知道一个复杂谜题的答案。零知识证明可以让你向某人证明你已经解决了这个谜题，而无需向他们展示你是如何做到的。

ZKP 既能保证隐私性，又能保证准确性。它们可用于验证身份、交易或计算，而无需暴露任何底层数据。

零知识证明如何改变世界

尽管听起来很抽象，但 ZKP 已经在各个领域进入实际应用。让我们探索 ZKP 的一些关键应用领域，以及它们如何直接影响您的生活。

财务隐私和安全

ZKP 正在改变金融交易的开展方式。区块链和加密货币经常被批评为过于透明或过于私密，现在可以使用 ZKP 实现平衡。

保密交易： ZKP 可实现私密交易，隐藏金额和参与者，同时确保交易有效。该技术已在 Zcash 等注重隐私的加密货币中使用。

防欺诈： ZKP 可以在不暴露敏感个人信息的情况下验证用户身份或账户余额，从而降低欺诈风险。对于个人而言，这意味着您可以安全、私密地进行交易，而不必担心您的财务信息被泄露。

彩票和游戏的可验证随机性

ZKP 正在重新定义依赖随机性的系统（如彩票、抽奖和在线游戏）的公平性。在传统系统中，随机性是在幕后生成的，需要用户信任系统运营商。

ZKP 可实现可验证的随机性，从而允许系统：

证明彩票或抽奖的结果是公平产生的，并且不存在任何操纵。

确保在线游戏不存在偏见，同时保护玩家数据的私密性。

Web3 游戏启动板Trailblaze使用零知识验证协议 zkVerify 构建了支持 ZK 的抽奖游戏，以提供可验证的随机性并确保公平的游戏结果。

私密且可验证的投票

选举和投票系统在保持透明度的同时保护选民隐私方面面临挑战。ZKP 通过实现安全、匿名和可验证的投票流程提供了解决方案。

通过 ZKP，选民可以：

私下投票，不透露他们的选择。

核实他们的投票是否被正确计算，确保透明度而不损害匿名性。

随着最近美国大选的到来，一些选民表示他们对投票过程没有信心。我们相信ZKP 可以恢复这种信任。

无需过度分享即可进行身份验证

在当今的数字时代，证明您的身份通常需要分享过多的个人信息。例如，在验证您的年龄时，您可能必须分享您的整个身份证件 – 即使验证者只需要知道您是否年满 18 岁。

ZKP 解决了这个问题，它允许您证明具体的细节而不泄露不必要的数据。

零知识证明的未来

随着零知识证明的不断发展，其应用将进一步扩展到供应链透明度、物联网安全和人工智能 (AI) 等领域。特别是，零知识证明有可能通过充当强大的验证技术彻底改变我们使用和信任 AI 系统的方式。

对人工智能的影响：

模型和数据验证： ZKP 可以让 AI 开发人员证明他们的模型是在合乎道德的、公正的数据集上训练的，而无需暴露数据集本身。

决策验证：随着人工智能越来越多地做出影响我们生活的决策（例如在招聘、贷款或法律判决方面），ZKP 可以验证人工智能决策是否基于公平合规的逻辑，而不会暴露专有算法或敏感输入。

身份验证和所有权： ZKP 可以验证 AI 生成内容的所有权或确认 AI 系统输出的真实性，而无需共享模型的内部工作原理。

想象这样一个世界：

人工智能系统无需暴露敏感数据或专有算法即可证明其完整性和公平性。

您可以验证生成式人工智能是否以合乎道德的方式生成了内容，而无需访问其整个训练历史记录。

组织可以确保其 AI 工作流程遵守数据隐私法，而不会牺牲创新。

ZKP 将在建立对 AI 的信任方面发挥关键作用，尤其是当这些系统成为我们日常生活不可或缺的一部分时。通过在不损害隐私的情况下实现可验证的信任，ZKP 可以弥合 AI 技术透明度与创新之间的差距。

想象一下这样一个未来：得益于零知识证明的力量，隐私、透明度和安全性将无缝融入到我们生活的方方面面。

在Horizen，我们致力于创新和推动 ZKP 成为现实，使个人和组织能够拥抱更安全、更私密、更分散的数字世界。Horizen 致力于推进 ZKP 技术，确保这一变革性未来不仅是一种可能性，而且是重塑我们与数据、系统和彼此交互方式的必然里程碑。

The post Zk零知识证明将如何塑造我们的数字未来 appeared first on Horizen Blog.

