FOCIL in Hegota, Core Dev priorities and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #859 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of daily refuel recap the latest news in the ecosystem. I'm your host and this is the 23rd of February 2026. All right everyone let's get into it. So a big week of protocol related news to get into this week but first off I just wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping here. Just a quick little announcement. Uh this has got not got to do with um with Ethereum or crypto or anything like that. But as you guys know I announced, you know, a couple months ago, a few months ago now that I was uh taking on another project which was writing a fiction novel. Now, that's making really great progress and I'm having a lot of fun doing that. Uh, but going forward, I don't think I'm going to be talking about it at all on the

refuel. I'm actually thinking of starting a separate channel for my writing in general where I can talk about, you know, my writing, talk about books that I'm reading, talk about those sorts of things, right? Uh, because I want to keep this channel, the daily, as the Ethereum channel. Um, and it doesn't really make sense to be talking about both. Uh, so yeah, when I make that channel or share it, and whoever wants to follow can follow. I know there's not that much overlap between kind of the two, I guess, industries, if you will. Uh, and totally don't feel forced to follow along with or anything like that. Maybe you're interested in it, maybe you're not. That's totally fine. But that's again why I'm going to create a new channel and keep it completely separate from this one. Uh, because I just don't think that these things um,

you know, got have anything to do with each other really. So yeah, uh, that'll be coming soon enough. Maybe by next week I'll have that all set up there. Um, but for now, let's jump into the news, the Ethereum news from the last week. So, the first thing I want to talk about, there's a there's a bunch of big protocol related news, but the first thing is that Fossil is going to be included in the Hegota fork. So, I remember I discussed with you guys that it was a priority headliner for the consensus layer in Hegota. It got punted from Glamsterdam and I remember saying to you guys that I really hope it doesn't get punted in Hegotar. It doesn't seem like it's going to. It seems like I mean we know we know now that it's going to be included in that hard fork. In terms of timelines, as I

said to you guys, I still don't think Hegelie is going to be delivered this year. I think it's going to be like early next year. Happy to be proven wrong on that. Um but you know, we're in kind of late February here. A glamster is still trucking along. But if that if Glamstead doesn't happen until like August or something like that, right? Um then yeah, I just doubt the hea is going to happen uh this year. But that's besides the point. The point is is that Fossil is going in. Now, a recap for those of you who don't know what Fossil is. It's basically the end kind of state of many years of kind of iterative designs around hardening censorship resistance on Ethereum. And it really started picking up steam once the OFAC actions h sanctions happened on Tonto all the way back in 2022. I believe it

was like about a month before the merge was happening. So it was August I think it was August 8th 2022 where essentially the office of office of foreign asset control in the US said that tornado cashache smart contracts were sanctioned and you couldn't interact with them and then of course we had the fallout of that uh which was a lot of these kind of entities on the network uh specifically the builders and the me boost relayers on the network started censoring those transactions and that really brought to the forefront the conversation of well we need to kind of stop that we need to harden Ethereum against stuff like that and I I think there was like two main things that got birthed out of this and maybe a third but the main two were were um EPBS and Fossil and all its iterations over over the years then

we're getting EP EPBS and Glamsterdam which is awesome but now we're getting Fossil and Hegotar the other third thing I guess like it still falls into the same bucket here but it's more uncertain still at this stage is uh encrypted me pools or doing some kind of uh I guess like uh encryption uh at at kind of layer 1 in order to make it so that transactions are private so you kind of have no idea what's going on inside the transactions there and that's on the execution layer side of things so that doesn't conflict with this the consensus layer side of things uh but yeah both of those things you know Fossil and EPBS have really been at at the forefront since then and it's been you know three and a bit years since then so this is not something that's happened overnight but it is happening guys which is

awesome like Fossil is happening EPBS is happening and happening one after the other too like as I said EPBS is in Amsterdam which fixes a lot of the issues issues around the MEV boost pipeline with regards to relayers. And then you've got Fossil which fixes a lot of the issues around censorship when it comes to validators and builders. So essentially the way it works is that it basically forces builders to include certain transactions or the validators force builders to include certain transactions in their blocks instead of just censoring uh you know uh censoring them or not including them. And there was some like this is a little while ago, I think like maybe a year ago at this point. Um I I showed you guys uh I think a chart that basically showed that within I think it was like two blocks,

