Personal updates, Core protocol news and more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #863 - Ethereum Updates

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Daily We Refuel, where we cover the latest news in the Ethereum ecosystem. I'm your host Anthony Sassano and today is the 22nd of May, 2026. All right everyone, let's get into it. So, it has been a while. It's been a couple of months since the last refuel. I rugged all of you guys, I think, when I said that I was going on a break and I'd be back. I can't remember what date I said I'd be back, but it was quite a while ago now. Uh and of course, I ended the uh by saying that I would stick to a uh weekly cadence for refuels or at least try to do that. And obviously, I had failed to do that uh at this point. Now, uh there's a lot of things to talk about, I think, today. Um I'm not going

to dwell too much on topics that I think I've talked about a lot in the past. Obviously, more drama about the Ethereum Foundation today and just generally, and that's always a thing. Like, there's always drama about the Ethereum Foundation, so I don't think it's worth dwelling on that too much, but I will talk about that a little later. Um but I think I wanted to start the episode off with kind of, I guess, like a personal kind of update on where I'm at with everything, uh kind of what my involvement with crypto is going to be going forward. And none of this should come as like a shock or surprise to anyone, considering I've talked a lot about this over the years. Um but yeah, if you're not interested in that and you just want to get to kind of the Ethereum-related news, you can skip

ahead. There'll be timestamps, of course, as there always are. But where I'm at today is kind of where I was at, you know, I guess, like beginning of last year, even in 2024, where essentially, I kind of got to a point where I was like, you know, I spend so much time in this industry, so much time in this ecosystem, basically every waking hour. Uh I needed to just generally take a step back. And that's got nothing to do with Ethereum or ETH or crypto generally, and everything to do with just where I'm at kind of personally, right? And I've been talking about this in the Daily Daily We Discord channel for a little while now, and I basically said that, you know, I'm at the point in my life where I need to do other things. I need to kind of uh shift my attention and my time towards other

kind of, I guess, like more important things at this stage in my life. Uh I'm almost 34 now, Um but I've been in crypto for you know what feels like forever. Like my first kind of foray into crypto was in 2013, then I took a kind of I guess like break or I kind of got out of crypto until 2017 when I discovered Ethereum. And then from I would say from 2017 to 2025, maybe the beginning of 2025, I spent pretty much like every waking hour in crypto. Like I'd get up, I'd jump on, and I'd be on it the whole day. And I suffered a lot because of that. I suffered a lot physically because of that. My physical health went, you know, down a lot. Mental health definitely kind of went down a lot, right? My basically my physical mental health looked like a a meme coin chart, just

like straight down, right? Maybe a like a high for a little bit and then just straight down. So, you know you know, given that and given the fact that like I was moving into different stages of of my life as I got older, I thought to myself, you know, it's it's not worth me spending so much time in this industry anymore, especially because the industry was growing, too. Like when I first got in 20 in in 2017, there was the ICO mania, so the industry was kind of growing from there. But then in '18, '19, and '20, it was basically just like the hardcore people around. And I that's when I actually enjoyed it the most. I mean, I enjoy being part of things when they are early, when they are a small, when they are kind of like experimental. And then as it grows, like I kind of grow out of

it that way, right? And and kind of my interest wanes and my my kind of like need or drive to be part of that kind of wanes because I'm like, well, it's it's kind of gone a life life of its own now. I made my impact. You know, I think that there's diminishing returns now, so I'll go do kind of something else. So, the something else for me over the last, I guess like especially the last year, 18 months, has been obviously taking my physical and mental fitness a lot more seriously. And I say obviously because I've talked a lot about that in the past. So, I've taken that like extremely seriously, and I feel better than I ever have, to be honest. Trying to spend more time with family and friends, you know, like real life family and friends, things that that kind of matter most to

me there. Um, recently found out that I'm going to be an uncle soon, which again, is another thing that I'd rather focus on than sitting on Twitter all day fighting with people about the EF or Ethereum or why ETH isn't at like 100k or something like that, right? Um, and then also, uh, I plan to have my own kids as soon as I can, basically. Like I want to to have children. I have for a little while now. So, it kind of when it comes to a head where I'm like, would I, you know, rather spend time with my, you know, future kind of, a future kind of niece, and my future children, or would I rather sit on crypto Twitter or sit in Discord channels and debate with anonymous people about, you know, about Ethereum and everything

like that. And, you know, in the past, yes, that would have been what I would have chosen to do because I didn't really have these other commitments that were more important. And I considered, obviously, fighting, you know, those battles to be important. But, I mean, it's felt like Groundhog Day for ages now, where essentially, you know, I still check Twitter. Like I check Twitter in the morning maybe for like 30 minutes. I check the Discord channel, and I'm still around. Like I'm not like cold turkey off it or anything like that. I am focusing my energy on other things. I'm still doing my writing, which I announced a little while ago, but I mean, that's that's kind of, you know, a hobby. It's not like something that I'm I'm trying to make into a career or anything like that.