On the Bankless podcast, we dig into questions about the quantum doomsday for Bitcoin.

Natural disasters can impact your self-custodied crypto holdings; take action.

The next big NFT-centric airdrop is coming to the Azuki community via $ANIME. Here's everything you need to know.

Hyperfy's new v2 release is a taste of the metaverse to come.

Weekly Recap: Crypto fights market jitters pre-inauguration while Hyperliquid quells concerns about centralization.

Biden admin regulators go after MetaMask and other wallet providers.

Unpacking the latest buzzy sector in the fast-evolving crypto AI agent space.

Crypto asset staking providers set to win big with proposed amendment.

World, formerly Worldcoin, has surpassed a major progress milestone.

It's time to tap into this app favored by DeFi pros.

The CFTC isn't done with its war on predictions market platforms.

The stablecoin giant joins Ripple and Coinbase in donating to the organization.

The Terra founder faces up to 130 years in prison.

In this episode, Substack cofounder and CEO Chris Best joins a16z General Partner Andrew Chen to discuss the origins and evolution of Substack, a platform redefining media and empowering creators to connect directly with their audiences. They dive into how Substack’s early days led to over 3 million paid subscribers, why creators are moving away from traditional platforms to establish direct connections with their audiences, and how the future of media in the AI era is reshaping opportunities for writers, podcasters, and video creators.

From Chris’s lessons scaling Kik Messaging to Substack’s profound impact on the creator economy, this conversation shares insights on building platforms, culture, and opportunity in the modern era.

 

Resources: 

Find Chris on Substack: https://cb.substack.com/

Find Andrew Chen on Substack: https://andrewchen.substack.com/

 

Stay Updated: 

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.

This post was written by Shivan Kaul Sahib (Lead for Privacy Engineering).

Brave provides best-in-class privacy protections, including robust third-party ad and tracker blocking. As demand for privacy grows, more websites have emerged to compare web browsers and extensions. While some of these comparison tools, such as https://privacytests.org and https://coveryourtracks.eff.org, are valuable resources for privacy-conscious users, others can be significantly flawed. This post explores how some adblocking test websites—those that claim to assess adblocker effectiveness—fall short due to poor testing methodology, and even harm the ad and tracker blocking ecosystem through misleading results.

The problem with adblocker testing websites

Adblocker testing sites can be misleading—or even harmful—for a number of reasons. We’ve outlined the four major issues below.

Low-quality tests

First, the quality of these test websites is generally low. While well-intentioned, many adblocking test websites check for blocked domains that are non-existent or not even used for advertising or tracking. Additionally, there is often no—or poor—justification provided for why a particular test exists.

For example, consider a test website that checks whether your adblocker blocks HTML elements with specific class names, such as .box.banner_ads.adsbox. Most testing sites will provide no rationale for why an adblocker should block these elements. It is possible that adblockers have identified more effective selectors to block actual ad-serving elements, but without a clear explanation for the test’s criteria, it’s impossible to evaluate its validity. Essentially, the test arbitrarily checks for blocked elements without any justification for why they should be targeted by any reasonable adblocker.

Savvy users could easily add a custom filter (such as ##.box.banner_ads.adsbox)to adblockers like Brave to artificially pass these tests. However, doing so would provide no tangible benefit, and create unnecessary rules that could inadvertently break websites. Testing, if done carelessly and erroneously, does more harm than good to privacy tools, and ultimately, users.

Tests often do not emulate real-world blocking

Testing websites often fail to emulate real-world ad delivery and tracking practices. For example, some will issue network requests to base domains without specifying full URL paths, and expect them to be blocked, as pointed out by a filter list maintainer. This approach does not reflect how trackers or ad servers operate in practice. Adblock maintainers carefully craft their rules to create the minimum required blocking to avoid breaking website functionality—a nuance these tests ignore entirely.

