1/ Understanding the EVM – Simplified
You’ve probably heard of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), but if you’re like me find it more than slightly intimidating. Below is my attempt at a basic guide to what it is and how it works:
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After an incredible journey at Archetype, I’ve decided to begin a new chapter!
One word encapsulates my experience - rare. A rare opportunity to learn from a unique combination of brilliant, passionate, and kind people. A rare feeling of walking into the office feeling inspired & energized every day.
As I wrap up this formative chapter, I’m excited to step into something entirely new. Looking forward to sharing what’s next 🔜!
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From truth-machines like Polymarket eclipsing $400M in cumulative volume to the emergence of SUAVE, crypto-powered information games are here today.
My newest piece explores the design space & challenges for the crypto apps & infra that support them.
archetype.mirror.xyz/LNgRLem…
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Over the moon to share that I’ve joined @deltadotnetwork!
Here's why I couldn't be more excited:
+ Delta represents a *step-function* improvement in distributed systems for developers and users.
+ A world-class team combining operational excellence with cutting-edge science, engineering, and a creative drive to do things differently.
+ The opportunity to build the crypto rails that transform our cyberspace is still wide open.
Honored to be working alongside @spjoleh, @riabhutoria, @iorulezz, @MylesOneil, and everyone else on this stellar team!
More on the delta vision & design below – and much more content to come soon :)
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The next generation of execution layers is defining a new wave of designer blockspace:
+ What are the defining paths towards improving execution performance?
+ Merkleization to parallelization—why & how do these optimizations matter?
Read on @viamirror
archetype.mirror.xyz/0B-qAEv…
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To celebrate my first few months full time @archetypevc, here's the first cold DM that started it all
don't let your dreams be memes, anon
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1/ Hmmm… let’s explore some of the arguments being made here. 🤔 @macbrennan
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Absolutely thrilled to share that I'm joining the @archetypevc team full-time! I'm so grateful for the opportunity to continue working with this brilliant, kind, and hardworking group of people.
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Excited to release Part II on Exchanges & MEV! ⏬
Some high level takeaways:
1. Intents to improve onchain UX > intents as combinatorial auctions
2. Proposers ---> $ MEV ---> orderflow aggregators
3. On/offchain order matching naturally specializing to tackle different markets
Part II of MEV & The Evolution of Crypto Exchange is live! @0xFunk is back and exploring:
+ intents as tools for exchange
+ the future of onchain financial products
+ and competition along the MEV supply chain
Read Part II on @viamirror
archetype.mirror.xyz/IOvUPaj…
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Bitcoin is crossing bridges—metaphorically and literally.
In this article, I delve into the evolving Bitcoin tech stack, from tokens to scaling solutions, and the promising paths these innovations could take us on.
paragraph.xyz/@archetype/bri…
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What do zkTLS, TEEs, MPC, Futarchy, and the Internet have in common? They’re driving technological revolutions in how we 1) produce and 2) monetize information.
Back in March, I wrote about the primitives I expected to power experiments that showcase the potential of crypto-powered information games.
•zkTLS: Revolutionizes production by creating ways to unlock raw materials—without needing cooperation from the siloes they reside in.
•TEEs & MPC: Enable new methods of information production and monetization, where sellers can secure credible commitments about the computations buyers will run on private data.
•Futarchy/Protocolized Governance: Transform prediction markets by establishing new information buyers who pay for valuable information
It’s still early, but these categories are seeing many cool, novel experiments at the application layer—built by teams like @cursive_team, @MetaDAOProject, @OpacityNetwork, @butterygg, @reclaimprotocol, @connormcmk, @flashbots, @jokerace_io and others.
If you want to dive deeper, read more here ⬇️
archetype.fund/media/crypto-…
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Was extremely honored to host an MEV workshop and discussion at @archetypevc HQ today!
Big s/o to the wonderful speakers and attendees who joined and looking forward to hosting more of these events in the future - HMU if you'd like to be invited! :)
+ @mikeneuder on ePBS design space
+ @ThogardPvP on sandwiching models & mitigation
+ @soumyab8 on first-principles approach to exchange design
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2/ To start, it's important to understand what a virtual machine is. In the context of Ethereum, a virtual machine is a program built into software (Ethereum clients) that recreates a computer's functionality.