Maybe it does become a career one day because I've I've gotten to the point where I want to take it more seriously, but it's definitely something that I'm just doing for fun right now, and I've made really good progress on that. Um, but yeah, I'm still still involved to a to a certain extent. Um, but the but the thing is is that I can't be as involved as I as I once was. You know, I was doing daily refuels for such a long time, right? Like, and it's got nothing to do with, you know, price or anything like that. Some people comment and say, "Oh, look, because price isn't, you know, good, you know, Sassal kind of exited and and he's gone away." It's like, "No, I was the most active when price was the worst." Like I was the most active in 2018, in 2019, and 2020

where ETH was in a lot worse shape than it is kind of today, right? Um and and you know, people genuinely thought and and believed Ethereum and and ETH were kind of completely dead. Uh and it was just like very very different time back then, but I was the most involved back then. I was doing daily stuff. I was like on it all the time. And then all throughout the bull market that we had with COVID and then the the subsequent bear market, I was more active than I you know, than I I I've been in the in the you know, the bull markets, basically. So So from that lens, it's got nothing to do with price for me. It never really has. Um but yeah, it's all about like where I am at personally in in my life there. So that that's basically like the TLDR of

of kind of what my involvement is going to be like going forward. And if you read between the lines, it's obvious that I'm not going to be doing weekly refuels. I just I just can't. Like I I I think that, you know, what drove me before was was definitely like that the fact that I had the time to dedicate to it, but also the fact that it was like it was early, it was experimental, it wasn't like out in the mainstream, there wasn't like all these big corporations and enterprises getting involved, and I felt like I could make a huge impact by being so active. Um but yeah, I don't feel like that anymore. And I I think I've said multiple times on the refill over the years that when it stops being fun for me to do it, I would just not do it. Um

and that's what had happened. It just stopped being fun for me. Like it started just draining my energy rather than giving me energy. So uh from from that kind of I guess viewpoint there, that's that's why it'll become and it pretty much is the every other kind of day way. And I don't know when it's going to happen. I still want to do these kind of podcasts for you guys. I still want to kind of give updates and and share stuff with you guys, but I don't know what the frequency is going to be like going forward. Um you know, I can't promise anything. It's definitely not going to be weekly like I promised. It just It's just not going to happen. Uh and also like I've never, you know, monetized any of this stuff. So like you never had to pay for the daily gwei.

I've never set any expectations around that. Um I've always just done it as I said because it was a fun thing to do. I love educating people. I love sharing my knowledge. I love getting people bullish on Ethereum and ETH. And I think I did that. I think I did that for long enough. I don't think I need to do that anymore. And that's been true for a while. That's not not just today, guys. Like as you know, it's been like 18 months, maybe maybe 2 years of this of like me being one foot in, one foot out sort of thing. But I'm just in a different different phase of my life. And I will say one last thing is that like I see a trend or a lot of a trend with people shaming others for kind of like leaving or taking a step back from

the industry. And I think that unless that those people came into the industry just to like extract and just to be a scammer, I think shaming them and shaming genuinely honest people for for kind of changing careers or or taking a step back is pretty disgusting to be honest because like what do you what do people expect? Do you expect people to just be around forever? And I think that's what people expect and what it kind of reveals to me is that there's an insecurity there where essentially people are holding a bag of something, whether that be ETH or something else, and then they feel like that the people working to make their bags go up or at least there's an expectation from the people holding that bag that other people should be working for their bags to go up, that they shouldn't be allowed to

kind of leave or go do something else until that person sells that bag. And then they don't care anymore, right? And I think that's just very toxic. I think that's just the wrong way to think about things and I think that people have various different reasons for kind of leaving, right? And for kind of moving on with their lives and doing different things and things change. Like things aren't static in life, guys. Like it's always changing. You know, if if you kind of showed me what my life was like today versus what it was like, I don't know, 5 years ago and told me where I was where I was going to be, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have called you crazy. But like I'm just in a different place now. I'm so different to how I was 5 years ago. I'm a very

different person to how I was 10 years ago. Like meeting 10 years ago me, I would call him an idiot cuz he was. like I was just like very very young, you know, I was 24, my brain hadn't even fully developed yet as they say it fully develops at 25. Uh I was just entering the corporate kind of workforce and I guess you could call that the the actual real life, you know. Um and and and and and I would have called that person uh you know, an idiot and been like, you know, you don't know what's coming. You don't know what life is, you don't know what life is like, you don't know anything yet. And and uh you know, I think that's very true. So, people move on, people evolve, that's just life, guys. Um and and and on that note, I think I'm going to end the the personal

update there, but then I'm going to shift to talking a little bit about the Ethereum Foundation. This is a dead horse. Like, this horse is so dead that it has been buried hundreds of times already and and brought back and just like killed again. Like, it it it it annoys me how dead this horse is. But, I think it's worth addressing something in relation to what I was saying about people moving on from the industry. Now, we've all seen over the last few weeks a lot of prominent Ethereum Foundation people. Well, not a lot, maybe I think like 10 or something like that of the 200 or something in the EF uh uh kind of leave the EF or, you know, um move on to to do something else.

