On my way home from my 11th Financial Cryptography (
fc26.ifca.ai).
It is still one of the best conferences for cryptocurrencies.
There are a few things that stood out for me:
- DeFi and financial engineering is at all time high,
- Consensus moving towards weaker Byzantine assumptions in favour of scale,
- AI has changed the workflow for all researchers, especially
@claudeai
- Lightning/Bitcoin is mostly absent, replaced by various networks like ETH, SUI, XRP, Cardano, AVA and even Solana.
It was nice to see
@ittayeyal and
@el33th4xor’s selfish mining paper win the test of time award.
Very well deserved, especially given the many doubters (both in industry and academia) when the work first came out.
Most importantly, there is a whole new generation of researchers, bright eyed and super excited for the future of cryptocurrency.
There are MANY of them.
Research magic, energy and vibes is still there.
I am thankful to witness it first hand and hope it continues for the longest time! 😊