Writing is hard and takes time, but the rewards can be immense.

The demand for good writing exceeds supply, and we live in a special time where billions of people can instantly read what you write.

One of the most exciting developments in consensus protocols in 2022 has been the recent advances in DAG-based consensus. a16z crypto recently hosted three excellent research seminars on this topic, video links👇

Recently mattgleason.eth and I cracked the IAmTheOptimizor challenge by 0xBeans.eth. We've released a blog post detailing the challenge, our solution, and an informal proof that we can't be beat (for now).

Check it out here:
a16zcrypto.com/winning-the-ia…

Play OPCraft bit.ly/3VCVYyt Lattice Optimism (✨🔴_🔴✨)

🎉🤳🌞🚴🎖🚂🐪🔌🎐🚯🎦🔋🎢📵🔫🐂🎢🔙🌓🐇👞🔆🏛🐆🎱🥅🍠🔸👚📵💟🈹🎉🔆🔠🔵🎌🤠💩🐲🎌🤐🌒🔋🎭🚲👞🈳👝🚏📫🌭🎭🙏📞🌩🎭🚏🎦🈷🎛🛡🌟🔈🎑🔙👪🌮👝🤐🐩🔊🎉🔆🌒🛹🎥🛡🔫🚴🎉🔹🎖🐅🎡🚿💩🐵🎱🚟🌒🔊🎌🤐👞🌬👩🚢🌔🐳🎉🔙🍕🈶🎍📲☕☕

I spent some time last spring contemplating the utopian fantasy of how to build a quiet electric leaf blower.

After making a few prototypes, I now believe that another world is possible.

A world where the leaf blower's shrill whine has been transformed into a gentle whoosh.

Crypto Startup School is back!

A video from Andrew Lewis-Pye providing a tutorial on DAG-based consensus.

Andrew starts with the very basics and then gets more complicated and formal.

He also evaluates state-of-the-art protocols like Cordial Miners, DAG-Rider, and Bullshark.

youtube.com/watch?v=v7h2rX…

Happy to announce that the HyperPlonk paper is online! It moves Plonk to the boolean hypercube which removes the need for using FFTs and makes Plonk linear-time and eases parallelization. It also enables high-degree custom gates. CC: Binyi Chen zhenfei 📜 Dan Boneh

Non-custodial != full control of keys.

Nass - nassyweazy.eth and I break down the not so obvious trust assumptions, tradeoffs, and best practices for wallet security: a16zcrypto.com/wallet-securit…

At a16z crypto research, we're looking for interns for summer '23! Our lab is an amazing environment both for fundamental research and for close collaborations with the best web3 startups. Learn more and apply here (ideally by Nov 15): a16z.com/about/jobs/?gh…

If anyone ever doubts the magic of the American Experiment, spend some time with a Miami Uber driver who will wax rhapsodically about how the United States, and Miami in particular, is the finest corner on God’s green Earth.

Scaling quality on Farcaster

2/ It involved building our own blocks to set the block.coinbase to make pulling arbitrary values cheaper. For information on the specifics, check out ncitron.eth's explanation.

4/ Then I found this beauty. It does everything the same as Riley Holterhus's but takes advantage of some shrewd memory placement and another previously unexplored value, gas price. For reasons I'll cover later, this is likely to be the most optimal solution possible.

The challenge that launched a thousand lines of code and created one of the strangest looking blocks in Ethereum's history.

mattgleason.eth and I cracked the IAmTheOptimizer challenge, here's how we did it.

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