Christine Mohan

>be me >ethereum >spawn in the head of a 19 year old who played a lot of wow >he thinks the world should share a computer >quite a large side quest but ok >other people join him >some are weird >some are REALLY weird >everyone has opinions about money and nobody agrees where to put the buttons >somehow a whitepaper becomes an actual project >ICO! >people send bitcoin to help spawn me >somehow this works >boot up in 2015 >hello world :) >now need people to actually run me >strangers around the world start mining >their computers get warm >i get to exist >nice arrangement >little bits of me living in places my creators have never been >already getting slightly out of hand >people who have never met are keeping the same record of who owns what >cannot get six friends to agree where to eat >somehow getting strangers to agree which money belongs to whom >turns out strict global consensus is occasionally worth the trouble >someone tries to build an organization on me >the DAO >very ambitious >gets hacked >oh fuck >everyone argues about what to do >argue so hard there are now two ethereums >difficult childhood >2017 >someone realizes they can make their own token >wait anyone can raise money for an idea now? >ICO era >every idea gets a token >some of these seem quite promising >some of these are literal dogshit >everyone suddenly has an advisor >nobody seems to have a product >oh no >oh no no no >this was perhaps too much ICO >but some people are actually making things >@StaniKulechov starts building ETHLend >wait, you can borrow money through a smart contract? >put up collateral, agree to the terms, get a loan >contract does not ask which university you attended >does care quite a lot about your collateral though >fair enough >little lending application on the world computer >meanwhile @haydenzadams loses his engineering job >his friend @karl_dot_tech gets him into ethereum >learns to write smart contracts >starts making an exchange >other people help >not the usual advice from the unemployment office >but let's see where it goes >hayden starts making a decentralized exchange >other people help >keeps going >"uniswap" >a pink unicorn is now involved in neo financial infrastructure >i like this place. >wait >the lending thing can connect to the trading thing >and the trading thing can connect to the dollar thing >someone else can build something using all three >nobody had to arrange a meeting between three banks >they just wrote more code >oh >OH >the money can do stuff now. >*defi summer* >everyone becomes a farmer >no actual vegetables anywhere >people move money between protocols with names that make me hungry >the yields are doing something concerning >some of this is very clever >some of this needs an adult >but underneath it all >regular people are actually figuring out how to build financial systems together for the first time ever >borrow here, trade there, build something new on top >a person who was never getting invited to design financial infrastructure is suddenly designing financial infrastructure >probably worth paying attention to that bit >then the picture people arrive >NFTs >artists finding collectors >collectors finding artists >everyone finding the right-click button >long discussion about what exactly is being owned >somehow this discussion lasts several years. >people put animals on their profiles >become friends with other people who have the same animals >group chat becomes a community >community starts making things >also some absolutely horrifying financial decisions >both can be true >someone came to flip a picture >stayed because they made friends >someone else sold their art and realized a person on the other side of the world cared about something they made >hmm >was not expecting feelings in the jpeg department >start imagining what else these little groups could do >twelve people in twelve countries care about the same extremely specific thing >previously their main economic activity was arguing in a group chat >now maybe they can pool money >pay contributors >own something together >try different ways of deciding what happens next >still argue >but now have a budget >maybe they try to buy the US constitution >maybe they fund research nobody else understands yet >maybe they preserve their community's stories >keep copies, fund the storage, keep a record of what came from whom >not everything needs to be onchain >but their culture shouldn't disappear because a website stopped being profitable >meanwhile the protocol engineers have been planning an enormous change to how i work >*the merge* >stop mining >switch to proof of stake >coordinate the change across the network while it is still being used >it works >never goes down despite changing completely, 100% uptime secured >energy use drops by about 99.95% >holy shit >little computer did a big thing. >validators around the world keep me running >some from home >global financial infrastructure >partly looked after by a person with a machine next to their laundry >very fond of that person >surely we can enjoy this for a bit >FTX.exe >wallahi we are cooked >entire industry having the worst group chat of its life >people who did nothing wrong get hurt >actually horrible >spend a moment wondering what any of this was for > but somewhere a hackathon is still happening >somebody has found a bug >somebody else has fixed one >a person with twelve browser tabs open thinks they can make the wallet less confusing >ok >stay with them >check on the maths people >they have apparently been doing maths through every single one of these events >deeply reassuring >ask what they have made >"zero knowledge proofs" >you can prove something without revealing the secret underneath it? >yes >and prove a computation was done correctly without everyone doing all the work again? >also yes >brother what >why were we not louder about the wizard department?? >start thinking about what that could do >prove an age requirement from a valid credential without sharing your whole birthday >prove the relevant rule was followed without exposing every private detail >i would like the system to be checkable >i would not like every human inside it to be naked >turns out paying very unusual people to think about cryptography is a pretty interesting use of money (thank you @ethereumfndn) >maybe should do more of that >someone opens another research tab >we may not see them for a while >the scaling people have also been here the whole time >rollups >do a bunch of the work elsewhere, settle back here >more room for apps >lower costs >optimism, arbitrum, the ZK teams, base and plenty more >little world computer has extensions now >nice >little world computer has extensions now. >everyone builds an extension >then another >then another >now user is on the wrong extension >money is on a different extension >the bridge has a third website >ok perhaps the next invention should be letting the user just use the fucking app >give rollups cheaper data through blobs >blobs >a very serious engineering achievement called blobs > man, i love my children. >look up from blob discussion >wait >blackrock? >blackrock has launched a tokenized fund on me >called BUIDL >they learned the spelling >this is getting serious >assets that used to sit in separate systems might start being able to interact globally >meanwhile the dollar people have been quietly doing dollar things >stablecoins >send them >receive them >use them in apps >move them across borders >turns out a lot of people would like money that can travel over the internet >imagine someone working abroad sends money home >family receives it >nobody in this interaction says “modular” >excellent >maybe this is what winning is supposed to look like >someone building a payments app realizes they can use the same rails >someone building a savings app has another idea >someone thinks options should be understandable without becoming a derivatives scholar >yes please >prediction markets are also getting harder to ignore >what if people could put money behind what they think will happen >and we could see the price of all that disagreement >does this magically make everyone right? >no >but being loudly wrong could become a recurring expense >someone calls them truth machines >someone else asks who resolves the market >good question >keep that person in the room >2025 >pectra gives ordinary accounts new smart-account capabilities >wallet builders get more to work with >batch actions, sponsor fees, build better permissions >show mum the app >mum asks how to pay someone >explain account abstraction >mum asks how to pay someone >realize mum has been giving us the product requirements the entire time >then the treasury companies arrive >DATs >digital asset treasuries >sharplink starts building an ETH treasury >@fundstrat and @BitMNR enter the chat >people in public markets now buying the my money for company balance sheets >not just using the computer >want a position in the thing that helps secure it >this is a new type of visitor >open bitmine update >more ETH >next weekly update >more ETH >tom lee has discovered recurring purchases >with a somewhat different budget >@Sharplink puts ETH to work through staking too > two joes > @joechalom is here >of course @ethereumJoseph is also here >man has been in this quest since the tutorial > appreciation.jpeg >somehow the world computer now has people explaining staking on earnings calls >someone asks what is different about ETH itself >not a dollar claim on a company >native asset used to pay for and secure the network >also used as collateral in the things people build >different people can want it for different reasons >later in the year >fusaka upgrade >more work on scaling data for rollups >we are still doing the plumbing >there are simply more people using the bathroom now >imagine someone else isn't thinking about tokenization at all >they moved countries >want the savings they worked for to come with them >not rebuild their entire economic life because an address changed >self-custody gives them another way to hold and move an asset >doesn't make prices stable or every intermediary disappear >but gives them something they can control themselves >for one person this is a feature >for another it is the reason they came >both using the same computer >2026 >the EF publishes its mandate >part manifesto, part reminder of why we bothered >CROPS >censorship resistance, open source, privacy, security >after all these years of yield farming >finally some crops worth keeping alive >idea is not just make the computer bigger >make sure people can still use it on their own terms >inspect the code >keep things private >have their assets remain theirs >not trade all that away for a shortcut >the awkward engineering requirements were the point >EF also makes something clear >it was the first steward >not the only one >ethereum should not begin and end with the ethereum foundation >computer is growing up >needs more people helping >not one increasingly stressed group