Now, the EF the themselves haven't given like an update on this. Uh and I don't think that they should, to be honest. Like, I don't think it really matters too much. Um but, also that obviously will uh breed kind of speculation. And I think regardless of what the EF says, it would breed speculation. And a lot of the speculation is basically centered around, well, these people are leaving the EF because the EF forced them to sign that mandate that the Ethereum Foundation put out, the crops mandate, and these people didn't want to do that. And hey, if that's the truth, then then so be it. I don't know what the truth is. I don't think anyone really knows the 100% truth, even the people working at the EF probably don't know the 100% truth. Because I've talked to a lot of people from the EF, I've talked to a lot

of people around the EF, and everyone has their own story. Like, everyone has their own conflicting story here. So, really it depends on who you talk to. And and and that just signals to me that uh you know, getting to the bottom of it and getting to the truth of it is going to be near impossible. So, in that reality, I just decide to, you know, not kind of focus on it too much and just kind of move on from it. But, in saying that, the people who have left, let's assume that they didn't leave because of the mandate thing. Or let's assume that wasn't the main reason. Maybe it was in part the reason, but let's say that that the ones who left, you know, left for other reasons. And what could those other reasons be? Well, it's similar to the reasons for me,

right? They're at different stages in their life. They want to focus on different things. They've been in this industry for like 10 years, been, you know, bare metal kind of building this stuff for 10 years, which is like very, very demanding work, and they want to go do something else. Or maybe they don't want to be at the EF anymore. Maybe they want to go join another kind of company, right? Maybe they want to go earn more money because obviously the EF is notorious for not paying as much as other places because they just can't. So, maybe these people want to go move on and and work there and get paid more for their work. Or maybe they want to focus on something different. Or maybe their work is just done. Like people don't realize this, but like the next kind of few years of Ethereum is very

different to the last few years, right? We're moving into like the the kind of quantum lean era of Ethereum, and that's going to look very different to what it was in the past. So, maybe the people that were specialized in the past versions of Ethereum and and working on the past upgrades, maybe they want to keep working on on similar stuff like that, but they can't do it at the EF, right? So, there are very different reasons here for why someone would leave an organization, whether it's the EF or something else. But again, like regardless of what people say, there's always going to be needless speculation because people we're in a low trust environment just generally in the world, right? Like you just cannot trust what a lot of people say. And and and I think a lot of people are defaulting to just not trusting

anyone. And I understand that stance because that is a stance that I've kind of held for a long time is that like I don't trust 99% of people. I I trust people who I know and who I I consider to be credible and legitimate over long periods of time. But like generally it's very hard to trust anyone these days. Whether And you know what? People aren't just malicious being malicious when they're lying. You know, certain people, maybe they're just kind of not wanting to give the whole truth for various different reasons. Or maybe that just that their version of the truth is different to what the actual truth is. So, like that there's all this kind of stuff that that kind of compounds here that that makes it more complex than what it is, right?

So, you know, in saying that, I think my stance on it generally on on the EF stuff and the I guess like Ethereum kind of core protocol work itself is as long as the work continues, as long as the road map is shipped as, you know, as it's been kind of presented to the ecosystem, I don't think that it's something that's like a huge deal. Like I've always been about that. Like I've always been been about the deliverables, you know? There's all this noise and then there's what actually gets built and delivered. If Ethereum still builds and delivers what it it needs to build and deliver, you know, with the coming upgrades and everything like that, then I personally don't see a reason to be like sounding the alarms and to be like disappointed and to be like upset about things.

Especially things that you can't control. Like none of us can control what the EF does or what they don't do. The EF is not beholden to us at all. We're not shareholders in the EF. Just because you own ETH doesn't mean that the EF should listen to you or anything like that, right? The EF works for what they believe is the best path for the Ethereum ecosystem and what they want to see Sorry, the best path for the EF is and obviously that is contributing to Ethereum, but they don't want to imprint onto Ethereum and they never have. They never want to dictate what Ethereum is and what it isn't. They want to basically say, "Well, this is what we think Ethereum is and this is what we're working towards with Ethereum. But if you have a different idea of what Ethereum should be, you can start your

own organization, your own company, your own foundation, and you can go do that." And that's what a lot of people have done within the ecosystem. They've done their own things. So, from that point of view, I just don't think it's worth continuously harping on about the EF. And I know a lot of this stuff comes from price. Like if price was going up and if ETH was outperforming everything and ETH was like the hottest thing ever, no one would care about any of this. And that's the problem with this industry that that hits at the heart of a lot of the reason why I get burnt out on it as well. And why I think a lot of people get burnt out on it is that the sentiment always follows price. The most bullish things in the world can happen for Ethereum. Everything could be going

really well. Everything could be going excellently. Everyone could be in agreement that hey, we love the direction of Ethereum. We love what the ETH is doing. We love everything. And if the ETH price was flat, people would still be upset. That is the main issue. And this this does not apply to just ETH. It applies to everything. And that's why this industry is so so brutal. Because on the on the flip side, you get the high. When everything's going well, when the price is going up, you get that high, right? And everyone gets that high. It's like, "Oh my god. Like this is never going to end. The party's awesome. I love it. I'm getting rich, you know, I'm making money. This is awesome." And then and it never lasts, right? And then you get the flip side and and you get the hangover. And