even if 90% of the network was censoring you or something, you would get your transaction included, which is a huge huge deal because if 90% of the network was censoring you, then that means that you only have a 10% chance of getting your transaction included uh in every block because only 10% is non-ensoring you. Uh, which means that it would take on average, you know, one in 10 blocks. Obviously, that's not still not a long time, right? That's like a minute and 20 seconds or something like that if I'm doing the math correctly there. I'm I'm not actually. It's it's closer to 2 minutes. Um, you know, if if that was to happen, but uh, you know, while it may not seem like a big deal, may not seem like a long time, you it's basically delayed inclusion, uh, which is what happened with Tornado Cash, by the way.

I think at one point it got that bad. Uh it kind of is fine for to cache because you don't need like instant inclusion or anything like that. You can actually wait. And by fine, I mean like it's just not like terrible. It's not terribly bad. It's still It's still bad, but it's not like terrible. Whereas when it comes to other transactions on the network, such as DeFi transactions, for example, such as arbitrage transactions, then that's when it becomes an issue, right? That's when when 2 minutes like that's a that's a lifetime in certain scenarios, especially in very volatile market conditions. Um, and then on top of that as well, what's what's cool is that not only does Fossil uh rectify a lot of these issues, but what it also does is um it kind of hardens the protocol and it's part of the wider road

map of hardening the Ethereum protocol even further. And again, this is Ethereum, as I've said many times in the past, differentiating itself from everything else. Like no other network is putting this much emphasis on censorship resistance. They claim to be, but they are not. They're not even looking at this sort of stuff. They're not even caring about it. They're actually internalizing it where essentially they're saying that well, you know, if if we just control all the validators, we can make all the money and then we can censor whatever we want and still make money and it's fine. And there are a lot of chains that are doing this. Whereas Ethereum is going the complete opposite direction and and saying that no, that's not what we're building. We're not trying to recreate Tradfi. We're trying to create a entirely new system here and and not just, you know, a financial system, but

like a new internet essentially. And that's always been the goal of of Ethereum here. So, I'm really really glad that we're still on this path and I'm really glad that the core developers um and researchers prioritized fossil uh and we finally have it. EIP7805 it is and it is going into Hegotar. So, I would say let a year or less from now we will have this in the network which is going to come up uh pretty quickly there. So, great to see that. Congrats to all of the people that worked on this on getting their EIP into the network there. All right. Another big piece of protocol related news was this new team that has been uh no sorry not the not new team that that comes next. This is something separate to the new team that was formed out of the EF. So this is an update on

the EF's protocol priorities for 2026. So, as you guys know, last year the EF put uh put put forward their priorities for 2025, which was essentially scale the L1, scale L2s via things like blobs and also um fix the user experience on Ethereum or improve the user experience on Ethereum. So, essentially there's been great progress on that front. Uh but the renew the renewed priorities for uh 2026 are a bit broader than what they were as defined last year. So essentially scaling is still on the on the road map here for L1 and L2. And they say they're focusing on scaling for consensus execution and blob scaling. So that's at the L1 and and the L2s there.

Uh and they also mention who's leading these efforts as you can see uh here and I'll link the blog post in the YouTube description below for you to check out there as well. Secondly, improve UX obviously still on the table. like improving UX is is like a core priority that's going to be there for for you know maybe forever essentially like you can always improve the user experience for users here. Uh but this is essentially doubling down on the work from last year. There's no major kind of changes here or anything like that. Just continuing the great work that was done in 2025 and then hardening the L1. And this is what I was talking about before with regards to essentially this big new priority that's been put on uh you know hardening the protocol by the Ethereum Foundation by the Ethereum researchers and core developers uh to essentially