Tests ignore advanced protective capabilities

Advanced adblocking capabilities, such as resource replacement, are often overlooked in these tests. Resource replacement refers to how adblockers specify replacing a known tracking script with an innocuous version of the script. This is useful for preserving website behavior while still blocking the privacy-harmful script. Because these features aren’t easily measurable by simple network request tests, they’re excluded from a testing website’s scoring mechanism, which can lead to underreporting of an adblocker’s true effectiveness.

Tests cannot account for domain-specific rules

To reduce the risk of website breakage, adblockers often use domain-specific rules (rules that only apply on a particular website) rather than generic rules that apply on all websites. For example, a request to usertrack.js on the website search.com might be something that an adblocker wants to block, because it knows that that usertrack.js on that website is used for cross-site tracking. However, on a different website like shoes.com, a script named usertrack.js could be a legitimate script used for keeping track of user preferences like night mode or theme. Test websites cannot test for this nuance because their evaluations are confined to their own domain. Thus a simple overlap in script naming could lead to scoring mistakes.

Why testing websites can be misleading for users

Fundamentally, these tests are unable to differentiate between adblockers effectively. Most adblockers rely on the same community-maintained filter lists for their blocking rules, with minor deviations. Brave, for instance, directly supports and maintains the well-regarded EasyList projects, and publishes research and techniques related to ad and tracker blocking. This shared foundation allows filter list maintainers to work together and adapt quickly, especially against well-resourced advertising and tracking companies.

This means that testing websites that naively measure “is your adblocker blocking requests to tracker.com?” have limited value, since the underlying rules are mostly the same across major adblockers. Worse, these tests encourage adblockers to manipulate results to avoid misleading users. Both uBlock Origin and AdGuard, two major adblockers, have added workarounds to pass tests (uBO workaround, AdGuard workaround) so as to avoid confusing and alarming their users.

Brave has actively reached out to—and attempted to help—the authors of many test websites to improve their tests in the past (here are just a few examples), but we’ve had to deprioritize such efforts due to fundamental issues in the testing methodology (as described in this post) and the fact that low-quality tests continue to be added.

How adblockers should be measured against one another

Adblockers should (and often do) differentiate themselves in areas like extension-based vs native support, performance, advanced adblocking features, and ethical practices. It’s these differentiators that adblock comparison sites—and users—should focus on.

Extension-based vs. native support

With Google’s Manifest V2 deprecation, adblocking Web extensions face existential threats to their capabilities. At the very least, Manifest V3 severely hamstrings adblocking extensions by imposing a cap on blocking rules and banning background pages while requiring service workers. Brave’s Rust-based adblocking engine, integrated directly into the browser and not dependent on any extensions, remains unaffected by anything Google might require for extensions. This ensures that Brave Shields will continue to offer a superior ad and tracker blocking experience.  Brave will even support some Manifest V2 extensions that users might want to use in the interim before fully switching to Brave Shields as their main adblocker.

Performance

Efficient matching algorithms ensure minimal impact on browsing speed and system resources while blocking ads and trackers. Brave’s Rust-based adblocking engine is built into the browser, thus allowing us to make deep changes in both the browser and the adblocking code which ensures best blocking results and maximum flexibility. We’re actively working on improving our engine’s performance especially as it relates to memory usage.

Advanced adblocking capabilities

Brave constantly ships new adblock features like procedural cosmetic filtering, which allows for fine-grained control over ad and tracker blocking, and to expand the kind of ads we can block for our users.

Ethics

Unlike extensions that participate in “pay-to-play” programs, Brave does not accept payments to unblock certain advertisers or trackers. This ensures that user privacy and experience remain top priority.

In general, adblock tests do more harm than good

We applaud the intention behind these adblocker testing websites. The online third-party based advertising and tracking ecosystem has metastasized to a point that even US intelligence agencies use adblockers internally to counter the threat of malvertising. Brave has been outspoken in its condemnation of third-party advertising and has proposed alternatives like Brave Ads that prioritize the user, not ad-tech third parties. But while well-intentioned, adblocking testing websites currently do more harm than good.  By promoting arbitrary and low-quality metrics, these tests mislead users, force adblockers to adopt unnecessary workarounds, and detract from meaningful advancements in the field.