now normally a hangover like will not like it depends how much you drink, of course. But like a hangover for most people, the worst of it will last like a couple of days, right? Maybe a day for a lot of for a lot of people. But like a couple of days if you've had like a really big night, right? So, but but in crypto, like the hangover lasts for years, right? Because you get that just euphoria. You get that absolute euphoria for like 6 months, 12 months. And then you get the hangover for a long period of time. And the hangover is always worse. Um and then you're like begging for the good times to come back. But you don't have control over this, right? We Whereas with like I guess like drinking to to continue the analogy here, you can go out after a couple of days, drink

again, and get drunk, and have have a have a party, and have a good time. And you have control over that. But within kind of this ecosystem, everything's out of your control. You can't control when the market goes up or down. You can obviously control your own investments. Um but but like that's a whole other thing, right? But like you can't control uh, you get that next high. And I think that's what causes a lot of people to grow so resentful and to grow so bitter and so angry and to feel trapped and to to feel like they're drowning in that like they're holding this thing and they're watching it either go down or do nothing like these assets and they're watching other assets go up and it just becomes worse for them and then they start lashing out because they don't want to obviously take responsibility

for themselves. They want to blame other people for things. So I understand where it's all coming from, but again, this is a big reason why I kind of like take taking a step back as well. like I don't want to be around that. Like I don't want to deal with that every day. I don't want to expose myself to that. I want to be happy in life. I don't want to continue this kind of you know, Groundhog Day of like log on to Twitter, see ETH fud, see Ethereum fud, see the same [ __ ] every freaking day and have to like try and fight fires or feel compelled to do this or feel compelled to put tweets out about it.

Um, and like argue with all these different people about things that I know I just like very defensive about it because they're you know, defending their investment or they're feeling very insecure about things. Like I just don't have the energy to do that anymore. I did that for so long. Um, and as I said, I think like it gets to the point where you're just like this is Groundhog Day. And I I actually said this in the Daily Gwei Discord channel today where I think that eventually everyone gets to the same position that I'm in. It takes a while to get there, but eventually you just like something just clicks in your brain and you're like, "Wow, you know, this is just the same stuff every day. I can't be bothered with this anymore. I'm moving on." And moving on doesn't mean that you you know, you sell your

investments or you sell your ETH, whatever it is and just like never be part of the industry again. Moving on is just realizing that like you don't need to fight these battles all the time. You don't need to be in the trenches like this all the time. You don't need to be exposing yourself to this all the time because it is a net negative for you. And I think that goes for just social media generally. I don't think it just like applies to, um, uh, to crypto, but in crypto it's it's particularly bad, I think, because of the fact that price drives sentiment always. Like it that you could never get away from that. That was That is what this entire industry is built on is like price drives sentiment and if price is bad, sentiment is bad.

Doesn't matter if everything else is good right? So yeah, anyway, I think I've I've ranted long enough about those two things there. As I said, I didn't want to comment too much on the EF stuff cuz I don't think it's important. If you do, well, you know, you go do your own thing. You go think about it. You go talk to people about it. I think it at this point it's just like a lot of needless speculation, a lot of crap, a lot of crap been through in the past that I just can't be bothered with anymore personally. But yeah, anyway, let's move on to something not negative, I guess, or not drama-filled. Let's move on to what's been happening with Ethereum developments and Ethereum core protocol developments. Well, they've been moving along quite nicely, right? That nothing has really fundamentally kind of changed there. So,

Glanstadam is still coming. Glanstadam is making really good progress. In terms of when it's going to get shipped, I haven't kept up with like the, you know, the timeline in in terms of like being at the the forefront of it. I I I think it's going to get shipped in like Q3, maybe. Maybe earlier than that, but like I think Q3. And then Hegeltar is definitely going to be next year. I think I I, you know, called that months ago. I I didn't believe it was ever going to ship this year this year. But Glanstadam is definitely still shipping this year. And with it comes EPBS, comes block level access list, right, and a host of other EIPs, as you can see here, scheduled for inclusion there. So, yeah, Glanstadam is coming.