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3/ To understand how it works, let’s take a look into its use through the lens of an Ethereum validator by breaking down some key categories: Clients, Storage, Transactions, and Execution.
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Just got a demo from @deltadotnetwork engineers.
Blown away. Christmas came early.
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4/ Clients: To become a validator and produce blocks, running the EVM as a means to compute state transitions is necessary. To best understand what state & state transitions, consider that when you’re sending Ether, this requires a transition in the state of the blockchain:
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Excited to meet people at ETHCC – DMs are open!!
ethcc roll call, @0xFunk and i will be there and looking to get out of our NYC bubble -- hit us up if you'll be around! :)
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Excited to (briefly) lift my head from this rabbit hole and lay out some of my thoughts in Part 1 of 2 pieces!
In Part I, I evaluate the order-matching systems we're building and examine the tradeoffs between asymmetries of power and information involved across exchange designs.
The future of onchain financial products is bright, but there are plenty of challenges ahead.
In a new essay, @0xFunk investigates:
+ the MEV landscape
+ the order-matching systems of today
+ and the crypto exchanges of tomorrow
Read Part I on @viamirror
archetype.mirror.xyz/DVJFtcE…
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5/ Tokens now belong to a new account than before and this needs to be reflected in Ethereum's map of who owns what. In order to do this, validators need to take inputs/transactions, run their respective instructions in the EVM, and print the output in a block header.
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1/ Congrats to the @PrimitiveFi team on this! Just published a draft of some AMM research, with the intention of getting feedback & redoing improved simulations on Arbitrer.
medium.com/@bfunk1/research-…
1/🚀 Introducing the beta release of Arbiter, an innovative agent-based analysis tool for the EVM. Arbiter enables fast, precise modeling and economic fuzzing for the DeFi ecosystem, leveraging Rust for top performance.
primitive.xyz/posts/introduc…
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Under-discussed centralization vector for Solana is that Jump will effectively control fork choice rule w/Firedancer
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7/ Ethereum monetary policy is explicitly flexible, where the supply of Ether will be inflationary & deflationary as a function of demand for blockspace (ether burned > block issuance), not constantly deflationary as alluded to in this thread.
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1/ I think there are holes in @toly’s Solana NASDAQ vision (would love to catch what I’m missing). With multiple proposers updating an order book:
- MMs can't update liquidity as fast/reliably as on CEXs
- More toxic flow priced in
- Wider spreads
Solana NASDAQ < CEXs ⬇️
Amdhals law. The overhead is on order - 2x more cores for cryptographic signatures and 4x more bandwidth. The cost of the physical resources is negligible. It won’t impact prices to users if a CEX has fewer cores and bandwidth for its linearizer.
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If you’re creating a fun, crypto-powered information game, please reach out to chat.
I’d love to try it out, learn more, add your project to the market map, and brainstorm ideas!
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Awesome to see @drakefjustin @mikeneuder lead discussions on Execution Tickets at CCE!!
Promising paths to:
+Better censorship resistance through working inclusion list mechanism (still some research on block stuffing + multi-block MEV to go
+improving consensus layer stability by reducing incentive to play timing games
+diminishing risks associated with centralized power structures by mitigating “rugpools” and smoothing MEV rewards (solo stakers happy)
+maybe getting us to L1 preconfirmations? I’m more skeptical of this one 🙃
a small christmas present 🎁 for cryptotwitter – we are ecstatic to share "Execution Tickets," an idea from @drakefjustin on a reimagined blockspace market!
dive into the design + implications here↓
👽🎟️ ethresear.ch/t/execution-tic…
thanks for reading, and see you next year🎄🪩🎉
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6/ This is so other nodes are aware of how the state has changed. A validator runs the EVM by downloading an Ethereum client – software which contains the EVM program. An Ethereum client contains the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) as well as other necessary features:
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7/ a) Memory pool: Location of signed transactions ready to get included in a block gets stored
b) JSON-RPC API, which provides a data structure for processing requests to read/write data to Ethereum
c) A client process, which sends transactions from the mempool to the EVM
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Super excited to publish this piece with the legendary @katiewav!
