Hesab selected Movement as its exclusive stablecoin settlement layer for cross-border flows. $160M in monthly volume. 1 million+ transactions per month. The corridors they serve run on informal cash networks with 2-5 day settlement and capital sitting idle in pre-funded float. Movement provides access to licensed rails across the US, Canada, and the EU. Same remittance, cleared in real-time.

Live at 12:15 PM ET / 9:15 AM PT. Today's lineup: - @Zachawalsh, @hifiHQ - @CaddleMaya, @SolanaFndn - @gizmothegizzer, @perena - @torabyou, @movement_xyz The Custody Debate - @nassyweazy, @Bastion - @SimkinStepan, @altitude / @multisig nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1pJkOXLDW…

Today at 4:21 UTC Payy’s bridge contract on Ethereum was exploited and drained of its full balance. Investigation is ongoing and we are following incident response guidelines. While we investigate, all Payy Network transactions are paused including deposits, withdrawals, transfers and card transactions. We will continue to communicate updates here.

Probably half of the crypto founders I've been speaking to in the past few months are pivoting to building in other industries. The pivots are mostly to AI, but some defense/fintech as well. Among investors, there's this preconceived notion that pivoting is bad because startups should stick to the industry they have experience in. And since many founders get their advice from "experienced" investors, they feel guilty for thinking about a pivot, or worse, continue building something that's not working only because it's the safe thing to do. My POV is pivoting can be very good and way less risky than continuing to work on a product with little PMF. Smart founders can learn new industries quickly, especially if the industries are still emergent (there are few best practices + vendor lock-in isn't real yet). Relatedly, I'm seeing certain crypto founders take their experience outside of crypto -- and succeeding massively. OpenRouter is the most recent example (the product inspiration came from crypto wallets), but I suspect we'll see a lot more of this in the coming years. Crypto has many interesting product primitives like zk, exchange design/order routing, distributed systems, and intangible assets (e.g., NFTs), just to name a few, that arm founders with unique toolkit in a new design space. This all isn't to say crypto is going bust -- it's here to stay. Rather, it feels very additive to see the same network of people expand the scope of crypto beyond just crypto.

If you are not moat maxxing you will eventually be one shotted by someone with 100x your distribution

Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

Erebor wants to be the first US bank in markets reopening to the global financial system. Venezuela first, now Syria. Basically: take geopolitical + compliance risk that big banks won’t, and become the financial bridge before others show up. theinformation.com/articles/…

Which exchanges have your tokens? Which work in your country? What are the fees? New on DefiLlama: Find My Exchange 50+ exchanges compared on costs, slippage, liquidity & volume. Advanced filters, token finder, and detailed per-exchange pages. defillama.com/exchanges

big boy made a dashboard

Every Monday and Thursday I go to the deli and order The Muscle man. It’s effectively a turkey melt with some extra bullshit. I like it. The first time I ordered it the elderly Filipino behind the counter goes “muscle man sandwich for big muscle man” and slapped his bicep. We both laugh. He did it the next time. And the next. It became our thing. This morning some asshole ahead of me ordered The Muscle Man. Wouldn’t you know it, the elderly Filipino behind the counter goes “muscle man sandwich for big muscle man.” They both laughed. I felt nauseous and raped. Is this what everything in life is like?