In addition, while adblockers are a crucial tool, privacy-focused browsers like Brave can protect users in ways that standalone adblockers cannot. Read our privacy updates blog for more details on how Brave ships privacy features to protect and enhance your Web browsing experience. Brave will continue to work with legitimate testing sites like https://privacytests.org and https://coveryourtracks.eff.org and with the larger open source filter list and adblock communities. It’s only through a consistent testing methodology and agreed-on sets of common privacy harms that we’ll be able to improve Web privacy for all users.

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Partnering with Gridware: Protect the Grid of Tomorrow

Tim, Hall, Omar and their team are giving utilities unprecedented insight—and reducing incidents that cost money and lives.

By Bryan Schreier and Charlie Curnin Published January 8, 2025 Gridware co-founders A Bin Omar, Tim Barat and Hall Chen.

A utility pole topples over, spilling live wires into a family’s backyard. A tree branch falls on a power line and starts to burn. A wind storm scatters electric lines across a busy street. 

Today, incidents like these cause problems ranging from inconvenience to forest fires and lost lives.  And the costs of even minor outages add up, with an estimated $150 billion lost in the United States each year. But the grid of tomorrow can address these issues quickly and safely—and in many cases, avoid them altogether. 

The U.S. electric grid currently includes about 200 million electric poles. It has more than five million miles of distribution lines. It’s worth something like $1.5 trillion. And, thanks to the nearly 600,000 people who keep it running, it makes practically everything work. Already, the grid provides the power that lets us access the internet and keeps HVAC and medical devices running at home, and enables businesses to take orders and serve customers—and it’s only becoming more critical as the U.S. economy continues its shift to electric power. But what do we do when the grid goes down?

That’s the problem Gridware co-founder Tim Barat has been thinking about since he was a teenager. 

Tim started working in electric infrastructure at 15, when he dropped out of high school to become a linesman in Australia. He saw the risks of the work firsthand, losing colleagues who put their lives on the line to fix power lines. Tim went on to study electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, where he met co-founders Hall Chen and A Bin Omar. Together, they realized that the outages, wildfires and other risks we associate with electric infrastructure are actually symptoms of a larger problem: utilities don’t have the observability they need. The grid is like a $1.5-trillion car that’s missing a “check engine” light. 

When something goes wrong—when high winds or a fallen tree knock down a power line, or a car clips a pole—most utilities can’t identify and locate the problem without time-consuming, and often dangerous, manual inspections. Crews are forced to either patrol in hazardous weather or wait until storms pass, and delays can be the difference between a non-event and a disaster.

But what if providers could instead gather that information in real-time, tracking and even predicting the health of the grid based on direct measurements from each asset? That’s Gridware: the instrumentation layer for the grid. Their sensors and analytics suite constantly monitor poles, lines, and transformers—even when the power is out—to detect issues as they happen and help utilities respond precisely and efficiently. In many cases, Gridware can even stop issues before they start, catching leaning poles and trees smoldering on energized wires. “If this had not been reported or dispatched,” a customer said about one discovery, “It would have surely caused a forest fire.”

After launching in 2020, Gridware is now working with some of the country’s largest utilities to help them monitor their infrastructure—and the results speak for themselves. In one northern California circuit, outage patrol times are down by 70%. Another midwest utility reported saving 400,000 outage minutes across four circuits, recouping the costs of deploying Gridware after a single event.

We at Sequoia are delighted to be in business with Gridware, and to support their growth by leading their Series A. The electric grid is worth protecting, and we look forward to a future of fewer outages and more reliability thanks to Tim, Hall, Omar and their team.

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The post Partnering with Gridware: Protect the Grid of Tomorrow appeared first on Sequoia Capital.

Fellow Panthers, 

December marked another milestone month for Panther, featuring strategic partnerships, significant technological advancements, and increased visibility within the broader DeFi community through notable media appearances.

Read on below to learn about what happened in December: 

Ecosystem Updates

Key partnerships were announced in Panther’s ecosystem, including with prospective Zone Managers and important media, research, and KOL outlets. 

The Panther Protocol Foundation (PPF) announced agreements with two prospective Zone Managers, who, if successful, will operate their own logical confidential transaction partitions within Panther’s Shielded Pool. As part of the agreements, both parties will explore community building opportunities to promote these Zones and their transformative potential in the DeFi space.