Grateful to everyone who’s helped shape my thoughts on these topics 🫡
we wrote a guide for the topics that have been dominating your TL lately:
rollups
sequencers (centralized, decentralized, shared)
cross-domain MEV
intents
we break it all down by starting from fundamentals:
the transaction lifecycle...
🧵
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9/ Storage: How does the EVM store state prior to a new transaction? Like a computer, a virtual computer is able to store data. In the context of the EVM, one of its critical functions is to store the “state” of all accounts and what information those accounts store.
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Hopped on a call yesterday with @0xSnarks to discuss all things @sentimentxyz V2… 👀
Relentlessly listening to + iterating on user feedback throughout the bear market and it’s paying off.
If you’re a borrower looking for your onchain AMEX, or a lender looking to optimize risk-adjusted returns - shoot over a DM.
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Some thoughts on prediction market (PM) microstructure 🧵:
Innovating on PM microstructure = better payoffs, info quality, UX for takers & makers
It is *not* the bottleneck to the liquidity issues PMs face today, and liquidity is a distracting bottleneck…
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8/ There are many different types of clients that run in different languages, but they can interoperate with each other because they follow the same specifications in the Ethereum yellow paper.
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What if the real "sound money" crypto brings humanity is a scalable credit economy that fuels better resource allocation – all powered by tech that allows for the separation of the unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value across the globe?
H/t: to @cwgoes @buchmanster @connormcmk @noturhandle_ and all the other people working on these critical ideas within crypto. Some *highly* recommended readings/resources on this topic here:
nitter.app/cyclesmoney/status/175…
coda.io/@connor/negation-gam…
piped.video/watch?v=Sml3s6Ne…
pluranimity.org/2022/09/26/t…
Let a billion monies bloom. If you're working at this intersection, I want to speak with you!
Soon we’ll release the @cyclesmoney whitepaper on a new financial paradigm, so here's a few things you should know to prepare yourself.
We know that blockchains, crypto, and defi apps have long promised to replace banks and finance. But there’s a lot of problems with this 🧵
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+ After-party Mario Kart
If you're in NYC, would love to have you join :)
DM me or anyone else on the team for an invite!!🥂
first happy hour of 2024 + unofficial @dberenzon welcome party on 1/18 at archetype HQ!
if youre in NYC crypto and wanna join, dm an @archetypevc team member for invite :)
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Yes, every app will have its own branded shard for reasons that go beyond mere customization—but not because they aim to capture an “infra bid” with diminishing marginal returns in pursuit of an “AWS play.”
The market’s opinion on the “best L1/L2” to build on shifts every week. Why would an app:
1. Needlessly tie itself to avoidable brand, technology, or ecosystem risks?
2. Venture into a market outside its core competency, distracting from achieving PMF?
Right now, the primary barrier preventing apps from building appchains is distribution on monolithic chains. However, those paying close attention can identify examples of both apps and tech that are eroding this moat.
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Want a clear view of the design space for onchain gaming?
@katiewav's piece takes a step back to look at games from first principles to do just that.
+ Ties it back to Marx. Legendary.
Gaming has always lived at the frontier of technology, from introducing the world to GPUs to now enabling entirely open worlds with blockchain rails and onchain economies
From Players to Gods: Games & Autonomous Worlds by @katiewav
Read on @viamirror
archetype.mirror.xyz/unOEXm_…
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Have had the privilege of working with @Ismael_H_R & team over the past months. They are incredibly thoughtful, intelligent, and have an (un)paralleled ability to execute :)
Lagrange Labs is thrilled to announce our $13.2M seed round, led by @foundersfund, with support from @archetypevc @1kxnetwork @Maven11Capital @fenbushi @VoltCapital @CMT_Digital @0xMantleEco, and various angels.