It's all well and good there. And then as I mentioned, Hegeltar is is coming next year. It is currently in the scoping phase. They're still talking about what to include. Fossil is definitely going to be included on the consensus layer side of things. On the execution layer side, I think frame transactions is a very good candidate here. And there's a bunch of other EIPs that are proposed for inclusion as well. But as I said, Glanstadam still isn't shipped. It's still going through testing phases. I think testnets are going to happen relatively soon. You know, we're already in May, so probably going to see that happen soon. And then once that happens, we'll probably have like an August, maybe September uh a date for for Glemster Dam. And then Hegeltour will probably happen maybe late Q1 next year,

uh maybe Q2. But yeah, things are moving. Things are shipping. Things are happening here in terms of uh in terms of developments on the core protocol side of things. Now, of course, it's not just Glemster Dam and Hegeltour, it's also all of the the lean Ethereum stuff, all of the PQ Ethereum stuff, which is is happening in a really big way as well. There was a website that they launched uh for PQ Ethereum, or at least a subdomain. I don't know if I've covered on the Refuel before, but I'm going to bring it up here on the screen. So, it's pq.ethereum.org, so it is hosted on the ethereum.org website here. So, this will basically give you everything you need to know about post-quantum Ethereum, which falls into like lean Ethereum, uh and that's basically what Justin Drake is is working on a lot you know, with a lot of

other people. Uh and that's the Straw Map as well, I think. Uh so, you can see here I I This is the PQ roadmap, but then if you want to look at the the the Straw Map, which is the overall L1 roadmap, it's still here at strawmap.org. This has everything up until 2030 plus, guys. So, if you're at all curious about what's coming for Ethereum on the core protocol side, all you have to do is go to this website. Um this is continuously updated from from what I know. Um and as I said, like Justin Drake is one of the leads on this, but so um uh uh other people at the Ethereum Foundation. And also, the Ethereum Foundation org chart is I don't know how up-to-date this is. Um I don't think it's been updated since uh a few of those Ethereum Foundation departures

here. But this also shows you the amount of people working on all of this stuff. Um and you know, there's been a shift in who who who's kind of leading this stuff. Uh but but generally, um uh you know, there's there's so many more people working on this than the people that have kind of moved on from the Ethereum Foundation. And these people are still hard at work. They're still tweeting about things. I'm retweeting as much of it as I can. So, if you want to know about the latest updates, you can always visit visit my Twitter profile. I'll retweet what I think is relevant. So, you can go uh check that out there. But yeah, we're just moving steady along, guys. Regardless of all the drama, regardless of all the, you know, um disappointment about the price and stuff like that and other things going

up and stuff. Um you know, things things are still developing here. And you know what you know, it's kind of what I find funny with a lot of this stuff is that I think you know, people complain about like ETH, but I I I was actually So, I don't check the markets that often, you know, anymore because I I just don't think it's relevant. But I was looking at like the [snorts] CoinGecko the other day and I was looking at like the last uh 30 days cuz you can do the 30-day thing on CoinGecko and looking at what assets have done over the last 30 days. And besides a few outlier assets, like most things have just like not done anything, right? Like they've either gone down substantially or they've gone up substantially, but like that's like maybe one or two assets over the last 30 days. For the most

part, like crypto has just sat, you know, very very silently. It has not just has has really not just done anything in terms of like market side of things. But for some reason, ETH is the thing that gets all the hate and all the [ __ ] And I And like maybe that's because ETH is like the tallest thing besides BTC. But I find it strange because BTC has also not done anything. Um and all I'm seeing is just like ETH hate. So, like I don't know what it is. I I I I feel like it's just like popular to hate on Ethereum, so everyone does it because they're in engagement farming. But like I just find that funny because there was like 2024 and 2025 where I don't know, Solana was the talk of the town. Everyone's going on about meme coins. Oh my god, Solana, you know,

SOL's going to flip ETH, blah blah blah. But But then, you know, it that didn't happen and SOL I think is down like 60% against ETH or something like that. And like all of the Well, a lot of the biggest SOL bulls have now turned into like hyper liquid bulls. And then, of course, like hyper liquid's gone up a lot. And then, you know, everyone's shilling that. And then they they're like, "Oh, they're shilling on ETH as well." They're saying like, "Oh, you only need Hyperliquid. It's going to You know, it's not just a perp DEX. It's going to do everything Ethereum can do and all this stuff." And I just As I As I was talking about before, it's just like this Groundhog Day of like, "I've seen this before." Or like that Back to the Future kind of meme where it's like, "I've seen this one before." Because

it's always the same thing. And it's just like over and over and over again. And I'm just like, "You know what, guys? Like, you don't have to be in just one camp." Like you can hold ETH, and you can hold these other assets. You can profit from them. And that's, you know, there's nothing wrong with that at all. But like, as I said, it's just always the same thing. There's always something new, something shiny. And I think I've been saying this for years for people to focus on. Meanwhile, Ethereum development continues like uninterrupted. Ethereum development is the most exciting thing happening in terms of development within crypto. It's just that because prices aren't going up, people aren't as excited about it, which just like to me is is kind of silly. It's like, you should be excited about it regardless.

But like, obviously, you know, most people are not in it for the tech. They're in it for number go Like most people wouldn't give a [ __ ] about like Hyperliquid if the price was going down, right? Or if the price was like was sitting sideways or doing nothing. Like that's just the nature of the game. And as I said before, that's the big reason why like I can't be bothered with stuff anymore is just because like I can't be bothered with the sentiment being so driven by price and being really It's really It becomes very hard to be excited about things when everyone's shilling on something. But like, I'm still super excited about the Ethereum developments. I'm still keeping on top of it as much as I can.