Eurobit

PPF announced its partnership with Eurobit, a Spanish crypto exchange and Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP). Under the agreement, Eurobit will apply to operate a dedicated Zone within Panther’s Shielded Pool. If successful, Eurobit would oversee end-to-end compliance within the Zone, including KYC/KYT processes, user allowlisting, and transaction limits, allowing its users to benefit from Panther’s Privacy-Enhancing technology (PET). 

PureFi

Additionally, PPF entered into an agreement with PureFi, a KYC/KYT solutions provider for DeFi. This agreement expands on its existing role as an official Panther compliance partner also to include applying to operate its own Zone. If successful, PureFi would be poised to introduce enterprise users, including asset managers and institutions, to PET. This partnership leverages PureFi’s already-integrated compliance technology, strengthening a robust relationship and setting the stage for more secure and accessible DeFi services.

Messari 

To further raise awareness among key demographics including prospective Zone Managers and high-end investors, Panther commissioned an independent report from Messari, a leading research and analysis platform. Published in late December, the report is a deep-dive into the technology, features, and functionality of the Panther platform, offering detailed insights into features like the UTXO model, zAssets, Zone Managers, and more. Messari reaches a subscriber base of over 350K and is distributed to over 740k users worldwide via Refinitiv, Bloomberg Terminal, AlphaSense and S&P Global Capital IQ. 

The Street

Panther entered into a partnership with the Street, a popular financial publication with extensive crypto coverage, reaching 35M+ investors monthly. This collaboration provides access to their extensive network of influential KOLs who reach nearly 10M followers per week, as well as to their advertising network. The Street’s audience aligns well with ongoing efforts to attract more prospective Zone Managers, partners and users. The partnership kicked off in December, with resulting coverage to begin in 2025.

Technical Progress

December was a productive month for Panther Protocol’s technical development, with efforts focused on refining V1 and preparing for future updates. Following the completion of external testing, the team worked on addressing issues identified during quality assurance and audits, ensuring a stable and reliable foundation for the platform.

Development on V1.1 progressed steadily while planning for future iterations, including V1.2 and V1.3, also began. 

Panther contributors continued refining technical requirements to support Zone Managers, whose role is integral to Panther’s compliance tools and confidentiality-enhancing framework. 

Additionally, progress was made toward the planning of the forthcoming Canary Network (to be owned and operated by the forthcoming Swiss-based Panther Protocol Foundation), which will enable controlled testing of real assets and exploration of innovative features to strengthen the protocol further. The new, Swiss-based foundation is expected to provide more details about the Canary Network, including how to participate, in the near future. 

Important announcements about Panther’s V1 technical development, with much of the work taking place in December, are also coming in early 2025, so stay tuned. 

Panther in the Media

In December, Panther actively engaged with the media to raise awareness.

Panther was interviewed by Web3 TV to discuss the importance of privacy in DeFi. Co-Founder Dr. Anish Mohammed highlighted how selective disclosures can empower users while supporting the broader adoption of crypto technologies. Panther was also a featured interview on Market Movers on Fintech.TV, where co-founder Oliver Gale shared insights into how PETs are critical for building trust and driving institutional participation in DeFi.

In addition to these appearances, Dr. Mohammed represented Panther as it was  featured in AI Business, examining the privacy risks that emerge as AI becomes more accessible. Panther was interviewed in December by outlets including Cointelegraph, Sky News Arabia, Bitcoin Magazine, and CNBC Arabia. These features, which are still to be published, are expected to provide additional visibility for Panther’s solutions and vision.

The recently released report by Messari, mentioned above, continues to draw attention. This independent analysis offers an in-depth look at Panther’s technology, including the UTXO model, zAssets, and Zone Managers, providing valuable insights for industry professionals, prospective Zone Managers, and partners.

Conclusion

Panther Protocol achieved significant milestones in December across multiple fronts, solidifying its position in the DeFi ecosystem. The launch of partnerships with prospective Zone Managers Eurobit and PureFi is an important step towards the protocol’s real-world application. With technical development progressing steadily, increased media coverage, and an independent Messari analysis being published, Panther continues to build momentum in its mission to bring compliant privacy solutions to DeFi.

