Byron Gilliam

This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/brand/the-breakdown" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“Technology is everything that doesn’t work yet.”



— Danny Hillis
</blockquote>



The world’s first webcam was an inadvertent hit.



Computer scientists at a University of Cambridge lab, to avoid the disappointment of walking to the kitchen only to find their communal coffee pot empty, cobbled together a network application called XCoffee.



A spare video camera, mounted in the kitchen and connected to the laboratory’s network via Ethernet, was programmed to send low-resolution photos of the coffee pot to the scientists&#8217; desktops every 20 seconds or so.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="690" height="383" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110667" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=690 690w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-184.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 690px) 100vw, 690px" /></figure>



It was a novel arrangement in 1991 — and when the researchers migrated it from the laboratory network to the still-novel world wide web in 1993, it became the world’s first webcam.



It also became the web’s first mainstream use case.



The world wide web was a lonely place in 1993, with few web pages to look at and no search engines to find them with.



Somehow, though, people found their way to the coffee pot webcam.



These early surfers of the internet were so eager to do something — anything! — on the web that they found themselves enthralled by a fixed view of a standard coffee pot.



Is it almost empty? Is the coffee getting darker? Has someone had a cup while I was away???



It was reality TV at its very worst.



It was also a hit.



The opportunity to keep tabs on a Cambridge coffee pot must have spread strictly by word of mouth, because there was no social media to share it on, no search engines to find it with.&nbsp;



But the pot’s audience grew steadily, with the lab’s servers receiving first hundreds and then thousands of visitors — and then exponentially: Millions of people were soon using the web to monitor someone else’s coffee.



One of the lab’s researchers received emails from Japan requesting that the kitchen light be left on overnight so that people in different time zones could have a chance to watch the (presumably empty) coffee pot.



The Cambridge, England tourist information office began offering directions to the lab to visitors hoping to see the star coffee pot in real life.



Finally, peak coffee pot mania hit in 2001, when the lab’s decision to permanently unplug its webcam made <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81417&amp;page=1">front-page headlines</a>.



By that time, there were more substantial things to do on the internet, of course, like watching cat videos and pirating music — and not much later, there would be all-consuming things to do like scrolling through Facebook and posting videos on TikTok.



None of that was imaginable in 1993. But the popularity of the coffee pot webcam was a first hint that the world wide web would soon go mainstream: People’s eagerness to use the web to watch coffee stay warm was a clear sign they’d also want to use it for anything and everything.



This is a hallmark of great technology: If people are eager to use new tech when it’s not very good (three-frames-per-minute video) and for unexpected reasons (watching coffee), it’s a surefire bet that much bigger things are coming.



So, here’s something on my wishlist for <s>2024</s> 2026: Crypto has its coffee pot moment.



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History

The long wait for crypto’s “coffee pot” moment

Kate Irwin

This is a segment from The Drop newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Brave is one of the few web browsers that’s embraced crypto.



It has the affiliated BAT rewards token and a built-in crypto wallet, to name a few of its tie-ins.&nbsp;



But it’s also taken a privacy-forward approach — and splashed that across its marketing to help set it apart from other Chromium-based browsers.



“We’re kind of in [a] metaphysical rebellion against the big tech surveillance powers that evolved on JavaScript,” Brave CEO and cofounder Brendan Eich, who created the JavaScript language, said onstage during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference this week.



“We didn’t think about this enough in the mid-90s. The cookie was for keeping your login tokens,” he added. “It wasn’t for third-party tracking, but that’s how it evolved, and JavaScript was just fuel on that fire.”



Eich argued that internet advertising is inherently a “toxic system” where involved parties are “all fighting each other and cheating each other.”&nbsp;



But tech that can use blockchain rails, like ZK Proofs for privacy plus “proof of humanity” verification for fraud prevention, could help bring about a new, browser-native, more private ad system.



“We’ve gotta get onto blockchains that are faster and private by design,” he <a href="https://x.com/StakeWithPride/status/1937916138425618523">said</a>.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true"><a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Brave</a> in May 2025 passed 88M Monthly Active Users (MAU). On track for 100M in Q4. The well-known &quot;summer slump&quot; on desktop (school breaks, holiday trips =&gt; people outside) started, but overall browser + search growth holds strong. Also, we saw a nice bump in user-minutes. 1/6 <a href="https://t.co/aDakeadfCS">https://t.co/aDakeadfCS</a>&mdash; BrendanEich (@BrendanEich) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1930811477365293561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Brave began as a web browser, because that type of product is a starting point with the potential to reach a mass consumer audience.&nbsp;



“It’s the universal app, the daily driver. We have more user minutes and a smaller user population than X does,” Eich said. Brave’s <a href="https://brave.com/transparency/">transparency</a> page lists 38.6 million daily active users and 88.1 million monthly.



And while not all Brave users may like this bit, Brave Search is helping the firm’s AI business by using that data to refine its LLM (Brave offers Leo AI).



“It seems like the browser is still relevant, but we found that the flipside of the browser coin is Search,” the CEO said.



Eich previously cofounded the Mozilla Foundation and its affiliated company and worked on Mozilla projects for 11 years. He spoke onstage with Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed (Midnight is a Cardano-affiliated, ZK- and privacy-focused chain). Midnight, whose foundation <a href="https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/midnight-foundation-launches-to-support-growth-of-secure-and-decentralized-blockchain-network-822794925.html">launched</a> just last month, is planning to include BAT holders in its upcoming NIGHT airdrop.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Had a great discussion with <a href="https://twitter.com/BrendanEich?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BrendanEich</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/brave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@brave</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/Permissionless?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Permissionless</a> on building a user-first web. We covered privacy, wallet-native identity, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MidnightNtwrk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MidnightNtwrk</a>’s new tokenomics and incentives whitepaper. Catch the recording:<a href="https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4">https://t.co/M8SmAMfZb4</a> <a href="https://t.co/i0TPOlZ6jd">pic.twitter.com/i0TPOlZ6jd</a>&mdash; Fahmi Syed (@F_ZK_Now) <a href="https://twitter.com/F_ZK_Now/status/1937955388260815161?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2025</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Last month, Brave <a href="https://x.com/brave/status/1921945493870874799">said</a> it’s adding Cardano support to the Brave Wallet, which already supports lots of chains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and others.&nbsp;



During the Permissionless talk, Eich concluded with some advice for crypto devs that may give vibe-coders pause: Rewrite your code.&nbsp;



Then maybe consider writing it again, and again.