Read our blog: bit.ly/4boFIbw
Learn more👇
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The state of crypto infra feels like the outrage at the end of the school marble run competition ––
That one kid dumped sand into a centralized sequencer, poked a tiny hole at the bottom, and won because "technically, the marble is moving."
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35/ Ethereum EVM illustrated takenobu-hs.github.io/downlo…
Ethereum Merkle Patricia Trie Explained | by Leo Zhang | Medium medium.com/@chiqing/merkle-p…
EVM Deep Dives: The Path to Shadowy Super Coder 🥷 💻 - Part 1 noxx.substack.com/p/evm-deep…
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Much talk about prediction markets producing *better* information, not much about the applications that might consume it.
Futarchy = vertically integrated prediction markets.
Crypto will produce better ways to solve the safety + liveness failures that come with distributed decision making.
Come learn more about it at my panel @AstriaOrg’s research day on Monday.
A discussion on Prediction Markets & Futarchy:
- Moderated by @0xfunk (@archetypevc)
- @noturhandle_ (@butterygg)
- @connormcmk (Network Goods Institute)
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8/ In practice and on a very basic level, if everybody is holding Ether instead of spending it on goods and services (whether tructured products or deploying smart contracts), then blockspace doesn’t get filled up, and the burned Ether doesn’t offset the inflationary ...
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👀
Stackr hackerhouse in its final phase. Meanwhile internal team discord:
@ankurdubey521 @AmanRaj1608 sers have some explaining to do.
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4/ First, let’s start with the allusions to deflationary Japan. Importantly, deflation is formally known as a decrease in the prices of goods and services across an economy. This is completely different from a deflationary supply of Ether, which is a function of:
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10/ The EVM stores state according to a data structure called a “Merkle Patricia trie”, which is able to contain all the key:value pairs of all addresses on Ethereum.
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Special thanks to all the people in the arena for the thoughtful conversations & feedback that all went into putting this piece together: @ArthurRoingBaer, @soumyab8, @sxysun1, @tylerinternet, @katiewav, @dberenzon, @0xQuintus, @Bytekode, @startupoppa, @spenserhuang, @0x8ES, @metaproph3t, @tracecrypto1, @Hactar0, @connormcmk
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28/ Tagging a few people for visibility here @ViktorBunin, @toghrulmaharram, @GuthL, @antiprosynth, @hasufl because I think these points are important to get clarified. Also, I’m just a student, so please correct me where I’m wrong.
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34/ Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ethereum.org/en/developers/d…
Nodes and clients | ethereum.org ethereum.org/en/developers/d…
Getting Deep Into EVM: How Ethereum Works Backstage | by vasa | The Startup | Medium medium.com/swlh/getting-deep….
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I've recently made a commitment to writing as I learn about all things crypto. Here's my first article on the economics of play-to-earn if anyone is curious! link.medium.com/rOMoMdB0Okb
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Two things can both be true:
1) Prediction markets could be great machines to produce information, and can be monetized + valued as epistemic tools
2) To get to this point, they need to be much more widely distributed across people that can contribute valuable inputs - and the GTM to get there will depend on the information output. Selling PMs as generalized “forecasting platforms” is (and will continue to be) insufficient to achieve 1)!
"gambling/prediction markets like Polymarket"
Putting Polymarket into the category of "gambling" is a massive misunderstanding of what prediction markets are or why people (incl economists and policy intellectuals) are excited about them.
Prediction markets are interesting because they're a social epistemic tool: the public gets a view of how important certain events are and what kinds of things are likely to happen, that is much less vulnerable to biased editorial opinion than either social media or news websites. Conditional prediction markets have applications in governance, which we're starting to see already.
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Important clarification: the EVM will only be run if it's a transaction that involves a smart contract, for example when you’re depositing some tokens into Yearn or providing liquidity on Uniswap. A transaction between two EOAs transfers value with no need to execute any code!
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A rare chance to learn from exceptional people and build a crypto venture firm that's doing things right.
