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Your Sunday-bite:

• Ethereum makes its comeback – The Foundation has new leadership with a laser focus on scaling L1, scaling blobs, and improving UX. Dankrad Feist even proposed scaling Ethereum L1 by 100x over the next 4 years.

• Worldcoin finds unlikely product-market fit – Tinder is now using WorldID to verify users are real humans, potentially spreading across all of Match Group's 16 dating apps. Dystopian orb, meet dating apps.

• w3.labs validator demo incoming – I spent my entire Friday recording that tutorial you've all been asking for. The ridiculously simple UI for staking will land in your inbox tomorrow.

• Berlin Blockchain Week taking over June – Our calendar is filling up with events, and our beautiful new w3.hub website is live. Subscribe to our BBW calendar to stay updated.

GM.

Prices go up, so… We're back, I guess? And just in time. Berlin Blockchain Week is around the corner. And since this newsletter isn't just me throwing random headlines at you, but actually sharing the stuff I'm dealing with in my day-to-day, we can't really skip over Berlin Blockchain Week. And I know you're into it - I see exactly where you're clicking the most.

I got you cc’d, so let’s dive into it:

I spent my entire Friday playing around with our w3.labs validators and recording that demo you've all been asking for - ahem - at least that's what I tell myself.

More details about our w3.labs platform and the ridiculously simple UI for staking through our website will land in your inbox on Monday (aka tomorrow).

That's when you'll get to witness my glorious demo that has me wondering if being a presenter might have been my calling in some parallel universe.

Also, big news:

Ethereum is back

The Ethereum Foundation has a new leadership team (you can meet them in a recent Bankless podcast) with a laser focus on three priorities: scaling the layer 1, scaling blobs, and improving UX. Some call it a "pivot," others a "strategic reprioritization."

Dankrad Feist (Ethereum Researcher) proposed scaling the Ethereum L1 by 100x over the next 4 years, arguing that "the current way of doing things is likely to make Ethereum irrelevant over the next 5 to 10 years."

The Pectra upgrade just went live, improving data availability and developer tools as part of Ethereum's proto-danksharding roadmap.

What's fascinating is watching Ethereum evolve from ideology to product. While Bitcoin positions itself as digital gold (with the Trump administration calling it a "space race" to accumulate), Ethereum is becoming the productive financial infrastructure layer people actually use.

Worldcoin is also back and they brought a new use case

World ID as proof of humanity sounds super boring, but this is exactly what we signed up for. I've been full-time in this space since early 2021. I haven't seen as much as those "I bought Bitcoin in 2015" OGs, but I've been focused on consumer applications from day one because I wanted to change the world (lol. dream big).

Well, now Sam Altman is (again) changing the world with his matchmaking Tinder x World ID integration. You might laugh at this, but I've recently read an interesting quote on this:

"The more 'boring' a form of crypto adoption is, the more likely it is to actually happen."

It's not going to be some flashy game or social app that onboards the world - it's existing Web2 apps quietly moving onchain without users even knowing it.

Tinder is now using WorldID (Worldcoin's iris scanning tech) to verify users are real humans. This could spread across all of Match Group's 16 dating apps (including Hinge, PlentyOfFish, and OkCupid). Considering about 50% of adults under 30 use dating apps, we're looking at potential mass adoption of blockchain tech happening right under our noses.

The dystopian eyeball-scanning orb is finding its product-market fit in... making sure your Hinge date isn't an AI bot. Not what we expected, but maybe exactly what we needed?

Quick Hits

• Tether just announced "Tether AI" - because why not jump on the AI bandwagon when you're sitting on billions in reserves?

• Coinbase quietly launched Base Payments, essentially rewriting the internet's payment layer with onchain infrastructure

• Google Wallet is now rolling out age and identity verification features - another tech giant slowly entering our territory

• Robinhood is planning to build a blockchain to let Europeans trade US assets - the TradFi to crypto pipeline continues

Ok, the title is a bit misleading - the real event managers are Dongsinne and Nate - but our entire team will need to make a significant contribution to fully leverage the month of June.

I wrote in a previous LinkedIn post about how frequently I'm on stage these days and how much it has helped me build my personal brand. This is an opportunity I want some of you to have too.

Our calendar is filling up with more and more events, and I don't care if you find it annoying, I'm going to mention it in every single issue (so none of you can say at the end that you didn't know something. This is exactly why cc'd exists).

New events are being added weekly, so it's worth not just checking our BBW event calendar once, but actually subscribing to it so you don't miss any updates.

Oh and by the way, our new w3.hub website is live and I know self-praise stinks but people it is so beautiful, I look at it every day. And you should too.

That’s it.

See you next week 💅🏽

And while we're at it:

I'm on LinkedIn.

I'm on X.

Always here at w3.hub.

Active in the w3.group. Follow on LinkedIn to keep up with our projects.