I'm sad to report that the AA collab between 8130 and 8141 (Frames) broke down last week, and Base and Ethereum are now going separate ways to implement different AA standards. I want to share some reflections on this collab and on the future of the EVM. For a long time, the EVM has been a unifying force between L1 and L2s. Thanks to a standard account model (EOA) and a standard transaction type (EIP-1559), users have been able to enjoy their wallets working seamlessly across EVM chains. Similarly, a AA standard shared across L1 and L2s would ensure a consistent multi-chain UX for smart accounts, including post-quantum (PQ) accounts which we will eventually all use. As the crypto industry matures, however, L1 and L2s are starting to diverge in the values they provide and the use cases they target: - For the L1, it's all about CROPS -- censorship-and-capture resistance, open source, privacy, and security. In short, Ethereum L1 wants to be the most decentralized programmable settlement layer of the world, which is what makes it a good base layer for L2s in the first place. - For L2s, it's all about scaling, customization, and compliance -- things that commercial and enterprise use cases demand, and that the L1 does not provide. These diverging needs have pushed the shared layer -- the EVM -- to its limit, and AA proved to be the breaking point. While L1 and L2s both value core AA use cases such as gasless transactions and passkey wallets, they differ sharply in what these features must comply with: - For the L1, AA transactions must be uncensorable, private, and quantum-resistant, which call for a transaction type optimized for PQ signature aggregation and privacy protocols, and an account model that can be freely programmed and extended by developers without permissions from the chain. These needs lead to AA standards such as ERC-4337, EIP-7701, and now EIP-8141 aka Frame Transactions. - For L2s, AA transactions must work at high scale, and they must be legible such that the protocol can enforce clear rules about what kinds of accounts/transactions are permitted vs not. These needs lead to AA standards such as Tempo Transactions and now EIP-8130 by Base. With the AA collab, the authors of 8130 and 8141 tried to define a shared standard that can work for both L1 and L2s. While we identified a number of technical solutions, they all required one side or the other to compromise at least a little bit on their core goals. But ultimately, Ethereum wanted to be the best version of Ethereum, and Base wanted to be the best version of Base, and while both sides acknowledged the benefits of ecosystem interoperability, it was ultimately secondary to the need for each chain to achieve their core goals. So separate ways we went, putting the burden on wallets to deal with the fragmentation that ensues. Now, just because we ended up with fragmentation doesn't necessarily mean it was a bad outcome. If reducing fragmentation comes at the cost of homogenizing chains to the point that they fail to solve problems for the users they care about, that would not be a price worth paying. While I was initially sad that the collab did not come to a successful conclusion, I took solace in the fact that both Ethereum and Base are now free to innovate on AA to the maximal extent in accordance with their own visions, unshackled from the need to accommodate the other side. If they execute well, and if the wallet community can bridge over the fragmentation, we may well end up with the best possible UX for the end users. So where does that leave us -- the broader Ethereum community including Ethlabs -- if we want to continue pushing for a consistent UX across EVM chains? I see two paths forward: - We can establish a coordination mechanism that encompasses more stakeholders than ACD itself (where only L1 client devs have voting powers), to govern shared L1<>L2 resources such as the EVM. That way, L2s can participate in shaping the EVM, as opposed to having to accept whatever the ACD decides, or being forced to fork if they don't like the decision (such as in this case with Base). - We can accept that fragmentation of the EVM and wallet UX across L1 and L2s is inevitable due to their conflicting needs, and dedicate our resources to building wallets and applications that can abstract over the differences. Indeed, the collab was an exercise in the first path -- we invited Base, Arbitrum, and other stakeholders to directly influence how native AA shapes up for the L1. While it ultimately failed in this case, I feel a better outcome could've been achieved if we had established a dialog between both sides way earlier, as opposed to well after L1 core devs had rallied around Frames. On the other hand, I also learned from this exercise that some differences are unavoidable, and indeed it would be counterproductive to overly pursue interoperability at the cost of differentiation. In other words, we sometimes just gotta let the chains cook. For that reason, I've also become more bullish about the second path -- building wallets and applications that can speak the native transaction types of each chain, and hide the complexity from users through UX abstractions. This puts a lot of onus on the wallet/application developers of course, but on the bright side, it's also an opportunity for wallets/applications to stand out and differentiate, by competing to provide great UX across chains despite the underlying fragmentation. Ethereum is the art of staying together while remaining different. We must accept that chains will succeed by innovating, and innovations will naturally result in differences. On the other hand, we must never give up on dialogue when we can achieve interoperability without compromising core product goals. As Ethereum and crypto grow to eat the world, the push and pull between innovation and collaboration will only intensify, and it's up to all of us -- builders across L1 and L2s, applications and wallets -- to determine whether diverse innovations will split Ethereum apart, or make it thrive as one.