“Human intelligence is not about to be surpassed by these [AI] models,” Eich said. “Be a human, write and read code.”



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internet

Brave CEO: We’re in a ‘metaphysical rebellion’ against big tech surveillance

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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The crypto-powered cellular network Helium Mobile overhauled its pricing model for new subscribers — which formerly offered unlimited call, text and data for $20 per month.



Invite-only free plans come with 3 GB of data, 300 texts, and 100 minutes per month, $15 plans offer 10 GB of data with unlimited talk and text, and unlimited plans are now $30 per month. Legacy subscribers to the $20 per month plan can keep their existing price. It also introduced a points program to reward things like location sharing that users can redeem for gift cards.&nbsp;



The moves come amid a turbulent last several months that included layoffs and an SEC lawsuit at Helium Mobile’s parent company Nova Labs.



Helium Mobile is one of the most ambitious attempts at building a decentralized physical infrastructure network — DePIN for short — a popular concept among the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-lack-of-utility">crypto should do things</a>” crowd.&nbsp;



Helium Mobile comprises a network of individuals plugging in mobile hotspots to create a patchwork of what are essentially mini cell towers. Subscribers use Helium’s service where coverage is available and get T-Mobile service elsewhere. Helium Mobile rolled out its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-cell-plan-goes-nationwide">unlimited plan nationwide</a> in the US for $20 per month in late 2023.&nbsp;



$20 per month is a fraction of what legacy cell carriers charge for unlimited cellular plans, and combined with the fact that Helium Mobile must pay T-Mobile for some of the data subscribers use, it was never going to last forever. More price options are also nice for consumers — if you use less than 10 GB of data in a month, you no longer need to subsidize usage from data guzzlers.



Helium Mobile’s new free tier is a cool concept, but it’s not clear to me that it’ll find much demand — do you know anyone, particularly in the crypto world, who uses less than three gigs of data and 100 call minutes in a month? One possible target demographic could be <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/2025-solana-product-launches">Solana mobile phone</a> holders, who may own the devices as second phones and wouldn’t want to pay for a second cell plan.



Coco Tang, general manager of Helium Mobile subscribers, said the free plan could also be a good option for consumers wanting to try Helium before fully making the switch. Helium Mobile developer Nova Labs will hope the new pricing model can drive up revenue following what has been a turbulent year for the company. It laid off 36% of its staff in August, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-parent-company-layoffs">Lightspeed reported exclusively</a>. Then a couple weeks ago, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-gensler-resigning">outgoing SEC Chair</a> Gary Gensler made his last enforcement action a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-charges-nova-labs-with-fraud">lawsuit against Nova Labs</a> charging the company with fraud.



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DePIN

Helium Mobile introduces free plan, hikes price for unlimited data

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Crypto is a creature of extremes. Look no further than the major narratives right now.&nbsp;



AI agents and memecoins are almost completely virtual. DePIN, meanwhile, derives practically its entire value proposition from very physical networks of hardware. In the real world.&nbsp;



So, you can’t fault Helium — the decentralized wireless carrier powered by Solana — for teaming up with DAWN to expand both their networks, together.



The pair have struck a partnership to allow Helium hotspot operators to serve DAWN broadband internet, and vice versa, to create “the world’s first fully decentralized last-mile internet solution.”



Like how Helium is shooting to disrupt centralized telecoms, DAWN is pushing to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/two-vaneck-funds-back-depin-dawn">change our relationship with traditional ISPs</a>, allowing regular users to both own the infrastructure and be rewarded in crypto for providing wireless broadband to anyone in range.



“The conversation started with a strong alignment on the mission of decentralizing internet access,” a Helium spokesperson told me. “We&#8217;re moving toward making connectivity owned by the many and accessible to everyone.”



It means that the Helium Network will automatically grow by 8,000 nodes that already serve the DAWN ecosystem, according to a press release.



A Helium Foundation <a href="https://dune.com/helium-foundation/helium-makers">dashboard</a> meanwhile points to more than 25,000 mobile hotspots onboarded since last April, which hypothetically could serve DAWN broadband once the functionality is rolled out, although it’s not immediately clear how many are currently active.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1382" height="998" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96300" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=1382 1382w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=356 356w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=361 361w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=303 303w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXcS2KLUG9cyxVVCmOyGyMtabV-GqO6WfmGYnWh-Jyw1sYAued80xonZL9J3L_UXvxcfOcSfyJaKEQyJW9mBV6ui_1t8RJQKdsPJwnUTe5Av3abo1bUC-NVYnfEE6SXvEVFkKRnhvw.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1382px) 100vw, 1382px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Helium’s HNT is still working on reclaiming highs from the last cycle. DAWN, which has an active points program, is yet to confirm a token launch</figcaption></figure>



The spokesperson said that there’s no equity or investment deal as part of the partnership. Still, it all suggests a certain coalescence in the DePIN space.&nbsp;



Like how GPUs and ASIC mining rigs can be used to mine a number of different cryptocurrencies — switching between them based on profitability — we could be headed for a world where DePIN devices in our homes can be pointed to all sorts of different use cases depending on demand.&nbsp;



It might mean additional income for the household without the often extreme overheads related to proof-of-work mining, although how much would be largely dependent on token prices and whatnot.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1380" height="1000" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png" alt="" class="wp-image-96299" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=1380 1380w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=355 355w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=360 360w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=302 302w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/AD_4nXd1nND-GiHGinDzKPsTMQoHZpIsMAO9sRbIxvucteXY8QVyXzckJPVYFPSWbaG8q5B4smbdT9Sk21fQxESHnBI7ao1gb3IEupRaUJ1vkGak1ZA4ae1RNMwTOYrta425yRYk5J8aKg.png?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1380px) 100vw, 1380px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Helium users are spending ~$6,000 HNT per week right now, up from under $3,000 in January 2024</figcaption></figure>



What’s interesting is that had this partnership not been made, eventually Helium and DAWN would’ve been considered competitors. But not really anymore.



Wouldn’t that make Elon Musk’s Starlink the biggest rival to the Helium-DAWN partnership, outside of the traditional carriers?



“Starlink is disrupting the connectivity industry in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago,” the Helium spokesperson said. “Several Helium deployments use Starlink as an internet backhaul in the US and Mexico.”&nbsp;



The team has also developed a connectivity kit that combines Starlink with Helium Hotspots, to better serve phones in areas without cell coverage.