We're expanding the Archetype investment team! Consider applying if you're based in NYC/willing to relocate and:
+ crypto-native
+ high conviction
+ collaborative
Deadline is Friday the 13th, good luck anon
jobs.archetype.fund/companie…
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Massive appreciation for all the following people for the thoughtful conversations and feedback that inspired this piece: @ashegan, @dberenzon, @dima_null, @Ismael_H_R, @Kautukkundan, @katiewav, @keoneHD, @larry0x, @mvmt_research, @rushimanche, @soumyab8, @tylerinternet, @willkantaros, @yilongl_megaeth
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17/ As @hasufl puts it – it reduces Ethereum’s linkage between congestion and its security budget. Because PoS systems’ security relies on their assets' value, a consistent inflationary pressure diminishes the scarcity and hence the economic security budget of the underlying.
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11/ The keys correspond to both public and smart contract addresses, and their respective values represent the current state of those addresses.
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33/ For deeper information not covered, I recommend reading the exceptional articles by @iam_preethi, @Luit_H, @noxx3xxon, @vasa_develop, @chiqing whose articles are the basis of this thread.
If there are any clarifications/corrections that need to be added, please let me know!
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5/ 1) Merge-related decrease in ether issuance as a consequence of not needing to pay as much (mining is economically expensive) to secure the network
2) EIP1559-related burning of ether which increases as a function of demand for block space
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6/ Whilst *theoretically* increasing ETH price may have an impact not dissimilar to the Japanese economy in that it may incentivize saving more and spending less on the latest 10K PFP project, this completely ignores the actual nature of Ethereum Monetary policy.
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26/ The opcodes are sequentially loaded into the data area in a stacked sequence – where each opcode falls on top of another in the sequence specified by the bytecode.
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9/ block subsidy – leading to an inflationary supply which, according to the assumptions made in OPs argument, “is needed to promote spending within a siloed economy.” Similarly, Japan’s economic policy between 1991 to 2001 was characterized by monetary expansion in the context
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Special thanks to @soumyab8, @Autoparallel, @0xjepsen, @tylerinternet, @katiewav, @mountainwaterpi, @willkantaros, @ashegan, and @DannySursock for their feedback and insights on Part I, and the many more who also helped with Part II (coming soon).
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14/ Because of how hashes work, even a minute change in blockchain state will result in a completely different root hash. The reason for mandating validators to include this root hash in a block header is that it significantly enhances the security of the network.
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12/ The value/state for each address is itself an encoding of the hash of the address’s respective code, a hash of the data stored by the account, its balance, and the number of transactions it’s carried out (represented as a nonce).
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Instead of using token incentive programs in ways that obscure PMF, crypto projects could accelerate iteration speed towards finding PMF by incentivizing early users to submit feedback and contribute to the project. Add in…
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24/ a) The stack is the data area where the computations as defined by opcodes are performed.
b) Memory is an array of data that can be used to store information temporarily to pass through data required to compute the instructions on top of the stack.
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11/ will have to compete with investors measuring projects against the opportunity cost of staking Ether is also incorrect. Why in the world would investors fund the same dApp on Solana instead of Ether if there are no capital barriers to just buying & staking Ether instead?
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15/ This is because it enables light nodes, which don’t have the space to store this Merkle Patricia trie, to verify the legitimacy of the block that a validator is attempting to proliferate.
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25/ The increase in the cost of posting data to the L1 could lead to an increasing value of Ether due to a deflationary state, but that is offset due to the aforementioned characteristic of L2s. TLDR - it doesn't invalidate the business model for L2s. L2 tx aggregation also...
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14/ However, the lack of nuance captured in the argument starts here as it ignores the importance of deflation in preserving the security of blockchains.
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Couldn't be more excited about this panel with the awesome @connormcmk @eulerlagrange @spenserhuang.
Information markets of *all kinds* will enable the next generation of consumer, governance, and financial products onchain... come find out why ;)
2️⃣ THE FUTURE OF INFORMATION MARKETS
@0xfunk from @archetypevc in conversation with:
+ @eulerlagrange from Opacity
+ @connormcmk from Negation Game
+ @spenserhuang from Swaye
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2/ Disclosure – I enjoy participating in multiple crypto ecosystems, am a fan of innovation across many chains, and hold no particularly strong maxi-views. Nevertheless, some of the arguments made in this thread are really worth breaking down & bringing visibility to.