It's just that it's not worth me spending all my time in it anymore, right? So yeah, I always find that funny, you know, when I look at the the market and and and everyone's acting like like ETH is is going to, you know, going to zero or anything like that. Like I always just find that very, very funny. But yeah, outside of that, I think that when you look at like the ecosystem as a whole, like moving on from Ethereum development and looking at the ecosystem as a whole, and the state of the crypto industry, it's definitely matured a a right? Like the things that have matured a lot are the things actually have usage. A lot of it's just gone, you know, fallen off. Um Um, but it's moved past that experimental phase into the the mature phase, into the you need to be

onboarding customers, you need to be reaching new new people, you need to be reaching these institutions, and we've we've firmly moved into that. Um, but but what I find funny is that like there's two camps, and I and I've been saying this for years as well. Like this is nothing new, but there's like two camps within crypto. Uh, or I guess you could call it a barbell, and I I've used this analogy before, where you have centralization and decentralization on both both sides, and then you have like, you know, things that maybe kind of try to move you know, towards one side or the other. But but I've never really believed in like the the barbell lasting long-term. I've always believed in it basically sorry, that the middle of the barbell lasting long-term. I've always believed in just like the ends, the centralization decentralization. So, you're going to

have like centralized stuff that does well, like Hyperliquid is a perfect example of that, right? Hyperliquid, like I'm not trying to crap the [ __ ] on Hyperliquid or anything like that. It's it's a it's a it's a good platform, but it is not decentralized. Like anyone who calls it decentralized is delusional. It's not. It's not decentralized at all. It is centralized, but there's nothing wrong with that. Like I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. Um, because that's what it's doing, that's what that's what where it has found product market fit. It is basically like an on-chain centralized exchange, essentially, right? So, that's fine. That has product market fit. It's all well and good. Um, but then the other end of things you have, you know, decentralized, which is Ethereum, right?

But then anything that sits in the middle is just like there's no product market fit for that. Like I I've never thought there was product market fit for something that is like is you know, kind of centralized, kind of kind of decentralized, um, because you're always going to get beaten by the most centralized thing on the centralized side, and the most decentralized thing on the decentralized side, right? So, you're essentially fighting with like both arms arms behind your back while the your opponents have both of their hands and they're wielding lightsabers, right? Like you're You're you're you're fighting with a massive handicap, and you're not going to win that fight because you don't have the force.

>> [laughter] >> Like you don't have the force either. You're just in the you know, the worst of all worlds. So, from from that perspective, we've seen it. But you know, we've seen things balkanized. We've seen Hyperliquid succeed here on the centralization front, and they're just one example. There's other examples out there, of course. And then you've seen Ethereum succeed a lot on the decentralized front because no one is even trying to compete with that, right? Like none of the new L1s are trying to compete with that. None of the existing L1s are trying to compete with that. A lot of the existing L1s are just going to the wayside. You know, even even even kind of Solana has been completely outcompeted by Hyperliquid because Solana was all about speed and you know, doing perp dexes and and you know, trading at the speed of

light. But Hyperliquid beats them on that because the the best way to do that is to be centralized or to be an L2 because there's Lyra, which is a true ZK roll-up on Ethereum, a true L2, which has a functioning escape hatch and all of that. They're beating all of the other perp dexes on you know, on on these other general purpose chains that are trying to be decentralized but not really and you know, are more centralized. But the thing is is that you're either an L2 which can not have to worry about consensus, or you're an L1 that is just like totally centralized because that's just the way it works.

That's just physics, guys. Like that's just the the reality of the situation here. So, I think we've kind of seen that that happen. I think that's going to continue to happen. I think that the Overton window has shifted so much now that it's not about this whole industry being you know, having to be decentralized for things to get value. You can be centralized for things to have value. We've seen that time and time again. I think people have accepted that. But I think that from from that lens, I think decentralization is definitely undervalued, severely undervalued, and I think centralization is maybe fair fairly valued in terms of like this is a business. This is how we value these things. We value it based on the business in in of like the user base, the revenues, projected revenues, projected volumes, stuff like that. And

then decentralization is honestly harder to value. Like I think it's definitely um more of a story than based on not not so much a story, but more of like a a kind of like emergent property, an emergent narrative based on the principles of the thing. But yeah, I don't think that you you're going to have things sitting in the middle accruing value uh accruing long-term value going forward. I think you're going to have things sitting on centralization decentralization and that's where the value centers are going to be. And that I guess like uh brings it to to the logical conclusion of companies versus protocols. Because for all intents and purposes, the centralized things are companies, right?

They are managed like a company, they are built like a company, they are uh they are maintained like a company. And then on the other end, you have protocols like Ethereum, which are managed not as a company, but as a protocol, as a decentralized protocol, as a distributed network. Because the people who work on Ethereum upgrades are not all part of the same organization. They're not all part of the firm They're part of very you know, various different teams. The core dev teams, only one works under the Ethereum Foundation. Um that's the uh that's the Geth team. The rest of them are independent of the Ethereum Foundation. Yes, they may get some funding from the Ethereum Foundation, but they're not part of that organization. Uh researchers, a lot of them are definitely at the Ethereum Foundation, but more and more of them are at different organizations around.