In any case, the Helium-DAWN partnership makes total sense, especially considering the latter is expected to airdrop a token to early adopters at some point.



After all, when it comes to incentivizing people to set up physical devices in their homes, two token flywheels must be better than one.



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Helium partners with DAWN to create ‘last-mile internet solution’

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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Before “AI” came to be synonymous with “agents,” there were far humbler AI projects with functional use cases. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-wallets-grass-airdrop">Grass</a> was one such DePIN project on Solana.



The Grass elevator pitch: Big Tech bad because it scrapes your data on the internet for their profit, Grass good because you can now use it to activate your idle internet bandwidth to sell that access.



Rather than buying it from Big Tech, AI companies (or businesses that find it useful to track media sentiment) that want your textual data can now purchase it from you via Grass as an intermediary.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfOaFluRNCHciWYIG5ognSLP1iMjgw-yNP3MiFDA2E6Y6wfWaAzw6K5EHG2bvhWOxesvclzRtsHmqzbf_6d6tr2KS9i1EEblPhnmJEjSZ3Kld7Zgh313htaZ9KfuEp0h_HJtn-OvA?key=t0gZV95PRBaJNtXjVlJVzpLc" alt=""/></figure>



Grass blew up mid-2024, growing to more than <a href="https://x.com/getgrass_io/status/1837497231274041557">2 million+</a> active nodes in less than a year. These nodes scrape about <a href="https://x.com/Daveeemor/status/1868698451044675897">90TB</a> of data daily (about 445x less than Google), which is then sold to AI companies.



The GRASS token airdropped in October, with multiple major CEX listings and a 380% appreciation since.



That’s impressive considering most tokens see a down-only trend on TGE. It’s even more particularly impressive since GRASS farmers don’t suffer an opportunity cost, i.e., staking capital. The more costless it is to farm something, the higher tendency for a token to dump aggressively, but that hasn’t been the case for Grass.



Based on <a href="https://x.com/alpha_pls/status/1846611190891360467">@Daveeemor</a>, Grass generates about $33 million in annualized revenues, which it plans to eventually share with its node operators and GRASS stakers.



At a $702 million market cap today, that gives GRASS a 21.3x MC/F multiple. If one believes Grass can continue to scale as it did in 2024, that suggests a very attractive token valuation relative to other fee-generating DePIN protocols, like Helium or Akash, which <a href="https://x.com/Daveeemor/status/1868698451044675897">trade</a> at a much higher 265-334x MC/F multiple.



In Q1 2025, Grass plans to introduce the ability to better capture real-time data with its “Live Context Retrieval” technology, enabling more performant and specific AI models that depend on time-sensitive information such as market trading. 



For more on Grass, see our previous Blockworks research <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/flashnotes/touching-grass">report</a> by Boccaccio.



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0xResearch Newsletter

Reshaping the data layer of AI with Grass

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



DAWN’s goal is lofty. All the best ones are.



Aiming to enable regular consumers to serve each other broadband — and be rewarded for it with crypto — is similar to what Helium has done for mobile coverage over the past few years.



DAWN is positioning itself as a decentralized protocol for gigabit-level internet access, as in, download speeds of over 1 gigabyte per second (1,000 megabytes per second).



Helium hotspots, on the other hand, generally offer a 5G-grade service.&nbsp;



There are technically no minimum and maximum levels for how fast 5G internet can be. Helium users have reported download speeds ranging from under 100 megabytes per second to actual gigabit ranges. But it depends on the area, with factors including user demand, density and quality of the hotspots available.



Still, Helium plays a role in DAWN’s future, whether it likes it or not. Helium is the most obvious benchmark for DePIN adoption right now, especially for projects vying to disrupt services like telecoms and the internet.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeKU8DSkUk4lf3F49yGdMNNZc-Zbar4VCwitttdAtOeHE5Gjr0I96YVcSGFdHDUoFanNMm_YqDocDpjQZwVQnGmBfBK8Qa18m4X0vLznJepqew-XOKehy7ApBeQI9vMb0OzP4D1?key=CN2RNGBd-CTBs8tFHnhsvr-F" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Helium has been heating up all year</figcaption></figure>



And considering DAWN is utilizing Solana for its tokenomics — as does Helium since it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-token-holders-approve-switch-to-solana-blockchain">switched from its own network</a> in April 2023 — the two are destined to be compared against each other ad infinitum.&nbsp;



It could be that DAWN may only really be considered a success if it can eclipse Helium in certain metrics.&nbsp;



While the subscription rates of Helium’s mobile service have <a href="https://dune.com/rawrmaan/helium-mobile">slowed</a> somewhat (105 per day on average this quarter compared to 225 in Q3), users are spending more than ever to use the network. At least since Helium swapped over to Solana as usage data before the jump is apparently no longer publicly available.



Helium users <a href="https://dune.com/helium-foundation/helium-data-credits">spent</a> almost $63,000 and $56,000 on data in the first two weeks of December, as shown by the light green columns on the above chart. The price of HNT is otherwise plotted by the purple line.



In a way, DAWN is a bet on that number increasing dramatically from here. And what’s good for Helium could be good for DAWN — as long as the latter successfully channels that energy toward the home, rather than the hotspot.



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Helium revenues heat up just in time for a new DAWN

Katherine Ross

VanEck is putting $2.5 million into DAWN, a DePIN project aiming to create a decentralized internet service provider. The investment comes from VanEck’s Digital Assets Alpha fund and VanEck Ventures.



The strategic funding round marks the first time that “multiple funds at <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/vaneck">VanEck</a> have made a direct investment into the same company,” the firm exclusively told Blockworks. The newest raise comes after Andrena, the company behind DAWN, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-internet-service-provider-fundraise">raised $18 million</a> in a round back in August.*



Andrena CEO Neil Chatterjee told Blockworks that DAWN was designed to capitalize on the “transformation of our lives” as society goes from being wired into the internet to being completely wireless following the rollouts of 5G and Starlink.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/depin-monetized-tesla-dashcam-data">Turning Tesla cameras into data engines</a>



“So now that we are kind of as a society going from a transition from a wired society to a more wireless one, we can actually use that wireless transformation in a way that we can wield it to benefit the end consumer, to benefit the end household, in a way [so they] are owning their own network. With this new transformation, we want homes to be the ones that are taking the benefit,” he explained.&nbsp;



DAWN’s hardware can be used to reshare internet “no matter what provider you’re with,” and doesn’t need to be DAWN’s specific internet, the Andrena team explained to Blockworks.&nbsp;



Chatterjee said his project aims to give “anybody all across the globe that has underutilized bandwidth…the means to sell it without having to worry about the customer acquisition.”