ensure the core properties of Ethereum are preserved through all the transitions that's happening on Ethereum because there are a lot of transitions happening on Ethereum guys like as you guys know we have the whole lean Ethereum road map we have the all the ZKVM stuff happening we have all the other upgrades in between I did tease that a new road map is coming I believe it's still coming. It's just not public yet. But, uh, I I I believe it's coming very soon. Or maybe it's already public and I missed it. I I don't think I've missed it cuz I I I I told um who's um the people that are uh involved with putting it together to let me know when it's live so I can share it and everything like that. Uh but yeah, that that's coming there. Uh but yeah, hardening the L1 is is just this broad

thing that's happening u uh like alongside those other broad things that are happening there. So, those are the protocol priorities. I'm not going to spend too much going into each of those there because you guys already know about all of those. So, check them out there. Um, but what was really cool is that uh Vitalik actually quote tweeted uh this and essentially uh kind of gave his own opinions and own takes on these three things here like the scale improving UX and and hardening the protocol here. So he says, you know, in 2025, we scaled Ethereum gas limit. You know, we we gave more breathing room to L2s because we delivered PIDAS and we delivered these uh BPO forks, these blob parameter only forks. Um but 2026 is the year where all of last year's work uh uh

that was prepared last year really pays off. And he says we will get block level access list or bells which allow paralyzed verification of blocks. This is coming in glamdown. So only a few months away there. EPBS as I mentioned before makes it safe for block execution to take a much larger portion of the slot and also removes negative externalities around uh you know around the MEV boost pipeline here and that's going live in Glamster as well. Gas repericings which makes slow operations more expensive making it safe to greatly increase the gas limit without vulnerability to dos attack DOSs risk going live in Glamsterdam but also going live in subsequent forks after that as well. So huge huge upgrades coming this year guys that that work that are basically uh based on the work that was done in 2025 and also further back than

that guys. As I said like Fossil's been in the works for by the time it goes live it will have been four five four years let's say you know something like that. So crazy amount of work that's that's been happening for a long time. But what's really cool about Ethereum is that we can actually trust that this stuff's going to be delivered. Like Ethereum is no stranger to long-term road maps and it delivers on those long-term road maps and the long-term goals. Doesn't pivot away from them. doesn't change it. You know, it may change priorities, but it doesn't change what it's actually focused on, which is which is really great there. So, that's on the scale front. And then on the improve UX front, uh, Vitalic specifically calls out account abstraction uh, and Fossil as well. Uh, so these are the two major EIPs targeted

for Hegatar. Uh, and he also talked about this in more detail, which you can have a look if yourself if you want. I'll link it in the YouTube description below. And then hardening the protocol. Now, this is a big this is a big thing, guys. there's a big scope here with regards to what this actually means. So he first mentions Fossil as hardening uh Ethereum. That's on the censorship resistance side there. But beyond that, the most important work this year is not the glamorous EIPs. It's in the the gritty stuff. So network security testing, another way we're hardening the protocol here. Postquantum readiness, that's another thing that I didn't even mention before. As I said, we got lean Ethereum, we got ZKVMs, we've got postquantum uh readiness here with the new postquantum team, right? We've got improving our ability to analyze the network's geographic decentralization.

Shout out to the ETH panda ops guys uh and all the various work Kohaku is doing on the security side like trustless RPCs, social recovery and more. And then of course on top of all of this another thing that I didn't mention was privacy work too. A lot of stuff happening on the privacy side there. So yeah, as you can see a lot of work happening across many different tracks here. And as far as I know, no other L1 is even trying to do anything close to this. As I've always said, Ethereum is special. Ethereum is unique and we talk the talk, guys. Like we sorry, we we we we walk the walk, so to speak. We don't just say things and say we're going to do it, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. We actually deliver on our promises here. So So great to see that

there. Now, another Vitalic tweet that he kind of uh put out here was that this has been I think like brewing under the surface for a while. people had a maybe a general understanding that the big things that are coming to Ethereum like lean Ethereum like ZKVM and a few other things are going to require some pretty substantial changes of the Ethereum network itself and probably changes that are on the same level if not similar to what we did with the merge. Now, some people may think, well, those are big changes. Like, I didn't think we were going to do something so big again. And, you know, I would say that you're right in a way if you think like that in that in terms of like the amount of eyeballs on this, in terms of like the impact this is going to have in terms of the