The DeFi landscape has significantly evolved since 2018 when Chainlink was launched. Recent developments such as L2 rollups, liquid staking, restaking and the rise of BTC DeFi have created huge demand for more customizable, modular oracles that would be able to provide accurate data for countless use cases, crosschain. RedStone set out to do exactly that and are now securing over $6.6 bn worth of assets (1000+ assets), across more than 60 chains, without a single mispricing event.

Topics covered in this episode:

Marcin’s background Early oracle landscape RedStone’s technical architecture Network incentives Data aggregation module Node operator module Push vs. Pull oracles RedStone’s business model The role of RedStone token Pyth vs. RedStone Restaking Oracle extractable value Synergies between oracles and institutional investors

Episode links:

Marcin Kazmierczak on X RedStone on X

Sponsors:

Gnosis: Gnosis builds decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem, since 2015. This year marks the launch of Gnosis Pay— the world's first Decentralized Payment Network. Get started today at - gnosis.io Chorus1: Chorus1 is one of the largest node operators worldwide, supporting more than 100,000 delegators, across 45 networks. The recently launched OPUS allows staking up to 8,000 ETH in a single transaction. Enjoy the highest yields and institutional grade security at - chorus.one

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain.

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2024 in Review

2024 has been a transformative year for Panther, as its contributors worked to bring its vision of confidential DeFi transactions to life. Panther has achieved key milestones through a structured, multi-stage testnet program, engaging over 3,500 testers to refine its features and ensure seamless functionality for users and Zone Managers. 

In addition to completing the external testnet, 2024 also saw significant ecosystem growth, including partnerships that announced candidates to become the platform’s first Zone Managers. 2024 also saw a marked increase in media coverage for Panther across multiple platforms including key industry publications, major podcasts and more. 

This blog highlights Panther's key milestones and achievements in 2024.

Technical Progress: Testnet Updates by Stage

In 2024, Panther Protocol contributors worked to complete the features required for V1 of the protocol, with community involvement playing a critical role in refining these features. Over 3,500 testers participated in shaping the protocol, providing essential feedback throughout the process. We want to express our sincere gratitude to our test community.

The V1 of Panther Protocol will introduce robust capabilities for both users and Zone Managers that were featured in the testnet program, which included Panther’s Shielded Pool, zAssets, confidentiality-enhanced transfers, gasless transactions (where applicable), options to choose between faster or more cost-efficient transaction processing and  privacy-enhanced DeFi zSwaps on platforms like Uniswap and QuickSwap; as well as Zone Manager features like advanced Anti-Money Laundering (AML) tools, inclusive of KYC/KYB/KYT and mechanisms to disclose information as needed (for compliance).

A recap of 2024's testnet stages and their major feature updates follow: 

Testnet Update Highlights

Swap Functionality, Stage 7

Stage 3: Introducing zAssets

Stage 3 marked a critical milestone with the introduction of zAssets within Panther’s Shielded Pool. This feature allowed testers to deposit test assets and receive test zAssets that can be tested within the Shielded Pool. Enhanced circuit security was also implemented, focusing on KYC/KYT mechanisms to ensure safer and more reliable interactions. The user interface received significant updates to improve accessibility and ease of use, making the protocol more intuitive for testers.

Stage 4: Enabling Transfers and Withdrawals

In Stage 4, testers gained the ability to test confidentiality-enhanced transfers within the Shielded Pool and test withdrawing assets securely to external wallets. Additional features in this stage included the integration of KYT verification, which, when live, can be used to help Zone Managers to ensure regulatory alignment. This stage provided a major step toward seamless user transactions within Panther’s ecosystem.

Stage 5: Introducing Gasless Transactions

Stage 5 introduced gasless transactions by integrating third-party bundler services to the testnet. Once the protocol is live, this will allow users to execute transactions without requiring native gas fees, where applicable. In Stage 5 of the testnet, the “Taxi” mode for UTXO processing was also unveiled, which will enable users to choose between faster transaction speeds or cost-efficiency, depending on their priorities.

Stage 6: Introduction of Fees and AMM Refilling

Stage 6 introduced fee collection mechanisms, critical to the platform's long-term ability to support its success and to maintain the platform. This included simulated protocol fees being deposited into the protocol’s AMM. It also included the addition of capabilities that would allow fee subsidization if desired.