Um and a lot of you know, some of them have have left the Ethereum Foundation and moved on to other other places here. So like Ethereum protocol is not managed like a company. It is a protocol, the Ethereum network protocol. But then the other side of things, the centralized things, they are managed like like companies. As they should be, right? If you're centralized, you why would you manage yourself as if you were decentralized? You're just adding up all this overhead adding on all this overhead to your development process and to your like um business development and marketing and all that for for no gain. So if you're centralized, embrace it, right? Embrace it and and work with it and get your product market fit. But if you're trying to be decentralized and you want to be decentralized then you have to give up on trying to be like a company. You

cannot be like that doesn't work. It doesn't gel. It doesn't it's not coherent to be like that. Um and I think that is goes back to what I guess like the EF mandate says where they essentially say, you know, the EF is not going to be run like a company. The EF is not going to be responsible for onboarding users to Ethereum. The EF is going to be responsible for upholding crops, censorship resistance, open source, permissionless, secure, uh you know, decentralized Ethereum and they're going to work towards that. They're going to work on upgrades. They're going to work on the research and development. They're going to work on all that sorts of stuff. The most company-esque thing they're going to do is probably run like the conferences, right? Devcon and Devconnect. Um which again are run in such a way that like uh uh it's it's not

pro for profit, right? It's a non-for-profit kind of thing. So, yeah, taking it all together, we're at this phase where I think that going forward it is all companies versus protocols. I think Ethereum has already won the protocol war. I think Ethereum will continue to win the protocol war. I don't think it's going to lose there at all. Uh decentralization doesn't even come close. Like no one comes close to Ethereum. Like it Ethereum is is in such of its own league that it can't even see its competitors, right? Whereas the centralized side of things, that's a lot more cutthroat, guys. Like maybe, you know, today on on like just to use an obvious example because this is what people are talking about today. On the perp deck side of things, today Hyperliquid is winning. Tomorrow it could be someone else. Like when you're a centralized company competing in that

space and competing on the end user front, you always got to be evolving. You always have to be continuously you know, innovating, continuously doing new things. Or you have to buy out your competitors, right? So, to to maintain that dominance is is very difficult. It's very cutthroat, especially in crypto. So, I think that the winners on the centralized side of things are not as certain long term. Whereas long term, I am completely certain that Ethereum has won the decentralization race, has won the protocol race, and nothing is going to be able to compete with it. What the value of that is is up to the market to decide. I don't know what the value of that is. I think the value of that is multiple tens of trillions of dollars for ETH as an asset, but I've always said that's a long-term thing.

I've always said that's a multi-decade play, and if you're not, you know, wanting to be around for that, that's fine. It's totally up to you. But, as I said before, you can buy ETH and you can buy other assets. I know that may be like a you know, a a a weird phenomenon to you guys. I know that may be like a revelation that you can buy other assets, but I've said this in terms of portfolio theory and portfolio construction, you can have your core ETH stack, you can have a core stack of other holdings that you are bullish on long-term, and then you can have your degen stack where you go and throw money at things that you know are like not going to be around long-term, but there's hype around it. There's there's a narrative around it, and you can go profit from that. Like, you don't

have to be all in on one asset, guys. Like, I just this is insane to me that some people think that you have you know, you can only be on one asset. Like, I I think that it just takes time for people to learn that you can do different things and to like break those chains cuz it feels like a you put yourself in a prison, right? You're like, "Oh, I'm stuck in this prison where I can only hold this one asset, and I just have to wait till it goes up, and then I can make money, and then I can just buy something else." It's like, "No, you can buy something else always." Like, I even from when day one of buying Ethereum in 2017, I held other assets. I bought ICOs. I held them. I flipped them for ETH, but like I had them for a

while. Then in DeFi summer, I had other assets, right? And now I have other assets. I have my core ETH stack that I've had forever. But, I own other crypto assets. I own stocks. I own property. I own other assets like other kind of like investable assets or other assets that aren't maybe investable. I don't just stick with with ETH, and I never have. Not because I'm not bullish on ETH, but because there's always going to be money to be made elsewhere, especially for things that are a market cap. ETH's market cap is $250 billion. If I'm buying a token with a $100 million market cap that I'm bullish on, that has a lot easier time of pumping than ETH, and it requires a lot less money to to pump, right? So, you've got to just think about it like that. But, yeah.

I think just quickly the last thing I wanted to touch on before I end today's episode was there was that kind of exploit with the r s ETH with the Kelp um kind of re-staked ETH thing that had like a massive fallout with Aave and everything. You've probably heard many people summarize it at this point, so I'm not going to rehash it here. But, one thing I wanted to focus on is what it did for ETH staking. So, because a lot of people don't understand risk when it comes to just crypto in general, I think a lot of people didn't understand the risk of holding LST or an LRT. And you can actually see this in the last 6 months or the last month even, the liquid staking protocols have had some pretty big outflows. So, Lido had

7% outflow over the last month. EtherFi had 24% because it was the closest thing I think to to Kelp in terms of like being in the same sphere here. So, it had 25% outflow or 24%. So, we're at a 7% outflow from Lido, 24% from from EtherFi. And then if you you you go down here, you can see that Rocket Pool had over the last 6 months 22% and then yeah, there's there's a bunch of smaller ones like Stakewise had 11% over the last month. Mantle had 27% over the last um over the last month.

