A new visual series about reclaiming human expression, by Patternbase and Takens Theorem — Our information space, already saturated, now grows in tidal waves of content from artificial neural networks. De-Automated expresses the desire many of us have to go in reverse. To reclaim artifacts of our digital environment back into ones that echo the presence of fellow minds. …

Forthcoming mainnet upgrades suggest a future of incentivized data preservation and a shared responsibility to encode the past — Ethereum’s core devs are already approaching another major upgrade to mainnet. This upgrade will center on Ethereum Improvement Proposal #4844 (EIP-4844). They’ve designated a new portmanteau, “Dencun,” to refer to this upgrade (combining “Deneb” and “Cancun,” for updates to the consensus and execution layers, respectively).

The Beacon chain, the backbone of Ethereum’s move to proof of stake, went live in late 2020. Interested participants could deposit ETH into the Eth2 deposit contract, enabling them to participate as validators in the Beacon chain, which fused with mainnet in the celebrated Merge in late 2022. A few…

A few weeks ago, three crypto-serving banks faced major liquidity crises amidst a bank run. These banks were shuttered, and some rather scandalous hypotheses swirl around these events. Something else interesting happened on chain, too: This fiasco impacted the peg of both USDC and DAI. Because USDC was significantly banked…

Experimental visual with an interactive component, with 100% of proceeds to “Ahbap Yardım / Earthquake Support” Ethereum contract — I pushed release of a new project, an experimental, interactive project. I was planning to invest a bit more time finalizing some aesthetic and technical plans for it. But the reason for releasing it sooner is to have it support Turkey-Syria disaster relief. Using Manifold’s tools, I’m releasing a time-limited…

A visualization technique on public blockchain data yields an intriguing contrast when applied to FTX vs. Binance and more — Public blockchain offers a rich source of data. Anyone in the world can access and analyze the data for many purposes. One exciting aspect of this blockchain data is devising new analyses and visualizations to study blockchain itself. Coin Metrics recently illustrated this in a State of the Network article…

Code on distributed systems may live long into the future, etchings on a ledger, similarly revealing our human tendencies — Intrigue of the Ancients The earliest contracts in human history may be from thousands of years ago, in ancient Mesopotamia. Here’s an example of a real-estate transaction containing many familiar ideas: Sini-Ishtar, the son of Ilu-eribu, and Apil-Ili, his brother, have bought one third Shar of land with a house constructed, next the house…

Quick Look at Miners and Validators Crossing The Merge — Consensus is the backbone of crypto. And so, not surprisingly, it is a topic of much discussion and debate. Ethereum after The Merge is no exception: There is concern that proof-of-stake (PoS) validators have become too concentrated in the hands of a few, and that some are censoring transactions. This…

This series of visualizations depicts data from the perspective of an observer who is embedded in some way in that data. The tokens are both inspired by and part of the “New Home of the Heart” curated collection to commemorate The Merge and its developers and contributors. Often data is…