Stage 7: Privacy-Enhanced DeFi Swaps

Stage 7 brought confidentiality-preserved DeFi zSwap capabilities through integrations with DeFi platforms such as Uniswap and QuickSwap. This feature enabled testers to conduct simulated privacy-enhanced swaps from within the Shielded Pool. This stage also saw the addition of Data Escrow, a critical function of the protocol for both privacy-preservation and proof of facts critical for compliance.

Stage 8: Scalability with Diamond Proxy Architecture

In Stage 8, Panther implemented Diamond Proxy architecture to overcome Ethereum’s size limitations. This innovation allows for more scalable smart contracts, which are crucial for the long-term viability of the platform. Blacklisting capabilities were also introduced that will help Zone Managers restrict access for bad actors and others who are not wanted on the platform. Transaction management also saw significant improvements in consolidating deposits into single UTXOs, boosting performance and usability.

Stage 9: Final Testnet Stage and Canary Network Preparations

The completion of external testing for Stage 9 marked the culmination of Panther’s testnet.  This stage set the groundwork for the upcoming Panther Protocol Foundation (PPF) Canary Network, which will serve as a critical proving ground for real-world applications of Panther’s privacy-enhancing and compliance-driven solutions. Stay tuned for more information about Panther’s Canary network in the weeks ahead. 

Disclaimer

For the avoidance of doubt any tokens mentioned in this announcement or within the product are for testing purposes only and have no economic value, nor can they be exchanged for value. 

Participation in our incentivized testnet versions may result in you earning rewards, but such credits are not represented on any blockchain as tokens.

Key Partnerships and Ecosystem Growth

In 2024, Panther's ecosystem established multiple strategic partnerships aligned with organizations that share its mission of providing users with confidential DeFi transactions. These agreements focused on teaming up with organizations that will play important roles in the Panther ecosystem, including prospective Zone Managers; as well as organizations with a shared vision for DeFi privacy who will help in raising awareness for the Panther platform among prospective Zone Managers and the broader DeFi community alike.

Eurobit

In December, PPF partnered with Eurobit, a Spanish cryptocurrency exchange and licensed Virtual Assets Service Provider (VASP), to establish a dedicated Eurobit Zone within Panther’s Shielded Pool. Under the agreement, Eurobit will apply to become a Zone Manager, allowing it to provide its users with privacy-preserving transactions. Eurobit would be responsible for end-to-end compliance within its dedicated Zone. 

PureFi Integration

Similarly, PPF entered a separate agreement with PureFi, a provider of AML services. PureFi is already an official KYC/KYT solutions partner for Panther. This new partnership is in addition to the original agreement. Under the terms of the new partnership, PureFi will apply to operate its own Zone. This integration seeks to combine the full breadth of Panther’s privacy-enhancing technology with PureFi’s expertise and already-integrated compliance tools, creating a smooth and seamless user experience.

Messari Sponsorship

Messari, one of the biggest brands in research and analysis, was commissioned to write an independent in-depth report as part of overarching efforts to raise awareness of Panther’s platform among relevant audiences. It was published in late 2024, containing a comprehensive overview on Panther Protocol. Messari research reaches 350K subscribers, as well as an additional 740K users via Bloomberg Terminal, Refinitiv, S&P Global Capital IQ and AlphaSense.

Luna PR

Panther engaged Luna PR as its public relations agency to amplify Panther’s visibility and reputation among financial service providers, developers, and the broader DeFi community. This has led to an increase in news, broadcast, and podcast coverage about Panther, privacy-enhancing technology, and the need for confidentiality in DeFi more generally. 

Rivo.XYZ 

Panther also partnered with Rivo.XYZ, a one-click investment platform targeting the crypto yield industry. This collaboration has focused on fostering cross-community initiatives between the two organizations, driving innovation in privacy-preserving investments.

ZuVillage Georgia

Panther expanded its presence in Eastern Europe through its partnership with ZuVillage, a digital community of truth seekers, builders, and sovereign individuals guided by cypherpunk and d/acc philosophies.