The $2.5 million figure will partially be used to scale retail engagement through the hardware, allowing users to create mini networks for internet sharing and let DAWN expand internationally. Right now, the user base is predominantly in the US.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-exec-founds-internet-depin">Solana Foundation exec departs for ‘the most interesting experiment in crypto’</a>



Through that, Chatterjee’s team is looking for “partnerships with data centers, internet service providers, real estate, companies, that can kind of give you a very big footprint very quickly, and then we&#8217;ll be using our capital to help expedite that deployment process.”



The two biggest goals for the team are trickled down through their plans: onchain revenue and households. Chatterjee declined to give specifics on either metric, but noted that the team is moving to get both in the “millions.”



For VanEck Ventures, which launched back in October, DAWN offers a product that’s not only “economically competitive” but also challenges the “monopolistic nature” of legacy internet service providers, general partner Wyatt Lonergan told Blockworks.



The investment aligns with the new venture fund’s philosophy, which is jumping into an early-stage project with a check from $500,000 to $1 million, as Lonergan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vaneck-venture-fund-crypto-ai">explained to the Empire newsletter in October</a>.&nbsp;



According to Lonergan, DAWN aims to disrupt the monopoly held by traditional ISPs while giving “the consumer a better product, [and putting] them in control, [so the] token is kind of pouring fuel on the fire. It creates the really amazing network effects that you wouldn&#8217;t otherwise get and turns these users into owners. And that kind of strengthens the entire network, in our opinion. So I love the idea of using these mesh networks to bootstrap businesses that otherwise would be really hard to do. That is kind of the promise of tokens.”



But what really drew him, and the Digital Assets Alpha Fund, was the team behind DAWN.&nbsp;



“WiFi is something, to me, that’s really easy to understand,” which pushes this project more mainstream than other crypto projects, he explained. For VanEck, Lonergan said the goal is to back a “category-winning team,” which both funds believe DAWN is.&nbsp;



Disclosure: Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks and host of Empire, also participated in DAWN’s August round.



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Exclusive: 2 VanEck funds back Solana-based DePIN DAWN

Billy Luedtke

The internet is built on a fragile foundation of trust assumptions — and it’s breaking. Every time we browse the web, make online purchases or share personal information, we rely on unspoken assumptions about how platforms manage our data and ensure our security. But trust assumptions are inherently flawed.



A trustless internet, grounded in decentralized technologies like blockchain, can reduce these risks by ensuring that actions are verifiable and secure without requiring blind trust. If we don&#8217;t act now to address the internet’s trust problem, we’ll continue to see data breaches and manipulation that undermine both personal privacy and societal stability. By developing new trust protocols and adopting decentralized solutions, we can secure the future of the web.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What are trust assumptions?</h2>



A trust assumption is a condition that you blindly assume is true. While that may seem vague or overly simplistic, trust assumptions are actually a critical component of security audits, and form the bedrock upon which security assessments are built.&nbsp;



Imagine a security auditor tasked with evaluating a simple iPhone game. There are hundreds of components to consider, from the device running the app to the compiler processing the code. Not to mention the app itself, which likely contains thousands of lines of code and dozens of interactions with other systems — think connecting to GameCenter for multiplayer or using Google to let users sign in. The auditor cannot realistically verify every single component or piece of code; instead, they are forced to make trust assumptions.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchains-still-arent-great-at-communication">Blockchains still aren’t great at communication</a>



The auditor might decide to make the trust assumption that GameCenter is secure and will function exactly as indicated by Apple, or that the iPhone hardware will match the stated specs for the operating system and compiler to function as indicated. By assuming certain conditions are true, the auditor can concentrate their efforts on probing other aspects of the system that are more likely to harbor risks. However, once a trust assumption is stated in a security audit, the accuracy of the audit hinges entirely on that assumption being correct. If any trust assumption proves to be flawed, the entire program could be compromised.



Trust assumptions aren’t limited to security auditors; in fact, users make scores of trust assumptions everyday when navigating the web. When you log into a social media site, you trust that it won’t harvest and sell your data to untrustworthy third parties; that it employs adequate security practices and will keep your account and data secure; and that it won’t simply pull up stakes and delete all of your content.&nbsp;



But modern society is built on an increasingly complex web of trust assumptions, and avoiding them simply isn’t possible. It’s why many users continue to get burned by data breaches, most recently like that of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-13/hacker-claims-theft-of-every-american-social-security-number">national public data</a>, which led to the breach of 2.9 billion people’s sensitive information. It’s also why search engines like Google can convince you you’re browsing “incognito,” while actively <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/chrome-incognito-mode-privacy-warning/">gathering and selling your browsing data</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Encoding sociology</h2>



It’s clear that trust assumptions breed vulnerabilities, so how can we reduce room for error with a more secure solution?&nbsp;&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/decentralization-for-data-security">Without decentralization, our data will never be safe</a>



Countering the trust assumption are “trustless systems.” Operating on the principle of, “don’t trust, verify,” these systems allow every action performed on the network to be easily authenticated. Between cryptographic algorithms and decentralized consensus mechanisms, trustless systems establish security and integrity without needing participants to know or trust other network participants. This method has been especially novel in improving tasks like verifying payments or transferring digital assets, where actions are straightforward and can be easily verified.



However, while the cypherpunks got it right with Bitcoin, not all online interactions can or should be made trustless — at least for now. Consider, for instance, the Better Business Bureau, which helps resolve disputes between companies and their customers. The site must filter out illegitimate complaints, which involves subjective judgment and layers of context, making it difficult to fully automate. Given the complexity of language and the current limitations of AI, discerning clear-cut rules to determine a valid complaint is challenging, so human moderation is very necessary.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-audits-ey">Stop calling them audits</a>



Because some processes will always require a degree of trust, it is crucial to develop protocols that effectively monitor and manage trust assumptions, so as to identify their potential blind spots and fortify them against manipulation. These protocols can pin-point dependencies, reveal potential vulnerabilities and assess the trustworthiness of network participants. For example, users could see how many others trust a website before sharing their personal data, turning blind trust into an informed, measured decision that enhances security.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Leveraging the power of trust</h2>



There has never been a more critical time to rethink how we handle trust online. As our digital and real-world identities become more intertwined, the consequences of misplaced trust grow increasingly dire. And while embracing trustlessness is ideal for certain use cases, a more effective solution for others may lie somewhere on the spectrum.



