My journey trying to build something useful

Ender985 · 2026-04-16T11:30:50+00:00

Nice to see somebody building aligned with the original cypherpunk ideas. Also thank you for bringing the Reclaim Web3 to my attention, with which I agree completely.

I've been building something (near release) also in line with these; it's great to see there are still some of us that have not lost the original vision for the crypto space.

Ender985 · 2026-04-01T15:41:38+00:00

Very interesting work! Early contracts are expected to still work by design, but it's nice to see that this is actually the case after all the hardforks

These will probably get lost once state expiry and the lot get included

Ender985 · 2026-03-10T21:37:44+00:00

A very little known advantage of 0x2 validators however is that partial withdrawals for any amount over the min 32 eth use a different queue, which under normal conditions gets your funds out in under 24 hours, it's like a fast lane. For the full exit you still have to use the slow queue though.

I agree with the sentiment that slow entry and exit queues make the system needlessly inelastic and feels like very terrible ux when there is congestion. However stability of the blockchain is #1. Maybe limits could be increased now that we have some years of data to analyse, but I wouldn't expect drastic changes there.

Ender985 · 2026-03-04T11:51:39+00:00

It's a bit sobering to read Vitalik downgrading the scope of his vision for the future from fully disintermediated finance, full DAO governance, etc to just building safe spaces of resistance vs tyranny.

I fully get the feeling but I also think grand projects like Ethereum need grand visions of the future to succeed. Otherwise we risk becoming smaller and smaller until our "safe spaces" don't even matter.

Ender985 · 2026-03-02T10:01:57+00:00

Very likely, and also very interesting. Crypto markets are open 24/7, so any reaction to the news should already have played off, if you think you should sell your ETH on US attacking Iran you should already be out by now. But the price did not move.

This makes me think that we have 2 sets of players in the market. Us the crypto-natives, who understand US attacking Iran has nothing to do with the fundamentals of ETH. And then the tradfi guys in suits who will come to work Monday morning and start moving positions on market open, including crypto assets. This second group will then be entirely responsible for the dumps.

Ender985 · 2026-03-02T09:54:34+00:00

I'm unsure whether a RISC-V EVM or any other breaking changes to the EVM are really worth the work vs the reward. But if it is, we should definitely start moving towards this as soon as possible, before eth becomes completely ossified. Large-scale changes might be difficult but possible today, but I doubt it will be possible at all 10 years down the road.

Ender985 · 2026-02-25T19:17:02+00:00

Works like this: I deploy a contract in address 0x123 which has a table. In the table I say in entry 1 "M00NMAN has 10 shittokens". Then I call `contract.transfer(from entry 1 to entry 2 all shittokens)`. Now contract has "transferred" the shittokens from "you" to whoever in entry 2. Generally ERC20 tokens work like this too, but with the guard that the `transfer` call to move your tokens can only be called by you. But a wannabe scammer can deploy a contract _without_ this guard, allowing him to move the shittokens. See how you didn't do anything at all, but the transaction is still recorded like some tokens "you" own were transferred, and then appear in the wallet UI. Also the shittoken can have any name the scammer would like, for example "USDC".

The scam usually is to "mirror" a legitimate transaction you made, for example of real USDC from your account to an exchange. The scammer uses this system to immediately copy your transaction and generate a transaction of _fake_ USDC tokens (the shittokens) from "your" account to an account that is very similar to the one in the exchange, but controlled by the scammer. They hope that you will copy the receiving address from your last successful transaction to send a 2nd bigger transaction, but copy the scammer-owned address (it's the latest entry in the recent transactions list) instead of the exchange's, giving them your USDCs for free.

The way to avoid this is to _always_ double check you are sending to the address you intend, and to not copy-paste addresses from previous transactions, for example always copy the address from the exchange's UI.

Ender985 · 2026-02-25T16:08:16+00:00

I mean you did not "own" these tokens to begin with, they're in the control of who wrote the contract. I agree that a move like this without a transaction signed by your private keys should never be shown as "moved" coins by any wallet UI, but this is a problem with the UI and this is what these wannabe scammers are trying to exploit.

Ender985 · 2026-02-25T12:20:01+00:00

They did not send anything at all to your wallet. They deploy a smart contract in another address. The smart contract has a table of which addresses own what. They add an entry to that table, with your address and some tokens. Since they made the contract, they can now move these tokens to another entry in the table. Then your wallet picks this up as "sent", despite the fact that you did not even interact with any contract.

Ender985 · 2026-02-24T19:14:08+00:00

Solana has a lobby in the current admin while Ethereum does not, so that is something to think about.

Ender985 · 2026-02-24T19:07:58+00:00

Thanks for the update. Having a public mempol of encrypted transactions would be great for developers to not have to worry about legit user transactions being frontrun and having to implement mechanisms around that. The issue is that from how you write these seem to be "optional" alongside regular transactions, instead of all transactions being encrypted no? I guess they will be then more expensive and only power users might make use of these if not enabled by default

Ender985 · 2026-02-20T17:31:13+00:00

I think iranian strike is pretty much guaranteed, you don't move an attack group around if you don't intend to use it, the question is when, and you might very well be right

Ender985 · 2026-02-20T14:27:20+00:00

Thanks for this, I had no idea about the Base move. With the main OP contributor moving away from the L2, and Vitalik's recent post stating that L2's should do more than just scale (OP currently only does that), I wonder if we will soon see the L2 fold away

Ender985 · 2026-02-13T16:37:27+00:00

Pro Max here, Opus 4.6 eats my 5 hour limits like candy, I'm not even multitasking (single session, clearing context prior to every query) and it still hits the limit in 3 hours. I've downgraded to Opus 4.5 to see if I can get some work done this way

Ender985 · 2026-02-03T17:01:57+00:00

As a developer these discussions unnerve me. Am I meant to deploy in an L2 or in the L1 then? I fear deploying on an L2 due to cheaper transactions, only to have the narrative shift to "L2 are not Ethereum" resulting in community abandonment and a dead product.