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this was way too much fun
The Future of Information Markets
Moderated by @0xFunk
Featuring @eulerlagrange, @connormcmk, and @spenserhuang
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DM for invite codes 📟💹
ANNOUNCING: Swaye Closed Beta
Swaye is a user generated prediction market with uncapped upside – built for degens, by degens
Earn money & clout with contrarian takes 💸
Call bullshit on frens & influencers 🤡
Now possible at swaye.co
ALT swaye.co
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18/ We saw this example with Terra, where the *hyper* inflationary nature of its native asset led to a very low cost of attack and a necessity to halt the chain itself. Regarding the rest of the arguments made against Ethereum, the acknowledgment of rollups...
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@swaye_co innovating across both axes - market design + scaling creation & accessibility.
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12/ It’s not as if VCs don’t have equal access to Coinbase… The fundamental assumption here is of siloed ecosystems reminiscent of pre-globalization era markets, which is even less relevant in the context of open blockchains.
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Not many people know this, but @tracecrypto1 isn’t just an exceptional thinker in the space, but a gifted poet.
Congrats Nick!!
I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined the investment team at @standardcrypto, a venture capital firm with elite company-building experience and deep-rooted expertise in crypto.
standardcrypto.vc/thoughts/j…
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13/ A Merkle Patricia trie is used to store this data because it makes it easy to perform hashes of all the key-value pairs to eventually get to a singular “Merkle Root Hash” of the state of who owns what – a required field in the block header of a validator’s proposed block.
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23/ Rollups can always markup their fees relative to their costs *while* providing massive cost benefits to users. This is because they leverage batching capabilities that amortize that cost across users, providing massive fee improvements. Moreover, further adoption on L2s...
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Appreciate all the people that have already done so + pushed me to expand my thinking: @soumyab8, @Autoparallel, @0xjepsen, @ThogardPvP, @fcesco, @tylerinternet, @katiewav, @mountainwaterpi, @willkantaros, @ashegan, @DannySursock, and @dberenzon.
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10/ of decreasing prices of goods and services. This brings me to the next point, which is that even in assuming the (incorrect) view that Ether will be constantly deflationary instead of having a flexible monetary policy, the idea that *only* other projects built on Ethereum...
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18/ Bytecode appears as a HEX encoding of a string of binary. Collections of these bytes represent specific operations, known as opcodes that the EVM will perform.
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I also want to shout out the @thebellcurvepod and @MikeIppolito_, @danrobinson, and @hasufl. Grateful to be getting a front seat in learning from thoughtful conversations between all the fantastic hosts and guests on the podcast throughout the seasons.
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16/ A light node can compute a “Merkle Proof” with the root hash, account key, and balance value of the proposing full node, and compare that to a Merkle proof of its own address & balance. There would be no match in the Merkle proofs if there were any incorrect data.
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Quickly realized the time wasted on ideological fights over decentralization tradeoffs (e.g., MCP vs single-sequencer) when working on a system that lets them coexist, compete, and compose.
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17/ Transactions: When a user is submitting a signed transaction through a wallet, the transaction data is compiled into Bytecode and sent to a node using the aforementioned JSON-RPC API. Bytecode is the low-level language that the EVM reads to compute state transitions.
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21/ Let's run with these assumptions for a moment to ignore the unfounded but implicit dismissal of the costs of bootstrapping network security:
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19/ but the depiction of them as a solution defying the laws of maths & physics is particularly untrue. The claim being made is that it “is perpetually, mathematically impossible” to “decrease the cost of execution in tandem with a deflationary base token.”
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32/ Though there are many other fields required to then proliferate the block to other nodes, this concludes the general explanation of how the EVM works through the lens of a validator.
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25/ When transactions are accessed by the EVM through the mempool using the aforementioned client process, the EVM takes the instructions in the sequence specified by the bytecode and the bytecode gets separated into their respective opcodes.
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