By developing and leveraging better tools to monitor and evaluate digital trust, we can gain deeper insights into online security and create a safer environment for everyone. Strengthening these trust mechanisms is not just important — it’s necessary. We deserve an online world where reliability and safety are the standard, not the exception.



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audit

The fatal errors plaguing the internet, and how we can fix them

Casey Wagner

The internet turned 35 earlier this week, and it seems only fitting that Ethereum would undergo arguably its largest upgrade ever just one day later.



Ethereum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-dencun-upgrade-mainnet">Dencun</a> hard fork went off <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blast-pauses-block-production">mostly</a> without a hitch on Wednesday. Its arrival delivered a bevy of nine improvement proposals, with the blob-centric EIP-4844 being by far the most memeable.



For more than a decade after Tim Bernes-Lee (himself a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22557765/www-nft-tim-berners-lee-sothebys-source-code">dabbler</a> in NFTs) first conceived the World Wide Web, internet users languished inside a slow, cumbersome internet plagued by bandwidth bottlenecks.&nbsp;



Dial-up modems could only handle up to about 50 kilobytes per second. The platforms we now take for granted — YouTube, Spotify, Twitch and TikTok —&nbsp;were as unfeasible back then as high-frequency trading on many layer-1 DEXs are today.



The arrival of broadband in the early 2000s immediately 10x’d consumer-grade internet to 512 kb/sec. Impossible ideas could now be realized into billion-dollar dot-com powerhouses, radically overhauling the dynamics of our culture and turning us all terminally online.



Now, two decades later, TV is all but dead, replaced by a gamut of streaming services. AR headsets backed by hyper-fast wireless blend our physical worlds with the same digital space that Bernes-Lee laid out in his 1989 paper outlining the web.



What broadband did for the internet, blobs are now doing for Ethereum.



Blobs give the raft of layer-2s their own space through which to post transactions to the Ethereum mainnet without clogging up the blockspace intended for other users.



They have their own fee market, which means regular folk and their protocols of choice won’t have to compete with rollups and sidechains for blockspace — leading to lower fees for all involved.



Dencun and its blobs have already massively <a href="https://dune.com/Marcov/layer-2-transaction-cost">reduced</a> fees for the layer-2s that have adopted the new rules. For example, Optimism and Base fees are down to a fraction of an American penny per transaction compared to nearly $1 before the fork.



YouTube debuted in 2005, a half-decade after the rollout of the first consumer-grade broadband services. Justin.tv, the precursor to Twitch, came two years later.



It could be that layer-2 fees rise over time as more layer-2s compete for blobspace. The true impact of Ethereum’s successful push toward a cohesive and holistic multi-chain ecosystem, powered by “blobband,&#8221; probably won’t be felt for years to come.



But the groundwork has now been laid. Welcome to Ethereum’s blobband era.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Digest</h2>



🙃 Solana has <a href="https://defillama.com/chains">flipped</a> Ethereum layer-2 Arbitrum for total value locked (TVL) to become the fourth largest DeFi ecosystem — a first since November 2021.&nbsp;



🌊 A quarter of a billion dollars was <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData">liquidated</a> on centralized exchanges over the past 24 hours, 60% longs.



🤪 Memecoin mania puts Solana number-one for DEX volume over the past day — $1.45 billion to BSC&#8217;s $1.14 billion



😴 All quiet on the crypto front as BTC hovers around $73,000 as ETH sits just below $4,000.&nbsp;



✋No budge in the benchmarks: S&amp;P and the Dow were flat during the pre-market trade. That’s no surprise, considering the VIX’s drop to 14 from its long-term average of 20.&nbsp;



✅ Good news: A bull market with a high VIX tends to spell “bubble trouble” — so lower volatility with higher prices may be a boon for traders.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Is the SEC in the crypto market’s rear-view mirror?</h2>



The crypto pump is upon us.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/sol">SOL</a> is up 18% this week and almost 50% over the month. Binance’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bnb">BNB</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/fil">Filecoin</a> are each up more than 80% over the past 30 days. Wormhole’s Portal Bridge has facilitated more than $113 million in transfers from Ethereum to alt chains like Solana, Sui, and Arbitrum over the past week.



Has the market forgotten that in the eyes of the SEC, they are all securities? Probably. Or maybe traders are just confident that Coinbase and Binance will emerge victorious in their legal battles with the regulator.&nbsp;



In June 2023, the SEC filed back-to-back lawsuits against Coinbase and Binance for allegedly selling unregistered securities, among other things. The regulator named <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/judge-questions-sec-limits-coinbase-hearing">13 cryptocurrencies available on Coinbase</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-sec-hearing-motion-dismiss">ten that trade on Binance securities</a> —&nbsp;despite none of these issuers being named co-defendants in the cases.



The SEC has also not filed any individual lawsuits against these alleged security token issuers, opting to take a different approach than it did in 2020 when it sued Ripple over its XRP token —&nbsp;a suit that ultimately did not play out in the regulator’s favor.



Both cases are still playing out in the legal system, and you might remember the SEC was notably absent from the Department of Justice’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-settlement-message-to-crypto-industry">historic $4.3 billion settlement</a> with Binance back in November.



But if you look at token prices, you’d think the SEC had dropped the cases.



Coinbase and Binance are both waiting for rulings in their <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-pushes-to-dismiss-sec-lawsuit">motions to dismiss</a> their respective cases. If the suits are not fully dismissed, the exchanges will move on to the discovery process.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">MicroStrategy keeps its foot on the gas&nbsp;</h2>



Can’t stop, won’t stop?



After offering an oversubscribed round where MicroStrategy (MSTR) raised nearly $800 million in senior convertible notes — mind you, they initially sought to raise $600 million before upsizing to $700 million last week — the company has proposed <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/microstrategy-second-convertible-senior-notes-offering">another $500 million</a> in convertible notes.



MSTR could, all-in-all, raise around $1.3 billion from its convertible notes offerings to fund its bitcoin purchases.