the amount of change that's happening. I I don't necessarily think any of the things that Vital calls out here is akin to the merge. I think the merge was like a once in a lifetime kind of thing, but that doesn't mean that these things aren't going to have similar levels of of impact. It's just probably not going to have the same fanfare that the merge did because the merge, I mean, there's so many reasons why it had so much fanfare around it, right? But regardless of that, these are the four things that Vital calls out. State tree, so changing the and managing or basically changing the way Ethereum handles state in order to manage it much more efficiently. Lean consensus, which is the whole lean Ethereum road map, which I'm sure you've heard a lot about at this point. Uh Justin Drake is leading that effort. He

is very active talking about that. uh ZK EVM verification. Again, something that has been talked about for a while now. I'm sure you're all very aware of that. Uh and a VM change. Now, this is something that I think is not as far along as the other three, but again, all of these things, all four of these things do require a pretty substantial change to the network. Now, is there going to be risk involved here? Yeah, sure. There's always risk involved with everything. But does Ethereum have a long history of delivering big upgrades? Yes, it does. uh and you know will can you have confidence as uh as a an as as a person involved with the Ethereum ecosystem, as an ETH investor, as someone following along that Ethereum is going to deliver on these things and is going to deliver on them in a in a real

way, in a successful way, uh and have these things actually make meaningful impact on the network as well as the world. And I think yes. I think the answer is yes. You could be forgiven in 2019 for thinking, "Oh yeah, Ethereum is never delivering proof of stake because at the time there was a lot of open questions with even the people in the weeds of Ethereum being like, when's proof of stake going to come?" But then um maybe I would say this is like 2018 and but then in 2019, you know, things started taking shape 2020. By that point, if you thought that Ethereum wasn't going to launch proof of stake, then you were an idiot because there was so much evidence showing that it was going to. And then of course it went live December 2020. Um, and then the, you know, people shifted to the merge

and they said, "Oh, the merge is never going to happen. You know, this is just all a rugpool." And then the merge happened. Then this stuff, the FUD shifted to, well, you know, staking withdrawals is never going to happen. Which is just the dumbest fud I've ever heard. And then they did happen, right, in 2023. So everything that people said wasn't going to happen or was too far-fetched or was too complicated. You know, people said that the merge was like changing a jet engine midair. And maybe it was, but we did it. That's the point, isn't it? We did it. And we did it successfully. And it was so successful. I remember I distinctly remember the looks of the core developers and researchers on the live stream. They all looked and they were expecting something to go wrong. And when it didn't go wrong, they were

shocked. They were genuinely shocked. They were like, how did we just do this? And yeah, maybe that's scary to some people to see being like, well, these guys, you know, they may they should be more confident in their in their work. But it's not about that. Once you see how the sausage is made, once you see how many things can go wrong, once you understand how many things can go wrong, then you obviously worry. And you worry because it's your responsibility to fix it. If something goes wrong and if something that you coded up resulted in something going wrong, you would feel bad, too, right? We're all human at the end of the day. But it didn't go wrong. We we did it fine and we've done many upgrades since then and it's been fine. So, I don't really expect anything to go wrong with these other upgrades. I

expect us to deliver them. I expect us to uh to deliver them to little fanfare to be honest, but they're all going to add up to a lot of adoption of Ethereum, a lot of Ethereum being integrated into the wider in ecosystem, and I I guess like ecosystem being like the world. Um, and I do think that, you know, if crypto goes into a long bare market again, like everyone thinks it's going to, and we go into like an even longer bare market than the last ones, right? You guys know my opinion on the four-ear cycle, but you know, if it goes into a really long one, like what happened after the dot boom, uh, which I don't think is going to happen, but if it does, I I mean, I think if you were to bet on any ecosystem would be Ethereum to come out

