Reflection

Special thanks to 0xRahul for feedback and review. Preamble: In early 2016, Ethereum was my gateway into the crypto industry. From late 2021 through early 2026, I worked in the industry full-time. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. More recently, I’ve had a handful of conversations where people asked me: “So after all these years, what do you think?” This post aims to capture my journey, the opinions I formed along the way, the tradeoffs of having a blockchain, and where I believe value will accrue in the industry moving forward. ...

Over the last few years, I’ve been looking for analogies for the variability of life in the world around us. Some parts of life have four recurring seasons. Some are standalone films. Some are like a mini-series. Overall, it’s like a train that starts and stops, with varying passengers staying on for different lengths of time. The last 2–3 months haven’t been easy. They felt like an unexpected storm that only comes around once a century. I’ll write about the details in a separate post, but this one is meant to be a meta-reflection. ...

Things you underappreciate if you join a project that has passed the zero-to-one stage: Leverage Distribution Marketing

If you’re looking for inspiration, read. If you’re looking for clarity, write. If you’re looking for perspective, listen. If you’re looking for connection, speak.

TL;DR: Everything I’ve worked on in the last decade comes back to one thing: incentives. I didn’t plan it that way. I just keep ending up there. The Thread Charlie Munger said it best: “Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” I’ve quoted this for years. But recently, I realized it’s not just a quote I like. It’s the lens through which I see everything. ...

In 2014, Alan Kay was a guest lecturer in my programming languages class at the University of Toronto. I thought it was cool, but I definitely did not appreciate it as much as I should have. To this day, one of his infamous quotes still resonates with me: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” A Pattern I Can’t Ignore With the new year, I’ve been reflecting on my career up until this point. ...

I’ve seen dozens of crypto projects fail. I’ve seen a handful of crypto companies succeed. To succeed, many hard things must align. To fail, only one key thing needs to go wrong. After nearly a decade in this space, one pattern repeats itself: the fastest path to failure is biasing toward idealism over pragmatism. I joined the industry for its ideals. It took years - and a few hard lessons - to unlearn them. ...

A Read Through On Venting I have a close friend to whom I vent every once in a while. He recently shared a post he wrote called On Venting. I immediately understood why he responds to all of my non-venting messages and pretends as if the vents never happened: When folks interact with me, I often skip past the emotional complaints. I like to think I do the following, but it’s probably only true half the time—at best: ...

Founders create problems. Operators solve them. I’ve met a lot of executives and CTOs who resonate with two things: They like to solve puzzles. They like to be given an end goal and just make it happen. The job of a founder is to identify opportunities (i.e. problems), set a vision for what a solution looks like, and build a team that’s enabled to get there. That idea, of course, comes with plenty of qualifiers and caveats. It simply defines a founder’s end goal, not their day-to-day. ...