While this represents a new approach to the same tactic we’ve seen from MSTR in the past, Michael Saylor’s firm might have found a way to ensure that the stock remains more <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/microstrategy-stock-vs-bitcoin-etf">attractive than the bevy of bitcoin ETFs</a> on the market today.



By the numbers: MSTR has about $48 million in cash on hand as of December, but it has roughly $15 billion worth of bitcoin at current prices.



It’s fair to note that while the company may spend that cash on hand, MicroStrategy appears to largely plan to add to its BTC hoard. The stock was around before the bitcoin ETFs, and so far, it looks like it won’t only stick around, but may even outperform.&nbsp;



Compare IBIT and MSTR, for example. MSTR is outperforming BlackRock’s ETF even as the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/microstrategy-bitcoin-supply-rivals-blackrock-ibit">two go head-to-head over who holds the most bitcoin</a>.



MSTR’s bitcoin buying spree has proven to be a win-win for them: Wall Street’s happy and, more importantly, the crypto crowd goes bonkers when the company announces a new buy. And, trust me, the company is always announcing new buys. This year alone, MSTR has bought nearly 16,000 bitcoin.



Adding to that, when bitcoin’s price rockets, so does the company’s stock. The company, at the end of 2023, was trading around $680. Now, the stock is getting close to $2,000 — up 200% in the last three months alone.



Suffice to say, Saylor and MSTR keep hodling. The company isn’t afraid to hit the buy button — even if it means raising some debt to do so — and the most recent debt offerings show that the company’s appetite remains ravenous.



—&nbsp;Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



Welcome to The Works 👋 Your daily slice of crypto (and not-so-crypto) from around the Web. 🕸️



💸 Bakkt against the wall? The publicly-traded crypto company once owned by finance giant Intercontinental Exchange is facing an existential dilemma after <a href="https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/full?dockey=600-202403131740BIZWIRE_USPRX____20240313_BW401585-1">receiving a notice</a> from NYSE about its sub-$1 share price.&nbsp;



Bakkt’s been below a buck since the end of February, but it’s pledging to “cure” the problem. Stay tuned.&nbsp;



🧠 The crypto team at Franklin Templeton <a href="https://twitter.com/FTI_DA/status/1767969299350610040/photo/1">thinks</a> “meme coins have a strong relationship with their native networks.” The top response on X? “[w]e need a memecoin ETF” —&nbsp;something we’re sure Gary Gensler would love.&nbsp;



🐕Speaking of memecoins: X owner Elon Musk, visiting Tesla’s Berlin manufacturing plant, was asked when people can buy a car with dogecoin.&nbsp;



Musk’s response, according to a video from <a href="https://twitter.com/dogeofficialceo/status/1768087572234793050">X user @dogeofficialceo</a>: “At some point, I think we should enable that.” He then talked up how people can buy merch with the dog-themed memecoin.&nbsp;



🌱 A bitcoin ETF proposed last December would load up on 20% carbon credits, per a new <a href="https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/markets/nyse-arca/rule-filings/filings/2024/SR-NYSEARCA-2024-27.pdf">regulatory filing</a>.&nbsp;



🤬 The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, is a bit, uh, <a href="https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1768014042105253902">steaming mad</a> about short sellers.&nbsp;



😕 Today’s <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bba4771-a455-41f1-ba3b-2b9f43add832">why-is-this-a-crypto headline</a>: “What the Kate Middleton story tells us about bitcoin”



The short answer, per the FT’s Bryce Elder: “[a]bsolutely nothing.” Okie doke.&nbsp;



🚚 BitKey, Jack Dorsey’s bitcoin hardware wallet play, is (finally?) <a href="https://twitter.com/jack/status/1768003624330731842?s=46&amp;t=C4aoT7YJCbO_BZ2A-sRi4A">enroute</a> to people’s mailboxes. Get excited.&nbsp;&nbsp;



⚖️ Finders keepers: Australia’s finance regulator <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8555694/asic-loses-case-over-comparison-sites-crypto-service/?cs=14231">lost a legal fight</a> against the Finder Wallet Pty Ltd, with a court saying the firm did not offer an unlicensed financial service.&nbsp;



🔬 Researchers over at the Bank of International Settlements <a href="https://www.bis.org/publ/work1171.pdf">dug into</a> DeFi borrower behavior in a new study.&nbsp;



🤔Summing it up: Investor and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant <a href="https://twitter.com/naval/status/1768130605613818092">believes</a> that crypto is “adversarial venture capital.” Makes you think.&nbsp;



—&nbsp;Michael McSweeney



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Morning Riff</h2>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1057" height="359" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-82500" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=1057 1057w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image.jpeg?w=80 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1057px) 100vw, 1057px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Translation: We’re so back (<a href="https://twitter.com/naval/status/1768143338929258932">source</a>)</figcaption></figure>



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cheatsheet

Blobs, MSTR and more: This is Ethereum’s broadband moment

Max Widmer

In the beginning there was the internet, and the internet was good.&nbsp;



It’s the underlying premise of Chris Dixon’s <a href="https://readwriteown.com/">Read Write Own</a> — a book about blockchains that anyone can read. For an industry plagued by a struggle to communicate its vision en masse, Dixon’s a timely messenger. He’s also one of the more <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chris-dixon/?list=midas&amp;sh=4d8e05b85355">prescient</a> investors you’ll find in emerging tech today.&nbsp;



Dixon embarked on Read Write Own a few weeks before FTX collapsed, when the industry’s sentiment was already plummeting. For a while, it appeared like the curtains were closing on crypto, a burgeoning movement repeatedly battered by a litany of bad faith scams and what some might consider a “branding problem.” Public disillusion had grown so widespread, thought Dixon, that people were blinded to the revolutionary elements the technology actually possessed. He couldn’t escape a gnawing sense that someone was going to have to articulate the blockchain thesis in layman&#8217;s terms, and that someone would have to be him.&nbsp;


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Read Write Own, by Chris Dixon (2024)



Weathered crypto enthusiasts will find a freshly-glossed blockchain thesis in Read Write Own, a book they can proudly hand out to skeptical friends and concerned in-laws. But in the humble opinion of this writer, Dixon didn&#8217;t write the book for weathered crypto enthusiasts; he wrote it for anyone still scratching their heads over what crypto is trying to solve.



