Chief Strategy Officer @ADI_Foundation | Writing Enterprise Onchain. Previous: EF, Founder (2 exits, 1 flop).
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What happens when your digital ID is switched off? I care more about that than the privacy side (which I also care about)
My kid lost my Emirates ID. In the UAE, that single card gives you access to banking, telecom, healthcare, tenancy contract, and government portals etc. When I lost it, signing up to services was virtually impossible - to be fair its my fault and they did deliver a new one in 48 hours - which is pretty amazing service.
Built properly, digital ID has clear utility. Selective disclosure lets you prove you are over 18 without handing over your home address, date of birth, or document number.
The best digital identity systems actually let you identify yourself less.
The structural danger arrives when identity converts into universal permission. A status attached to your profile decides whether the next door opens.
In India, Aadhaar rolled out to streamline welfare distribution. An investigation by the Right to Food campaign found 57 starvation deaths since 2015, with at least 19 tied directly to biometric failure.
In China during Covid, the color of your Health Code decided whether you could enter a supermarket, board a train, or go to work. A turn to yellow or red erased your mobility overnight.
In the UK, a 2025 proposal requiring a digital ID to work was cancelled after public backlash. The proposed fallback was a passport, yet 5.2% of the working-age population in England and Wales, and 17.7% in Scotland, do not have one.
You cannot issue me another palm 😅
So good architecture refuses the transaction, not the person.
'What Happens When Your Digital ID Is Switched Off?', publishes tomorrow on Enterprise Onchain. (news.enterpriseonchain.com)
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Finally got my X account back (was hacked, even with 2FA).
Left the Ethereum Foundation after nearly five years.
Moved to Abu Dhabi as Chief Strategy Officer at ADI Foundation. Focus is on stablecoins, RWAs, and digital ID across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Back to writing Enterprise Onchain and new article drops on Sunday.
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James S retweeted
This is an incredible chart. This is the changing face of crypto.
From August 2021 through 2023, blockchains captured 90%+ of monthly crypto revenue.
By mid-2026, that share dropped to 25%.
The new breakdown:
🔸 Finance apps: exceeded 50% in most months
🔸 Consumer apps: steady meaningful share
🔸 Blockchains: down to ~25%
🔸 Physical and crypto infrastructure: rounding errors
The economic center of crypto moved from the base layer to the apps running on it.
Early cycles were infrastructure-focused because infrastructure was the only place value could accrue.
Users paid L1 gas fees because there was nowhere else for the money to go. Ethereum's high fees, Solana's spikes, Bitcoin's security budget drove revenue.
As blockchains became cheaper, more scalable, and more reliable, apps could finally support real users and capture their own revenue streams.
Finance apps (perp DEXs, lending protocols, stablecoin issuers, trading tools) earn fees from trading volume, not just gas.
Consumer apps (memecoin launchpads, wallets, social tools) turn engagement into sustained revenue as they find market fit.
The internet followed the same arc.
In the 1990s, ISPs and backbone providers made the money. By the 2010s, applications and platforms captured most of the value.
Crypto is following that path, faster and with full transparency because everything settles onchain.
You can't value L1s solely on the claim that they capture all fees anymore.
App-layer protocols have proven that lean teams can generate hundreds of millions in revenue across:
🔸 @HyperliquidX -style derivatives platforms
🔸 @Pumpfun -style consumer platforms
🔸 The wider DeFi stack
These products now capture economic surplus that once flowed almost entirely to validators and miners.
That diversification is healthy. Crypto no longer depends on one revenue source or one narrative.
The infra succeeded, which is why its revenue share fell. Finance and consumer apps now generate the majority.
That's where the next decade of value compounds.
h/t: @Blockworks
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Ethereum whole energy footprint is less than famous landmarks such as the British Museum.
The result is 'Ethereum after the Merge – A Change in Power', out today from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Cambridge Judge Business School at Cambridge Judge Business School – direct wall-plug measurements across 20 client configurations and two hardware profiles, and a far sharper picture of the network itself.
📊 Read the full report: lnkd.in/ejWZuUtJ
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I followed $100 through OUSD. (the new stablecoin on the block.)
TLDR: The coin won't circulate, because every one of its 140 backers is paid to stop it moving off their platform.
Read the full article here:
news.enterpriseonchain.com/p…
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James S retweeted
This week, @OpenStandard launched as a consortium of 140+ companies across 25+ countries.
Months ago, @Snapcrackle already called it. The consortium model wins against single issuers due to no single points of failure.
🎥 @Snapcrackle from @EnterOnchain explains at Bluechip25.
The stablecoin race doesn't depend on better technology. It depends on better "compliance liability architecture."
Who can comply with multiple regulators at once, especially when they disagree with each other?
🎥 @Snapcrackle from @EnterOnchain explains at Bluechip25.
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James S retweeted
🧵 Ethereum is preparing its biggest upgrade since The Merge.
It’s called Glamsterdam.
And it changes three things that affect anyone using Ethereum, even if they don’t notice. A thread with examples:
(1/5)
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James S retweeted
Announcing Ethlabs: a non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum and ETH
Our mission is to make Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy.
The internet became global because shared protocols created a common language between networks. Private systems remained useful, but bounded. Finance is approaching a similar moment. As value, assets, and markets become digital, the world needs shared settlement infrastructure.
Ethereum is uniquely positioned to become that shared base layer, the neutral foundation on which users, institutions, and agents can transact without intermediation.
What we believe:
• We believe credible neutrality matters. Ten years of uptime and the lowest counterparty risk. Ground that cannot be pulled away by any one country, institution, company, or person.
• We believe ETH matters. The most valuable, programmable store of value. A decade of broad distribution, deep liquidity in onchain markets, and maximally trustless asset on Ethereum.
• We believe DeFi matters. Markets, liquidity, credit, exchange, and coordination, open to anyone.
• We believe adoption matters. Principles do not change the world until people benefit from them.
We sit between two worlds: real usage from the builders at the frontier, and the protocol that has to support it. We work with users, applications, wallets, L2s, infrastructure teams, institutions, ETH holders, core devs and researchers, then turn what they actually need into protocol work, shared standards, infrastructure, and shipped products.
Ethlabs is independent but Ethereum is a shared project. We are one node in a much larger network of stewards. This is the multi-node future.
We have spent the better part of the past decade contributing to Ethereum core research and development.
We are opinionated and transparent. We move with urgency, learn in public, and course-correct when we’re wrong.
We are building a lean, talent-dense team for people who want to do the most important work of their careers: join@ethlabs.org
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James S retweeted
No win for the Netherlands unfortunately but cool to see @ADIChain_ 's prediction market active at the world cup!
Ethereum Everywhere
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getting on a plane to eat an enormous amount of bagels. while i'm there: ethconf. who's around?
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James S retweeted
1/ The EF App Relations team is putting out an open RFP for a neutral DeFi risk intelligence aggregator.
Public good, open source, no composite scoring. If you're the team to build this, applications close June 15.
Apply here: esp.ethereum.foundation/appl…
Here's how we got here 👇
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James S retweeted
Good take on CLARITY Act
@medium
“Why the CLARITY Act Quietly Makes Ethereum the Biggest Winner in Crypto” medium.com/@adriano.feria/wh…
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James S retweeted
The market cap of tokenized U.S. Treasuries on @ethereum is at an ATH of ~$8 billion, up ~100% over the past six months.
Key drivers of growth: BUIDL (Securitize), JTRSY (Centrifuge), iBENJI (Franklin Templeton), WTGXX (WisdomTree), USDY (Ondo Finance), and USTB (Superstate).
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