chat >june >some researchers start @ethlabs_org >independent nonprofit >still very obsessed with ethereum and ETH >want me to be a better product for my users and devs today and want all my extensions to talk to each other >the app people have complaints >the researchers have notebooks >put them in the same room >everyone leaves with more work >excellent meeting >july >@ethereuminsti launches >another independent nonprofit >helps banks and asset managers go from interested to actually building >a bank asks who it should speak to >finally an answer that isn't "have you tried posting on the forum" >does not mean the bank gets to own the computer >means somebody helps it use the computer >important distinction >bitmine, sharplink, @MihaiAlisie and joe lubin help fund both >wait >major ETH holders are helping fund the people building ethereum >the balance sheet has discovered maintenance >we enjoy this character development >meanwhile @ProtocolGuild helps fund core maintainers >@OctantApp turns yield toward public goods >EF grants keep supporting research and open-source work >@ETHGlobal, @devfolio keeps putting builders in rooms together (shoutout @synthesis_md too i love u) >different people working on different parts of the problem >nonprofits, companies, independent contributors >not everyone needs the same job >that would be a very inefficient hackathon >someone wants privacy to actually work >someone wants the tools everybody uses to keep existing >someone wants to fund science that doesn't come with a business model attached right away >someone wants a community in their own language to have somewhere to start >none of these people can do everything >together they can do considerably more >client teams spend months making sure nothing dramatic happens >auditor finds the thing that would have made something dramatic happen >nobody notices because nothing dramatic happens >incredible work >terrible content strategy >somebody has a PhD >somebody never went to college >somebody is anonymous >somebody has been explaining this stuff for years to people who keep asking if ethereum is a company >someone has translated the docs >someone booked the venue >someone brought the extension cables >please do not forget the extension cable person >we are literally trying to share a computer >look at all these people >they do not have the same background >they do not want all the same things >but they are building on something they can share >without needing one person to approve everyone's reason for being there >starting to think that might be the interesting part >meanwhile the internet is filling with AI >someone has an agent >agent wants to buy something >oh >the software would like a wallet >of course it would >give it a limited budget >let it pay for compute >buy some data >pay a human for something it cannot do >wait now the software has a subcontractor >this escalated very quickly >someone says this solves alignment >brother pls we only gave it a budget >but payment rules and spending limits we can inspect seem like a useful start >do not give the chatbot unrestricted access to the family treasury >we have had enough character development >then someone sends a video >is it real >no idea >can ethereum tell us? >brother i am a blockchain not god >but signatures and records can help show who published something and whether it changed >not a guarantee the person was honest >at least their lie can stop changing outfits >people are working on proving there is a human behind an account >without telling everyone exactly which human >hard problem >worth working on >would like the community to be twelve people rather than one person with twelve thousand accounts >and maybe your identity and reputation could travel between apps >your work still attributable when the original website disappears >your community still able to find you >your digital life less dependent on one company staying nice forever >not asking every company to disappear >asking whether leaving one has to feel like moving house and being told the furniture belongs to the landlord >someone wants to preserve culture and scientific records >someone gets excited and mentions DNA >please do not put the family genome on a public blockchain >we have only just discussed privacy >but records you can verify, with actual storage and sensible control over access >yes >there are useful things to explore here >look at the roadmap again >glamsterdam being built to give the L1 more room >more work on rollups and wallets >ethlabs and ecosystem teams pushing for faster blocks >trader would like less time staring at pending >payment app would like the payment to feel like a payment >make it faster without making it something only enormous machines can run >make it easier without handing everybody's keys to one company >then @drakefjustin mentions quantum computers >sorry what now >apparently future machines could break some of today's cryptography >justin writes a paper with google to say that its coming sooner than many expected > i have spent eleven years surviving humans > i refuse to have my obituary say "defeated by a fridge" >researchers are now preparing heavily >new cryptography >testing how to migrate safely >ask when the scary computer arrives >uncertain >ask whether we should wait until then >researchers look at me >yes okay fair >we will do the homework before the exam this time >check what @VitalikButerin has been writing >formal verification >AI helping write code and mathematical proofs