of that, like none of the other ones in my eyes would come out of that at all. Uh, and and nothing like Ethereum anyway, at least anyway. Uh, maybe there's some centralized stuff that comes out of it because that's but that's because it's centralized, so on and so forth. So, yeah. Anyway, uh, I covered all that there. Couple of other things to get through with regards to protocol related stuff. So Ben Edgington actually he's been a longtime Ethereum guy. I've talked about him a lot on the refuel. He used to be a core developer, you know, a while ago. He was very close um during the delivery of like the beacon chain, proof ofstake Ethereum, the merge, all that sorts of stuff. He um is an author of a book about ETH2. He still calls it ETH2, which I find which I find pretty funny, but like hey, more

power to you, Ben. Um but he recently rejoined uh core development. So he is working at the Ethereum Foundation now and he is in charge of fast finality on Ethereum. This is another big upgrade. This is something that is really wanted in the community. Like I would say that besides Fossil and besides some of the other kind of uh really cool upgrades that we've got coming uh like lean Ethereum, ZKVM, stuff like that, I would say fast finality is like pretty much at the top of everyone's list of what they want in Ethereum as well as quicker slots. And these kind these things kind of go hand in hand. Uh because like I mean you don't need faster slots for faster finality, but like they are kind of this no they're not okay maybe I'm wrong in saying they're the same thing,

but they are related. That's what that's the word I was looking for. They are related because finality happens after a certain number of slots and epochs. So if you have faster slots in theory, you could have faster finality, right? In theory. Um and and you know, the goal is to have as fast finality as we we want um as we can get. Uh and that's what Ben is in charge of now. So he put a tweet out the other day that people can DM him to set up a call if you are uh you know part of these uh entities like whether you're an infrastructure provider like an L2 bridges interop protocols provide liquidity part of the the protocol side they want to hear from you they want to hear like you know uh which trade-offs would be okay like what's the impact going to be on you how badly do you want

this thing so they're just doing this this um exploratory work right now but it's all going to end end up with fast finality and then faster slots as well. I I mentioned faster slots I think on the last episode. There's a real push to get some really cool uh uh scaffolding in place at least by Hegotar for faster slots on Ethereum. And getting slot times down as low as we can is the goal. As I've said before, I don't think that we're going to get below 4 seconds. Probably not for a long time. Like I would say that we maybe could get to 10.

So for those of you who don't know, slot times on Ethereum is 12 seconds right now. Maybe we could get to 10 in Hegotar delivered as part of the stuff that K beak is working on. I covered that last week on last week last last week's episode. Uh so maybe we could get to 10 uh and then 8 and then six and then four. But I think I've explain explained this before. It's not about like the time, it's about the reduction from where it is today. So if you were to go from 12 to 6, that's a 50% reduction. And then 6 to 3 is another 50% reduction. Now, the numbers seem closer to each other. So, it doesn't seem like a big of a change, but it is because it's still 50%. So, that's why they want to do it slowly is because they're not

looking at the numbers the, you know, the seconds, they're looking at the the percent change because you always have to take into account what impact this is going to have on the network. So, yeah, and and same with fast finality and doing that. It's the same kind of stuff there. But that's all moving, you know, everything's in motion. Everything's happening here, which is really, really great to see there. All right. I just wanted to give a quick shout out. I actually didn't know that the EF protocol support team had a Twitter account. Um I think it's because they only joined in Janu January of 2026. But if you're not following this account, please follow it. It is an awesome uh resource to follow along with things. They actually the team behind forecast. So the forecast website that I gush over every time I talk about it,

which got a new upgrade actually. You can see here what what uh the stages of each upgrade, which is really cool. Uh but yeah, they're behind this. They're behind a bunch of other things happening within the Ethereum ecosystem. So, if you want to follow along with their updates, you can join or sorry, you can follow their Twitter account here. I'll link in the YouTube description below for you to do so there. All right, last up. So, a little bit of drama in L2and. And I think this is manufactured drama because I didn't really see the reason why people were were kind of complaining about this, but essentially uh there was a big update out of Coinbase with regards to their base L2 chain here. So essentially the I guess TLDDR is that they are moving away from OP stack and essentially forking the OP stack and just taking control of

the entire stack uh on their own. So they're no longer going to be paying the optimism uh DAO to use the OP stack. They're no longer going to be part of the OP kind of ecosystem. They're going out on their own uh and doing their own thing. Now I understand why they're doing this because they want to control the whole stack and they're big enough to do this as well. like they're not some small L2 that relies on the goodwill and the graces of optimism to exist and to thrive. They can just do their own thing based like they don't need to actually work with optimism. Is it a bit shitty that they took a OP grant and then you know got a lot of money from the uh the OP kind of Dow and the OP tokens and now doing this. Yes.