Dixon has a real gift for explaining technical jargon to nontechnical readers. It’s a sorely needed skill in an industry famous for its perplexity. I, for one, felt like I was wearing a new pair of glasses as I flipped through Read Write Own, grateful for a clarity I hadn’t known existed.&nbsp;



In the book’s early chapters, we are transported to the mid-90’s internet with Lorax-ian nostalgia. What we find is a vast, uncorrupted frontier; the conditions ripe for a bustling and harmonious habitat. These were the halcyon days, where you could build whatever you wanted, and own whatever you built. In Dixon’s retelling of the early web, you can practically hear the birds chirp; breathe the fresh, unpolluted air; make out the Truffula Trees lining the horizon.&nbsp;


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The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss (1971), A story about&nbsp; a vulnerable ecosystem that comes under attack



The early web inflamed the hearts and minds of artists, philosophers and entrepreneurs — pioneers who arrived like westward prospectors drawn to gold. Early on in Read Write Own, Dixon introduces initial settlers like John Perry Barlow, a poet-turned-activist who spent the sixties dropping acid with <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-ghost-of-john-perry-barlow-lives-in-his-posthumous-memoir/">Timothy Leary</a> and writing lyrics for the Grateful Dead. Barlow would go on to draft a <a href="https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence">declaration</a> for a free and open internet, in which he scripture-ized what he believed were the fundamental assurances of cyberspace: “A world that all could enter without privilege or prejudice;” a world where “anyone, anywhere could express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity;” a world “independent of tyrannies.”



With the patience of a high school history teacher, Dixon reminds us that this “land” was not ruled by an empire or a king or an unelected governing body; it was designed without borders or jurisdictions or tithes. Instead, it was built on a decentralized&nbsp; protocol network called the open web — a technological breakthrough more seismic for humanity than the printing press.



The rules of a decentralized network, advises Dixon, can be thought of like the rules of a language. A language is governed by a social consensus. It’s why anyone fluent in English, for example, can speak with any other English speaker anywhere in the world; and they can do so freely, equally and without restriction. The rules of a language aren’t imposed by anyone in power, they’re imposed by the community itself. Break the rules, there’s a risk no one will understand you. Break the rules, and you cease to interoperate.



Next, you can think of a protocol network like a highway system. Highway systems are free, open and anyone can build on top of them. The more that people build on top of a highway system, the more the highway system gets used, which organically attracts more things to be built along it.&nbsp;



Decentralized protocol networks are governed like languages and provide infrastructure like highway systems. It’s a helpful way of remembering things.


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A modern urban highway system. Source: Shutterstock/Captain Wang



Around the time Barlow wrote his treatise, Dixon dropped out of Columbia to pursue a career in the internet full time. He’d been on track to earn a doctorate in Ancient Philosophy, but the egalitarian promises of the open web were too compelling to ignore. “I was attracted by this amazing, amazing promise of a network that was truly decentralized and owned by the users,” he recently told writer and YouTuber <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzU51vGn59c">David Perell on a podcast</a>. “To me that was a remarkable thing, that we would link all the computers in the world, and we would do it in a way where there was no kind of intermediary that was taking tolls, money, power and control.”&nbsp;



It’s no secret that Dixon’s blockchain thesis is inspired by his philosophical roots or that he still loves the liberal arts. Abstract digital concepts are littered throughout Read Write Own, but they are routinely dismantled and conjured with new life. Take the way he writes about software, for example:



“Software is special because it has a nearly unbounded range of expressiveness […] [Software] is the encoding of human thought, just like writing or painting or cave drawing […] Software is so expressive that it is better thought of not as engineering but as an art form. The plasticity and flexibility of code offer an immensely rich design space, far closer in the breadth of possibilities to creative activities like sculpting and fiction writing than engineering activities like bridge building.”



One thing Dixon noticed right away about the internet of the 90’s was how it felt skeuomorphic — it was mainly utilized for digital adaptations of pre-internet things, like letter writing and mail-order commerce. This is a concept he <a href="https://cdixon.org/2020/10/19/doing-old-things-better-vs-doing-brand-new-things">comes back</a> to often, and a threadline I enjoyed revisiting. Skeuomorphic is the word Dixon uses to describe the way humans hold onto the past as we dip our toes into the future. This usually flares up at the onset of irreversible technological shifts. The symptoms include suppression of imagination, and groundbreaking things not appearing groundbreaking at all.&nbsp;



“The best ideas,” says Dixon, “seem strange at first or are not yet imagined.” 



Skeuomorphic is why Gutenberg’s first prints were made to look like handwritten bibles; why the first automobiles were branded as “<a href="https://nickwidmer.substack.com/p/horseless-carriages-are-worth-understanding">horseless carriages</a>&#8221;; and why early films were shot like plays. It wasn’t until filmmakers discovered that movies had their own “visual grammar,” as Dixon puts it, that filmmaking started to get exciting.  



Shortly after its skeuomorphic adolescence, the internet lost its innocence. Dixon marks this as the early 2000’s, when business models on the internet became “native.” This was when it became clear for entrepreneurs that owning a network outright was a lot more lucrative than sharing value with users, and when corporate networks became the biggest new landowners on the open web (I thought about it like the part in The Lorax when the tractors roll in).&nbsp;



Dixon describes the corporate network model as “walled gardens with one groundskeeper” or “theme parks controlled by a megacorp.” I envisioned them as superstores falling from the sky and landing on the highway of the open web with a meteoric thud.



Dixon has no problem with superstores at face value. They arrive along the highway with sleek new features and disruptive applications, and when they get popular, traffic starts pouring in. Superstores have absolutely brought mass appeal to the internet. The problem, urges Dixon, has to do with the “ecosystem” of the internet, and how that ecosystem is impacted by superstores.&nbsp;



Today, a handful of corporations run the internet via corporate networks. They’ve become so popular and crushed competition so forcefully, that many users have forgotten there’s a highway system out there at all. Unlike decentralized networks, superstores need to “attract and extract” users in order to survive. When they get big enough, warns Dixon, superstores begin to exert a gravitational force all on their own — sucking all the life out of the ecosystem and into their orbit. My interpretation was this: When there’s only a handful of superstores on the internet, the internet becomes a company town, and when the internet becomes a company town, you become a product. And that, my friends, is not the internet John Perry Barlow imagined.&nbsp;



Today, the open web has had its canopy chopped. The top 1% of social networks account for 95% of social web traffic. The top 1% of search engines account for 97% of search traffic. That’s just the start. Should this trend continue, Dixon believes we’re looking at a deeply unfortunate online future. Kind of like an episode of Black Mirror, where users of the internet, Dixon says, “will become no better than serfs toiling in a field for the benefit of a corporate overlord.”&nbsp;