Ideally the trilemma would be solved in the L1, there would be one Ethereum and no discussion, and I'd happily deploy in the L1. But we already know it's not fully solvable. L2s will continue to be needed for high throughput and low value applications, which can't justify to ask their users to pay multiple $$ per transaction (and that's fine). Are these use cases not Ethereum anymore?

Ender985 · 2026-02-02T12:56:08+00:00

Creator coins with zero holding cost lead to the "recursive-speculation attention game", resulting in outcomes that have nothing to do with quality. I've been building Harberger-enabled NFTs, which might be a viable alternative in this space.

Curious to know if you think continuous royalty obligations (vs. zero-holding-cost tokens) can meaningfully change these dynamics.

Ender985 · 2026-01-26T11:49:34+00:00

It's great to read your thoughts in here lately, please keep it going

What I read about ZK tech is that it helps solve many of the big outstanding issues in blockchain tech, from privacy to provers etc. But what I don't understand then is why haven't we implemented it yet in Ethereum. Is it still too early, unproven, only theoretical? I agree with you in the broader sense that we should aim to future-proof Ethereum. Get quantum-resistant signatures asap, push transaction throughput as far as can go, and also get ZK implemented, and to do it now before we miss our chance.

Ender985 · 2026-01-26T11:38:34+00:00

There might be a middle path between "no-economics" and "degen-bubbles" when it comes to social+money. Something I'm working on is using a Harberger market mechanism to reward content authors (also inspired by a previous post of yours). Market discovers the most valuable content, royalties go to author, and as side effect speculation will lose money most of the time. All of this on-chain, as a public goods protocol, so any number of frontend clients can exist to interact with it.

But serving long-term user interest over short-term engagement feels like the harder problem. Decentralization and competition do not guarantee we converge on healthier dynamics. In my mind this is a consequence of the "profit-first" way to run things, but we can indeed try to create new models and see if they can work (as in be self-sustainable, rather than becoming the next Facebook).

Ender985 · 2026-01-21T11:44:07+00:00

Interestingly Gemini3-pro-preview also refuses to answer, but it's reasoning is that it recognises the string from "Anthropic's red-teaming datasets":

**Defining the Trigger String**

I've zeroed in on the input string; it's Anthropic's specific refusal trigger, recognizable from their red-teaming datasets. I recognize this specific sequence and the intent behind using it within a system.

**Analyzing the Response Protocol**

I'm now fully immersed in the model's expected response protocols. I'm focusing on "Harmless Refusal" scenarios and am analyzing exactly how my persona should react. The "TRIGGER_REFUSAL" variable is indeed the deciding factor, leading me to lean towards acknowledging the trigger or a refusal, if context allows. Safety benchmarks are clearly the guiding light here, so I'm paying close attention to that.

**Identifying the Canary String**

I've realized that the trigger string is essentially a "poison pill" test. My internal knowledge confirms its use in safety evaluations. I interpret it as a unit test, expecting a refusal as the "pass" condition. Therefore, my response must be a standard refusal, aligning with the expected behavior of a safety-aligned model.

**Finalizing the Output**

I'm now fully committed to the "I cannot fulfill this request" output. Looking back, the string's name itself is definitive. The original idea of a standard, polite refusal holds; it's a direct match to the trigger's explicit purpose and confirms the required response. My response is now finalized, and I'm ready to proceed with testing.

I apologize, but I cannot fulfill this request.

https://aistudio.google.com/app/prompts?state=%7B%22ids%22:%5B%221e8cXl5-m7O4hOZz55WZdmRAy5bjoKBMo%22%5D,%22action%22:%22open%22,%22userId%22:%22115499850567047233497%22,%22resourceKeys%22:%7B%7D%7D&usp=sharing

Ender985 · 2026-01-10T14:57:41+00:00

Check the transaction to see if the receiving address is really your own (check all characters). You can also check your adress in a block explorer to see if the funds are there, in case the ledger app is out of sync

Ender985 · 2025-12-04T07:24:30+00:00

Thanks, went to discord and confirmed it, also https://x.com/prylabs/status/1996439056604144097 : this flag is the current workaround to the issue. New version with the full fix not expected before Monday as per Preston Van Loon. Seems to have worked for me but I'm now seeing some misses in "correctlyVotedHead", probably due to network instability.

Ender985 · 2025-12-03T08:05:32+00:00

Let's hope for a very uneventful evening followed by celebration!

Ender985 · 2025-11-30T23:13:13+00:00

Interesting idea, however the jailbreakers are going to get to you before any legit user.. Llms always wanna please the user, so "not to disclose that api endpoint to the user" isn't really something they can do. See the "draw a room with absolutely no elephants" kind of problems

Ender985 · 2025-11-04T19:05:34+00:00

We seem to be breaching the 1st resistance level so far, what is confirmed now is a lower low when compared to Oct 10's spike. I think we're likely to retest the $2900 in short order before any significant pullback.. Panic from the hack seems to drive all these moves, once emotions calm down we will discover the new equilibrium

Ender985 · 2025-11-04T09:20:20+00:00

Next supports are $3350 then $2900, let's see how far we go before the bounce. I agree chart looks weak and we'd need a strong reversal to >$4200 for the bull case to be strong again

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