FIT21 passes, all about chains, the hard things about…
FIT21 passes, all about chains, the hard things about…
🗞️🗳️News & updates: An important milestone for the crypto industry, and for U.S. innovation
The House of Representatives made history yesterday when it passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) — notably, it showed that protecting blockchain technology in the U.S. has strong bipartisan support.
We covered this bill — and why it matters for the crypto industry and beyond — in our last edition of this newsletter. But in short: The bill is an important step in providing long-awaited regulatory clarity for crypto, protecting U.S. consumers, and promoting American innovation. It’s also a big step for holding bad actors accountable, which is good for everyone.
There’s more work to be done as the bill moves to the Senate, so we ask you and your networks to continue reaching out to your senators and sharing your voice on social media and elsewhere. For more on how to support, go here or call your senator.
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plus: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also approved listings for eight spot Ethereum ETPs (exchange-traded products) on Thursday. The decision helps ensure a pathway remains open and safe for blockchain-based projects to develop in the U.S. (The S-1 registration statements for the spot products still need to be declared effective, so trading has not yet begun.)
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🔗 🔧Special feature: Chains, chains everywhere, and going onchain
with Eddy Lazzarin, Guy Wuollet, Jesse Pollak, Jing Wang, Noah Citron, Robert Hackett, Sonal Chokshi
"Layer 2” rollups are computer networks that are designed to help scale “layer 1” blockchains such as Ethereum — and they've been bustling with activity recently, especially since Ethereum implemented its scaling-related "Dencun" upgrade in March. From deploying one’s own L2 to building decentralized apps (dApps) on top of an existing one, going onchain is like going online (as some have phrased it) — in terms of helping more people build and use blockchain-enabled applications.
So in this pair of recent podcast episodes, we feature Coinbase engineer and head of protocols Jesse Pollak, who created Base; and engineer and blockchain developer Jing Wang, cofounder of Optimism and CEO and executive director of Optimism Foundation.
The two episodes cover broader themes — bottom-up vs. top-down innovation; open source incentives, processes, and challenges; business models; software development roadmaps — as well as themes specific to building an onchain economy and a composable, unified network of blockchains that can support internet-level activity.
listen to ‘Layer 2, rollups, and building onchain (with Base)’
Iisten to ‘Open sourcing the superchain (with Optimism)’
share: Base pod | Optimism pod
related videos:
also check out:
🎧 Chain choices: Or, how to decide what blockchain to build on — "Which blockchain should I build in?" Is a very top of mind question for builders in web3, but also relevant to anyone interested in tech innovation and the evolution of infrastructure. So how does one decide among all the chain choices out there, particularly given how fast-moving the crypto and web3 space is? We sketch out the landscape, why it matters, tradeoffs; and then address common questions, a framework for deciding, different technical specs, and other factors such as community, marketing & ecosystem support, security, custody, programming languages, and more.
🛠️ 🔬Trend guidance: 8 reasons why blockchain mechanism design is hard
by Tim Roughgarden
The field of mechanism design goes back more than 60 years, but its tools and lessons have been especially useful in auction theory, market design, social choice theory, and now, blockchains/ crypto/ web3.
As opposed to game theory — which establishes the dimensions of a strategic interaction and then explores the most behaviorally plausible outcomes — the field of mechanism design begins not with the game, but with a desired outcome. Mechanism design aims to reverse-engineer a game of some form so that this desired outcome is an equilibrium.
Opportunities to apply mechanism design abound in web3, but the unique constraints of permissionless blockchains often forces a rethinking from first principles. Such challenges include no centralized trusted party, risks of collusion, inability to rely on rule of law, technical constraints, and much more. It’s an immature and still evolving space, which presents both challenges… and also represents a unique opportunity for mechanism designers, researchers, and other builders.
read the post/ see the list here
…pizza party
-- Robert Hackett, Sonal Chokshi, Tim Sullivan, & the a16z crypto team
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