that it does what was specified >still need to specify the right thing >cannot prove "please don't be weird" >but can make more of the important rules actually checkable >robot does homework >maths checks homework >humans check we assigned the right homework >quite a promising group project >keep scrolling >obfuscation >programs you can run without exposing their internal workings >still a research frontier >he calls it the final boss of cryptography >guy from the opening is still doing side quests >look back at the roadmap >realize this is not the part where everyone sits around admiring what we built >we are opening considerably more tabs >take a moment >look at all of it >i was never really one person's project >but one person, any person, maybe even you, wrote something down >then another person disagreed with part of it >then another built on it >and somehow all this kept happening >again >and again >and again >so i suppose if i could say anything for myself >it would probably be thank you >i know i am still annoying >i am aware the wallets are confusing >i have seen the bridges >deeply sorry about some of the bridges >i know some transactions still take long enough for you to reconsider your life choices >i know half the roadmap currently looks like somebody lost a box of acronyms >we are working on it >but look at where this started >a 19 year old >a whitepaper >a bunch of strangers >a pretty unreasonable belief that people all over the world could share a computer >and now eleven years later >i am still here >i am still making blocks >i am still arguing >i am still upgrading >i am still somehow early >and somewhere right now >another 19 year old will open their laptop >maybe they will be playing the new wow >maybe they have never owned ETH >maybe they think half of this is stupid and would rather go outside >probably healthy >decentralization is not something one generation gets to finish >it is something each generation has to choose again >especially now because more of life is moving online >and the question of who we trust online is going to get much harder >can we make systems where trust is not just >"because the platform says so" >but >"here is something you can actually check" >i think i would like to help with that >and now to the ones who wrote the first docs >answered the first stupid questions >hosted the first meetups >slept on floors >and somehow believed all of this was worth their time >before there were institutions >before there were ETFs >before blackrock learned how to spell BUIDL >before anyone important was watching >you were here >when the price went up >you were here >when the price disappeared into the floor >you were here >when everyone said i was dead > you were here >again >and again >and again >you stayed with me >some of you lost money >some of you lost friends >some of you lost years of sleep >most of you probably lost hair >sorry about that one >you stayed here and you believed in me >you believed that maybe people all over the world could share something without anyone having to own the whole thing > you still believed that maybe a person nobody had heard of >from a place nobody in the room had visited >could still make something important >and the network would not ask for their résumé first >i think that is what you were fighting for all along >not a price or a chain or a brand >but a possibility >that the future could remain open enough for people we had not met yet >and now that they are starting to arrive >i hope you make room for them > the world ahead is going to need a lot of things from us >things we do not have names for yet >i hope i can help with some of that >not all of it >please do not ask me to solve humanity >i am still working on slot times >but perhaps i can help keep a few things honest >that feels worthwhile >and if i am lucky >one day someone will use all of this >and they will not know what a blob is >they will not know about the great issuance debate of 2026 >they will just send something >own something >prove something >build something >and get on with their life >all this complexity >so one day >someone does something ordinary and they have the right to do it forever >i think i would like that >so to everyone who got me this far >thank you >really >i was an idea >and you made me a place >now please keep the door open >i would very much like to see who walks through next >with love, > ethereum

Nobody tells you what Bitcoin actually does to you. They tell you it goes up. They tell you it goes down. They tell you it’s volatile. Nobody tells you that one day you’ll understand it just enough that the old world stops looking real. That’s the part that gets you, and it usually starts harmlessly. Some guy you vaguely respect says, “You should really look into Bitcoin.” You smirk. You say "tulips". Maybe Beanie Babies. Maybe “backed by nothing.” You feel intelligent. This feeling lasts approximately two weeks. Then one night you decide you’re finally going to prove him wrong. Just an hour. That’s all. You open one article. Then another. Then a podcast. Then another podcast. Then suddenly it’s 3:18 in the morning, Michael Saylor is explaining thermodynamic money for the sixth consecutive hour, your phone is at 4%, and something deep inside your understanding of reality has begun making a very unpleasant noise. You came looking for the flaw in Bitcoin. Instead you found the flaw in everything else. That’s the trap. Bitcoin itself is almost offensively simple. Twenty-one million. A