The Street

Panther entered into a partnership with The Street, kicking off in late 2024. The Street is a popular financial publication that reaches 35+ Million investors, monthly, with a robust Key Opinion Leader (KOL) that reaches nearly 10M as well as a strong advertising network. This partnership aims to provide an additional platform for relevant audiences to learn about Panther and its mission, ensuring that the protocol reaches prospective users and Zone Managers effectively.

Swiss Entity

In October, Panther’s co-founders announced the start of work to establish a new Swiss-based entity. This move aims to transition operations from the current Gibraltar-based Panther Protocol Foundation to better align with Panther’s long-term vision. Switzerland’s well-regarded regulatory environment was selected to support the growth of Panther’s privacy-enhancing and compliance-focused DeFi ecosystem. Further updates are expected in early 2025.

Ecosystem Engagement, Community Involvement, and Media Presence

In 2024, Panther Protocol solidified its presence in the DeFi ecosystem through strategic engagement with its community, industry events, and media features showcasing its mission and technological innovations. Panther contributors actively engaged the community through AMAs, social media updates, and comprehensive communication on the protocol's milestones. 

Panther’s co-founders, leadership team and technical contributors also represented the protocol at key global events. This included participation at DevCon and side events, where they delivered talks and participated in round-table discussions on privacy-enhancing technology (PET) and compliance, the practical applications of zero-knowledge technology and its role in scaling privacy-preserving solutions, different models of privacy in DeFi, the role of analytics, and key considerations for AML. These contributors also spoke about Panther and related topics at Token 2049, EthDenver, EthDam, NFT NYC, Web3 Dubai, Web3 Global, at their side events and more. These events provided opportunities to lead thought by sharing Panther’s approach to privacy in the context of the evolving DeFi landscape to relevant audiences. 

Panther’s thought leadership extended into major podcasts and broadcast platforms, engaging with diverse audiences to expand awareness of the protocol’s mission. Notable appearances included Nowmedia, Proof of Podcast, Liquidity Lounge, Cryptopolitan, Infinite Crypto, and Web3 with Sam Kamani.

Media coverage increased through the end of 2024, with featured articles and appearances in crypto, tech and financial news outlets such as Bitcoin World, NASDAQ Trade Talks, Metaverse Post, AI Business, Web3 TV, Blockchain Reporter and more, with yet-to-be published interviews having taken place in December 2024 with Sky News and CNBC Arabia. 

This combined focus on community engagement, event participation and media appearances has bolstered Panther’s visibility among prospective users, partners and Zone Managers. 

Conclusion

Panther advanced confidential DeFi infrastructure through technical development, strategic partnerships, and ecosystem growth. These achievements position Panther to transform confidentiality in DeFi.

With a robust architecture and growing ecosystem, Panther is positioned to be the platform for building secure, private, and scalable financial solutions. By leveraging its infrastructure, the future of DeFi can be one where privacy, security, and compliance harmonize to create meaningful opportunities for all stakeholders.

The post How Upwind Is Taking on Cybersecurity Giants appeared first on Greylock.

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Source

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with @sambroner @meigga @darenmatsuoka @jneu_net @chrislyons and @rhhackett @smc90

Welcome to our special end-of-year episodes -- which also look ahead to 2025 --  covering our annual Big Ideas lists, where various a16z crypto team members share what they are personally excited about. (You can see the firmwide list, also including all the trends of the crypto team,  here.)

This episode is part 1 of 2 -- but you don't have to listen to them in any particular order -- covering the trends and themes of:

stablecoins, payments, and where the early adopters will come from; app store distribution, curation, and discovery; where the next crypto users will come from, turning passive holders into active users; how builders improve, and better choose, infrastructure; and simplifying user experience.

 Covering each of these -- and coming from the investing, go-to-market, data science, research, and media teams are:  Sam Broner, Maggie Hsu, Daren Matsuoka, Joachim Neu, and Chris Lyons; in conversation with hosts Sonal Chokshi and Robert Hackett. (Stay tuned until the end for some of our meta-commentary.) 

These are just 5 of the 14 trends we shared; you can check out the full list at a16zcrypto.com/bigideas.

Also be sure to check out part 2, which covers all the trends at the intersection of crypto and AI. 

As a reminder, none of the content is investment, business, legal, or tax advice; please see a16z.com/disclosures for more important information -- including a link to a list of our investments.

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