Blockchain networks, it turns out, are not built like walled gardens or theme parks or superstores — they’re built like cities. A city, says Dixon, that’s “built from the bottom up by the people who inhabit it […] where users have meaningful choices, rights and agency […] built by everybody, for everybody.” It’s also the simplified promise of Dixon’s blockchain thesis: “To restore a healthy civic life to the digital world.”&nbsp;



Read Write Own is a book about abstract ecological problems that anyone can read. That’s not a sentence you can typically say with a straight face, but in this case I believe it’s the truth. More than anything, though, it’s a book about restoring harmony. Not because we have to, but because we should.&nbsp;



The internet is broken. What if we can fix it?&nbsp;



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Max is Senior Brand Partner at Blockworks, where he consults businesses on their marketing strategies for the Digital Asset space. He is particularly interested in the way emerging technologies are influencing society and culture. He is based in NYC.</div>


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decentralization

The internet is broken. What if we can fix it?: On Chris Dixon’s ‘Read Write Own’

<div id="highlights-block_628d560713130" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li> Without substantial improvements to the country’s internet and electricity infrastructure, the plans will not make it far, experts warned</li>
 <li>“Project Sango” plans to create a digital national bank, a crypto wallet and infrastructure that will allow for property payments to be made in bitcoin</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Less than two months after adopting bitcoin as <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/central-african-republic-looks-for-quick-wins-becomes-second-country-to-adopt-bitcoin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">legal tender</a>, the Central African Republic has launched a “crypto hub” designed to attract people working in digital assets.



The program, “Project Sango,” includes plans to create a digital national bank, a crypto wallet and infrastructure that will allow for property payments to be made in bitcoin, according to an <a href="https://sango.org/sango.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">online presentation</a> the government released in tandem with a <a href="https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0NMB9KS92GbwaveRhi2n4FCGCTHaPS1jNhDkA2Rspzp1e6EAEea9BDVKrQ4mKT5yAl&amp;id=100068314766662&amp;m_entstream_source=timeline" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Facebook post</a> Monday.&nbsp;



The project will roll out legal cryptocurrency policies in phases, with plans to create a “crypto island” at some point.&nbsp;



The plans come as many question the role crypto can play in a country that lacks substantial digital infrastructure.&nbsp;



“This is a country with such limited internet availability, and, for that matter, limited availability of electricity,” said Steve Aschettino, a Norton Rose Fulbright partner concentrating on fintech. “To be able to enable bitcoin transactions requires at least two things: electricity and the internet.”&nbsp;



The Central African Republic plans to “finalize” the “Central African Backbone,” the fiber-optic Internet backbone connecting several countries in Africa, by the end of the year, making its blockchain ambitions possible, the country said.&nbsp;



The sandbox-like initiative is the latest example of emerging markets leaning into blockchain tech. Argentina recently rolled out a so-called “<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/argentina-moves-to-incubate-crypto-startups-under-regulatory-eye/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">innovation hub</a>” that allows fintech and cryptocurrency startups to build under regulators’ watchful eyes. <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/panama-moves-forward-with-crypto-regulation-bill/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Panama</a> and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/jamaica-to-launch-cbdc-this-summer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jamaica</a> are also exploring crypto regulation and related use cases.&nbsp;



“Having embedded compliance and embedded supervision is something that can really accelerate innovation,” said Carmelle Cadet, founder and CEO of CBDC infrastructure provider EMTECH. “If you&#8217;re waiting for the regulatory framework to be in place before the innovation, that&#8217;s not happening right now.”&nbsp;



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Africa

Shrugging Off Crypto Doubters, Central African Republic Forges Ahead

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_61f075101ef5c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>“Blockchain offers us capabilities the internet couldn’t,” Animoca&#8217;s CEO said</li>
 <li>The company raised $359 million earlier this month in a round led by Liberty City Ventures</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Making a break from centralized platforms and connecting directly with creators is key to carving out Animoca Brands’ niche in the metaverse, the startup’s CEO told Blockworks.



“We believe that in the battle between content and distribution, content is king,” CEO Robby Yung said. “In the world of Web3, content will win out over distribution because we will see content itself becoming the platform.”



Yung pointed to the company’s recent <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-sandbox-parent-animoca-brands-raises-359m-to-build-out-open-metaverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">nine-digit fundraise</a> as providing resources to build out its vision for the metaverse and enable digital ownership. 



In Yung’s view, nurturing the development of alt-chains and building toward a multi-chain future are key considerations for an open metaverse. Animoca — which incubates and backs NFT, blockchain gaming and metaverse projects — has supported development on blockchains including Flow and Polygon.&nbsp;



“[The metaverse] is attributable to openness, the multi-chain interoperable world, a diversity of platforms — many layer-1 and layer-2 chains that people can build on top of,” he said. “[The] last thing blockchain needs is ‘winners,’ and when we all coalesce around Ethereum, for example, that may not be good for innovation.”&nbsp;



And the market for individual ownership of virtual items will only grow as the metaverse expands, Yung said.&nbsp;



“Blockchain offers us capabilities the internet couldn’t,” Yung said. “There’s digital ownership of digital goods, which we feel is a game changer in how we conduct our lives online.”



Platforms now have too much power over the dissemination of copyrighted content, the CEO said.&nbsp;



“They were renting from platforms [like Netflix],” he said. “While it works for copyright holders, it doesn’t provide value to customers or return to creators of the content, either. Most of the value is taken by platforms distributing it.”.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">In the pioneering phase</h3>



As Animoca eyes new investments, it’s paramount for the company to key in on transparent businesses, Yung said.&nbsp;



It has previously backed over 150 NFT and metaverse-related companies, including OpenSea, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/dapper-labs-backer-animoca-scores-85m-to-further-invest-in-the-metaverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dapper Labs</a>, Axie Infinity and Yield Guild Games. The firm is also the parent company of The Sandbox.



“We’re still in the pioneering phase of building out content verticals and technology platforms,” Yung saud.&nbsp;



Though it’s matured a great deal, the metaverse and the entire idea of digital ownership remains nascent, Yung said.&nbsp;



“The products out in the market aren’t indicative of where this industry will be 3 years from now,” Yung said. “Now that we have matured, you’re going to see products reflective of what the future holds, compared to last year and the year before because those were built on shoe strings.”

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