Kelp DAO, I mean, like they were they were quite small. I don't know how the math is is done here, but they lost a lot as well, obviously. Stader, that's another one, lost a lot. But, the thing is the amount of ETH that is staked has got you know, gone down from 41 million to 39 million. So, it's come down about 2 million ETH. But, then it hasn't come down substantially because a lot of a lot of more ETH has been at stake. like uh Tom Lee has staked his ETH. Um you know, other big kind of stakers have put their ETH in, like Sharp Link and stuff like that. So, we've seen like a pretty big reshuffling here, but I think that you know, just generally when I look at this, I actually think that this is quite healthy still because you're getting more stake with other providers.

Like there's obviously the staked ETH ETF now, um and there's uh Tom Lee's managing the stake in-house, I believe. Sharp Link as well is doing their uh ETH staking there. So, the ETH staking environment has shifted quite dramatically here. But yeah, it just comes back to that risk where people didn't understand the risk of holding an LRT and an LST and all that, and and now they do. I think they they really do understand that uh it is quite uh risky to hold these things. Um and and you know, you for the APY that you get as well, you're probably not as compensated for it as you as you should be.

Um so so yeah, I just wanted to quickly touch on on that there. Uh before I end out today's episode, just wanted to recap what I said at the start of my kind of like personal journey there, and just set the expectation going forward. So, number one expectation going forward that I want to set is that the Refuel will come when it comes. Don't know when it's going to happen, don't know when the next episodes are going to be. It will happen when it happens, when I feel like doing one, probably around major things. Like I'll probably do one when, you know, next when there's like a major Glimpse to them update or something like that. I don't know. No promises there uh in terms of um in terms of like my involvement there. Uh in terms of like my guest appearances on other podcasts,

um I mean, I I you know, yesterday I'm sure you guys saw that Bankless has basically kind of exited their kind of uh not exited, sorry, like ended their era era one of Bankless. Ryan has kind of taken a massive step back. It's now, you know, David in the in the driver's seat. It's just going to be his show. But Bankless has like been, you know, very different for a while now. They've been doing different content for a while now. Um so, I don't think I'm going to be appearing on on Bankless anymore. If, you know, maybe maybe once in a while, but like I don't think so because they've moved on to different content that I have no view on. Like they're doing episodes on like Zcash and and and and and other stuff like that. And just like I'm just not involved in that, so

why would I go on to do that sorts of stuff? Um I may appear on like other podcasts for friends and stuff like that. You may see me around there. In terms of my Twitter involvement, I am just like not going to be tweeting much going forward. Uh really, I don't think so. Maybe I'll have some bursts where I'm like, "Yeah, I should tweet." But like just generally, I'm not going to be tweeting very much. Um uh there, in the Discord channel, I'm still quite active there, actually. I'm I'm more active than I thought I would be there. So, if you want to talk to me, you can talk to me in there. But I'm not going to get into long-winded debates with people. I'm not going to be sitting on in there every day and and you know, talking every day about things uh and

anything like that. I'm not even like really policing the channel rules anymore because I just don't have time for this stuff. I and I want to do other things with my time as well. Um and yeah, I'm still planning to launch the other YouTube channel that I wanted to launch to talk about my writing. Um and I may do videos on there because that's just like what I'm most interested in at the moment. Uh and I'm I'm very excited to like finish my my my book and actually get it out there so that you guys can read it. Still quite a while away, but um it's been fun. It's been a fun journey. It's been something fun for me to focus on uh and focus my energy uh there. But yeah, I guess like this is my way of saying like this is like a soft

exit for me from from from from things uh and and again, like I just want to thank everyone for being with me on the journey uh within Ethereum for quite a while now. Uh you know, you guys have always been awesome. I loved all the support that you guys have given me over the years. Uh it's been a journey, guys. It really has. From, you know, my days doing the Block by Block newsletter, if anyone remembers that, which became the EthHub kind of effort, and then that became Daily Gwei, and then that's what I've been doing for uh so long now. Um it's it's been a journey. It's been uh it's been great, but you know, everything kind of has its place.

Everything kind of ends eventually. Uh and I think my journey is is at its end, but that doesn't mean that Ethereum is at its end. Doesn't mean that that Ethereum is not going to continue and not going to continue to grow. It's going to continue to grow without me, and that's great. I'm happy for that. But, I'm on a different phase of my life. So, yeah, I guess like I'm going to see you guys when I see you in the next one cuz it's this is not like me totally stopping the the refuel or anything like that, but it is me kind of signing off for the time being. So, thank everyone for listening and watching. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet. Give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel, join Discord channel, and I'll catch you all next time. Thanks, everyone.