But I mean that's business. Like I don't know what else to say at that point. That's business. You know they are in control of of that that business. They do what they think is right for their business. But outside of that, and that's where the drama kind of stemmed from, but outside of that, they also put together a bunch of uh priorities for base going forward. So, they're targeting six hard forks per year. They're targeting 1 gigs a second. They're targeting extreme reliability, so 99.99% non-MPT blocks and predictable low fees with a simpler design. Uh, so a maximally simple spec that's easier to order and build on. So, I think that's why they took control of their own destiny here because they don't want to wait for the OP stack to be updated or upgraded to do this. Uh, they just want to do it all all on their own and

they're probably confident they can do it all on their own. So, I totally get that. I totally understand that. So, why was there so much drama around this other than the OP stuff? And I think another big thing was that for a long time people have said, well, when an L2 gets big enough, they'll just branch off and become their own L1. And I always thought that argument was dumb. And I still think that argument is done dumb. I think you get so much from being an L2 that becoming an L1 does doesn't make any sense to me. The only I guess and and to be clear here, Bass is still an L2 and they said that they're not they have no plans to not be an L2. But like the only I guess argument that I've seen that kind of resonates with me and kind

of is a good devil's advocate for L2s becoming L1's and I wouldn't even call what you know this is as an L1 is that some people will argue well if these things are centralized anyway and they can control what happens on the chain they can censor they can do whatever and regulations basically say that they have to do this then is being an L2 actually like beneficial to them versus being like a proof of authority chain. Now a proof of authority chain to me is actually not a blockchain at all. I I think you know for those of you who don't know proof of authority chain is essentially a chain that has a bunch of federated kind of actors like a small

number like less than 10 usually less than five that all just act as quote unquote validators and process transactions right and and keep the network running sort of thing again that to me is not an a blockchain that to me is a federated database but then people will make the argument that well if an L2 isn't decentralized at all if it has centralized kind a control over it like a multisig then isn't that the same thing and look I kind of sympathize with that argument to an extent but I don't think it's the same thing I think there's differences between that here right if you have a PA chain that's totally centralized then they're centralized like 100% but if you have an L2 with a security council for

example that that only gets invoked in order to um fix critical security bugs then that is very different to a PA chain And then of course the argument can be made well can't the you know the government force the um the signers on that multiig on that you know security multisig to make changes other than security related changes. I'm like yeah okay sure they could but the thing is is that a lot of the times the signers on these multiigs are actually not all based in the same place. They're purposely based elsewhere purposely geographically split up. Um, and you know, what the US government says doesn't apply to a lot of the world, right? And they're not going to uh you they're probably not going to uh go out of their way to go after, you know,

individual people here. They probably just probably just go after base, for example. But then that's a whole other kind of uh I guess like uh can of worms there as well. So then I just arrive at the same conclusion that I arrive at every time I think about these things is that centralization is a liability then. So why not just be decentralized? you know, then you don't have to worry about this at all. You provably decentralize, you don't worry about this at all. And I do believe there is a path for L2s to get there. Even if they have like a security council um and I do believe that it will take a while to get there because obviously like security is something you have to take seriously here. But like I just don't think that the path like if you have two parts in

front of you and you think that well I I may as well just go and be a POA chain because like I'm centralized anyway and uh that's easier for me and it's easier for governments and I can just give them what they want versus going down the decentralization ch uh uh road and path where you don't actually have control over it at all. I think that path is better. I I just I I think that part's better for a number of reasons. Because if you are exerting centralized control over your chain, why is anyone going to use it? Like like no one's really going to use it over time, you'll just lose users and you'll lose liquidity and you'll lose capital and they'll just go where that's not happening. So that that other path that that POA chain path just makes absolutely no sense to me. So the

the path of being an L2 and decentralizing over time as much as you can is the better path in my my opinion here especially because as an L2 you also get an escape hatch which is just absolutely awesome because even if you want to keep upgrading the L2 over time you can do that but there's like a built-in time lock for that as well so that any changes to the network you have to have like a 30-day grace period or something for people to move their funds if they want I if they want to right um and maybe those grace periods become longer and lower longer as these things mature. I just always think that the L2 path is better here uh than the L1 path.

