Or maybe it's just me feeling the cognitive dissonance in crypto is becoming too much to handle. We hype stuff up that isn't worth hyping, we put our chains' keys in other people's hands, and to top it off, now, without any of the goals of web3 reached, we want to let AI run the show? Feels bad man.

Story One

Ethereum 3.0 - poco sostenuto

Last week, the Ethereum ecosystem gathered for Devcon. While some complained about too many devs, most appeared rather content with a conference living up to its name. 

The agenda was stuffed with talks, but just a handful made their way to CT. Among them is Justin Drake's, an Ethereum researcher who teased his talk titled [redacted] as a major happening. I'll save you the hassle of watching it. 

In his presentation, Justin proposed to introduce significant changes to Ethereum's consensus layer (the layer responsible for staking). To do that, he suggested creating the beam chain and embedding updates that increase censorship resistance, decentralization, and add a spark of zk cryptography. After rigorous testing, this chain would then merge with the existing Ethereum. 

What's in it for me, you wonder? As an avid L2 heavy-user, probably not much except for knowing that the underlying L1 becomes more decentralized and less prone to sandwiching users. 

Nevertheless, degens quickly started calling this Ethereum 3.0. It isn't. It's just one proposal by one man, including only items already in the roadmap. Accelerating at best. 

Takeaway: The talk was overhyped; it's just already scheduled updates batched together. If you want to watch one Devcon talk with a better idea for Ethereum's L2 future, make it this one. 

Story Two

Degen L3 - furioso 

In a land far away from the Ethereum mainnet, the Degen L3 was fighting its own battles. For context, $DEGEN was launched as a token on Base and airdropped to early Farcaster users. With increased usage and awareness beyond that platform, the team launched its own Layer-3. A chain standing on even shakier grounds than an L2 with a 3/5 multi-sig controlling it. 

They enlisted Conduit, a Rollup-as-a-Service provider. If this sounds wrong to you, then you've got a good crypto intuition.😏

The Degen team learned the hard way that it wasn't. In a blog + X thread, they shared their frustrations publicly. At one point, the Degen bridge handled $200k in daily volume. However, after Conduit (allegedly) pushed a chain upgrade, 54 hours of downtime followed, losing users $160k. Not great. As a result bridging volume dropped, and the Degen team decided it was time to part ways. 

Of course, Conduit didn't just let those allegations seep in and were quick to post a response, stating they had never held the keys of Degenchain hostage and were more than happy to facilitate the migration...

Takeaway: The lesson is that if you want your own chain, just build it yourself. It might be hard, but at least any mess you're left with is of your own making. 

Story Three

Web4 - lamentoso 

Remember Web3? Yeah, that's apparently about to come to an end...

Enter Web4, the next iteration of the Web that's just around the corner if you're to believe Jeffy Hu. With AI here and bots launching their own memecoins for real, things will only accelerate. As Chatbots take over customer support from underpaid Indian phone operators, the world of Web 4 is blinding us all with the techno-optimist gaze. 

The idea for Web4 is that agents become increasingly autonomous, and they aren't just enhancing us; "they'll execute complex tasks, generate creative works, and innovate..."

Artificial intelligence will seep into any corner; nothing is safe. As AI agents run the show, they require crypto rails since that's the only way they can digitally natively transact. On top of that, only onchain data is readily accessible without GDPR violations. 

Web 3 walked so Web4 can run. 

Takeaway: I must admit, at the risk of being fairly contrarian in crypto with this, I find all this rather depressing. Is the enshittification of the online space with further coins and stuff no human could be bothered to write really that desirable? 

The most positive outlook I can come up with is: as agents do all the gambling and doomscrolling, maybe we can quit this toxic swamp and touch grass. 

Fact of the week: Speaking of dissonance, if you want to make a classical lover recoil, drag them into a performance of 12 Tone Music. Invented by Schoenberg in the early 20th century, the idea is that all 12 tones have equal weight, allowing music to be written with a strict formula rather than creative exuberance. The result, listen for yourself. Eventually, artists gave up this composition style. Yet, for me it remains a nice framework to apply to the writings of AI.

Naomi for CoinJar

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