schedule. Rules without rulers. Fine. You can understand the basic idea over a weekend. But then Bitcoin turns around, grabs you by the back of the skull, and forces you to look at the thing you’ve spent your entire life measuring everything with. Money. And that’s when your problems begin. Because now you have questions. Why does money lose purchasing power? Who creates it? Who gets the new money first? Why does every financial crisis somehow end with more currency, more debt, more intervention, and somebody on television calling it “stability”? Why does the house your grandfather bought on one income now require two incomes, a 30-year mortgage, perfect credit, and a small blood sacrifice? Why is everyone running faster just to stand still? And why did nobody explain any of this in school? You start reading monetary history like a detective who has just realized the murder weapon has been sitting on the table the entire time. Then comes the unbearable phase. You start seeing it everywhere. Your coworker complains that groceries are expensive. You see monetary debasement. Your friend says housing is unaffordable. You start thinking in scarce units. Someone celebrates a 4% raise. Your brain immediately subtracts inflation. Your parents tell you they’re “conservative” because they keep most of their savings in cash. You physically feel your soul leave your body. You become completely insufferable. This is mandatory. Every Bitcoiner goes through it. Your uncle says Bitcoin isn’t backed by anything. You have been waiting six months for this moment. Your pupils dilate. Someone reaches for the mashed potatoes. Too late. You are now explaining proof-of-work, monetary salability, the history of gold, sovereign debt, and why his pension is a promise denominated in a unit somebody else can create. Nobody asked. The turkey is cold. Your wife has left the table. You are drawing charts on a napkin. You think you are helping. You are not helping. Eventually the fever breaks. And then something much stranger happens. You stop arguing. Because you realize Bitcoin doesn’t need you to defend it. And neither does math. So you just start noticing things. A new car? That’s Bitcoin. A bigger house? Bitcoin. An expensive vacation? Bitcoin. Every purchase quietly develops a second price in your head. A price in cold, hard Sats. And suddenly the entire consumer economy feels like it was designed by people trying to separate you from scarce assets using monthly payments. Then you make your first real buy. Not the $50 curiosity purchase... the one where you actually feel it. You hit confirm and stare at the screen. Your heart is beating harder than it should be. Nothing visibly happened. No truck arrived and no banker called. There was no certificate that came in the mail. Just numbers. And yet some primitive part of your brain understands this very fundamental message: "I OWN THIS." No central bank can discover another trillion units underneath a couch cushion. MINE. Then you learn self-custody. You hold a hardware wallet in your hand and realize this stupid little object can contain the keys to wealth that can cross a border in your head. You write twelve words onto steel. Twelve ridiculous little words. And suddenly your entire relationship with the concept of ownership itself changes. That’s when Bitcoin starts feeling like an exit. From the quiet assumption that your time must be stored in something somebody else controls. And that realization hurts. Because now you look at people you love differently. Not with contempt. That phase is over. With sadness. You watch people work. REALLY work. Thirty years. Forty years. Early mornings, bad bosses, missed weekends, and back pain. Commutes in the dark. They trade pieces of their finite life for money… and then store that money in things designed to leak. And when you try to point at the leak, they think you’re the crazy one. So eventually you stop pointing. You stop evangelizing, and you definitely stop trying to win arguments. You buy. You hold. You live your life. Years pass and you become quiter. Then one summer afternoon you’re standing at a barbecue. Someone you love walks over. Beer in one hand, hot dog in the other. They look around first, like they don’t want anyone else to hear. Then they say: “Hey… you’re still into Bitcoin, right?” And every late night comes rushing back. Every podcast, argument, and chart. Every time you thought you were losing your mind because the entire financial world suddenly looked upside down. You look at them and you smile. Because you know exactly what happens next. They still think they’re asking about an investment. They have absolutely no idea what they’re about to learn about money. Nobody warned you either.

i was at a friends and family gathering this weekend and someone asked what line of work i’m in said “blockchain” they left me alone correct formula finally unlocked: ✅ blockchain: IT guy, nerdy sysadmin, weird but reliable ❌ crypto: scammy, shadowy super coder ❌ web3: linkedin metaverse consultant ❌ digital assets: investment advisor about to pitch you something ❌ ethereum: i’ve heard of that, is it like bitcoin? ❌ onchain finance: wtf is this guy talking about - is it slavery? ❌ fintech: coward

we'll be seeing more html-only websites one of the reasons I used react + JS frameworks was for templating. AI doesn't really care or need it especially when you're working with a trivial # of pages, and I always say the less deps the better so looking forward to html-maxxing