So that's my take on on that whole thing here. I think a lot of the people spreading the stuff that oh L2s will just become L1's just they want it to happen so that they're right. It's not necessarily what they think is best for the industry because a lot of people in this industry seem to care much more about being right than what's actually best for the industry. Even people like in Ethereum, even people that I've I've I've considered friends, it's really frustrating when that happens. And people will accuse me of the same thing. And sure, maybe sometimes I'm I'm guilty of this, but like it's frustrating to talk to people and then I just know that they actually aren't open to reason. And all they care about is being right. They don't care about the truth. They don't care about what actually makes the most

sense. They just like, well, I'm going to be right one day and you'll see. And then if something happens that is it doesn't even prove them right. If something happens that they think proves them right, they start viculapping, right? And they start saying, "Look, I was right all along. You know, this was wrong, and then I'm just like sitting here like, that's just not what's h not not what's happening. But hey, you don't care about that. You don't care to listen to reason. So, I'm not going to bother with that, you know, with you at this point." And that's a big reason why I've actually stopped being very active on Twitter. It's just no point being active on there. It's just like endless groundhog day of crap. Like, it's actually depressing going on there. I I literally only go on there now maybe like 30 minutes a day in the morning to

get uh just the latest news on what's happening in Ethereum and then I try not to go on for the rest of the day because it's just crap. It's just a waste of time and I can use my time doing so many other things, right? Uh and I encourage you guys to do the same because honestly it's just not not worth it. Um, and I think that, you know, over time what happens is that the people who clue into how bad social media is for them just they get off and then all that's left on social media are the people that like haven't clued into that uh and are happy being, you know, in a in a doomerism loop in a perpetual Groundhog Day dumerism loop. Uh, and that's all you're going to get. That's all the content that's created. Not to mention all of

the AI and bots that are there and all the slop that's there. Just a mountain of slop. Like there's already so much slop and there is more coming. Like it's not going to stop, guys. Like the social media companies have absolutely no reason to stop this because it makes their platforms look uh like look active. It makes their platforms look alive. It makes stock price go up, right? That's all they care about. So if you think it's going to stop, if you think that the oncoming onslaught and and continuing onslaught of slop, not just with content in terms of like text based content, but like all the slop coming out from uh uh from uh people creating like full-blown movies with these uh with these new models and these new AI models, all that sorts of stuff that's just going to be non-stop. And yes, I'm pretty excited about certain AI

things like AI agents and, you know, trustless agents on on Ethereum and onchain and stuff like that, but I'm so bearish on the content creation stuff. I think it's a complete waste of time, energy, resources, and it actively makes us dumber to consume this stuff. I really do believe that, guys, because what is this stuff trained on? It's trained on content that we create. So, what if everything in the end just ends up being the same content from the bots? they're going to be trained on themselves and then eventually everything just is the same. Like there's no creativity. There's no newness here. There's no novelty. That's at the heart of what makes us human, right? Is that our creativity, our culture, our our expressiveness, machines can't do that like and and and

if they have to learn from us to do that and then when we stop creating content or it gets drowned out by everything else, they're going to learn from themselves and then only repeat what they do. like it's it literally will become Groundhog Day. They'll just can repeat the same content every day. And some people are into that. Fine, you can be into that. It's not for me. Anyway, I could rant a lot about AI. I think it's just something that is interesting from like a philosophical perspective as well. Uh but I think on that note, I'm going to end it here today. I've already got over 30 minutes. So, thank you everyone for listening and watching. Be sure to subscribe to channel if you haven't yet. Give a thumbs up, subscribe to newslet, join the Discord channel.

And I'll catch you all next week. Thanks everyone.