We are continuing our work on building the cultural layer around live entertainment. Last week, RaveDAO co-hosted the first-ever Lisbon Dance Summit, bringing artists, producers, media, cultural leaders, and builders together to explore where electronic music goes next. The first edition brought together 100 speakers, 30 panels, 12 workshops, and 600+ guests from 35+ countries, across a 3-day conference and a 5-day city-wide festival with 30 parties and events in Lisbon. From Lisbon to Berlin, Amsterdam, Asia, and beyond, the conversation was clear: dance music is no longer just moving through clubs and festivals. It is moving through cities, communities, technology, identity, and new cultural rails. That is exactly where RaveDAO belongs. Not just throwing events. Building the space where real people, real scenes, and new onchain rails meet. Where culture can be felt in real life and carried forward onchain. Lisbon was a signal. The rave goes on.

Spencer Pratt on LA’s drastic NGO problem: “They will take $100M and steal it right in your face.” David Friedberg: “Can you explain what goes on with these NGOs? Like, how do NGOs create a system that the more we spend, and in the last 10 years, the City of Los Angeles, I think, has increased homeless spending by 10X, and the homeless population has doubled, and clearly it's gotten a lot worse. What's the role that the NGOs actually play in this?” Spencer Pratt: “First off, when you said homeless is 2x, homeless is 200x. When Mayor Bass in the debate was like, “It's down 17%,” these are the most cooked numbers. Even the RAND Corporation says it's a 30% increase. But they just drive around and they go, “One, two, three, four, five, six.” They're not going in under these encampments, and bridges, and bushes, and unzipping these tents, and going into the sewers. So we don't even know the count. But let me tell you my first experience with NGOs. After the Palisades fire, FireAid, $100 million raised. Every single person I talked to messaging me, “No one's getting this money. No one's seeing a dollar.” I go to Washington, I ask senators to investigate this. We open up a case. Now all of a sudden, FireAid puts out a legal letter to defend themselves. In their own legal letter from the law firm, they say, “Several of these NGOs gave directly to fire victims.” The list for the $100 million is 200+ (NGOs). Google “several.” It's under 10. So even in their defense, they're telling you, and again, I don't believe one of those, 10 gave directly. The people that they said did, they're like, “We gave gift cards.” Who'd you give gift cards to? You don’t think one fire victim, they're messaging me all day long, said, “Hey, I got a $500 gift card.” So that's when I learned firsthand that these NGOs will take, right in your face, $100 million and just steal it.” @friedberg @spencerpratt --------------------------------------- Thanks to our partner for making this possible Most advertisers have never heard of the platform with an $11B annual run rate in ad spend. by AppLovin — 1B+ daily active users, full-screen video ads watched for a median of 35 seconds, and businesses are profitably spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a day on it. Advertiser access is in closed beta. The window is open at @AxonAdsManager

📢Pickup Reminder - Poolside Guardian Zenith Poolside Guardian Zenith Pick up ends soon✨ "Big water guns are not allowed!" Zenith goes on vacation tomorrow—don’t miss your chance to catch her! Meet Poolside Guardian Zenith NOW in the pickup! 👓 📅 Pickup rate UP before the July 16th maintenance #BrownDust2# #Zenith#

It’s chaos in Yosemite National Park This is the first summer since Yosemite stopped using their reservation system There have been almost 100,000 more visitors than this time last year It’s so crowded the lines of cards are hours long and people are parking illegally in the meadows that are supposed to be protected “The line of cars goes on and on and on, all waiting to get into Yosemite National Park. People were waiting for like at least hour and a half and once you're inside, the waiting isn't over” By 7.30 am parking can already be at capacity “The entire park, it was impossible to park. There's nowhere to park for anybody. Waiting to find parking, waiting to get on the shuttle — With many getting impatient and just illegally parking wherever they could. There are people pulling onto meadows, pulling off pavement, going off-road” “Environmental Resource Center says it was at least better than this. Without any limits the amount of vehicles, amount of people, it becomes overwhelmed. He believes the decision was good for business, not for the environment” You can’t even take the shuttles they’re so packed, I found: Shuttles are overwhelmed, trails including Half Dome cables are jammed, and congestion is constant. Park staff and environmental groups say it’s harming sensitive meadows and wildlife habitat There is no daily cap on vehicles during peak summer hours Many park employees, over 300 signed a petition, environmental groups, and former staff criticize the decision as prioritizing crowds over visitor experience Go back to a strict reservation system. There are way too many people

SANTIAGO 🚨 What a night & it felt like yesterday The energy and passion you all showed was insanely memorable. I am so thankful because you all allowed me to be myself. It’s the last show i had on LEG 2 MAGICMAN2 world tour I had a wonderful time traveling around sharing my stories to yall face to face Im very thankful and blessed to be able to do so Thank you for listening & i hope again: find yourself and live the life you want to live. Another thing i want to add upon that is: If you really think about it, People are all reactions. what you do actually determines everything. When you are moving too fast, they tell you to slow down. When you are moving too slow, they say you lazy. When you are dreaming, they wake you up. When you believe in something, they question and judge. And the list goes on. And THIS is the pattern. My question to you all who i love and care about is: why bother to care ? Be you, and you are the main character of your movie “life”. Live the magic, live the dream and make it happen. That’s what i always want to share to you all. I love you and i care, I hope you hear me. You got it. It’s too late if you don’t start. . And fyi Im working on my next album. Up until this point, it’s chaos.🤯 Putting all the puzzles into the right places, New environment, new people, new chemistry, It’s going to be ridiculous.🏃🏻💨🚀 NO ONE READY FOR THIS. . #MAGICMAN2WORLDTOUR# #Santiago# #JACKSONWANG# #王嘉爾# #MovistarArena#

🚨WOW!!! An absolutely BASED Black woman GOES OFF on a "teen takeover" in her neighborhood in Chicago! "Take ya'll ass home!!!" "I come outside and motherf***ers standing on top of your car, throwing ass, shaking ass. You tell them to off your car, they wanna get ignorant with you!" Last night over 500 teens organized a "takeover" in neighborhood in Chicago and dozens of police officers were called in to escort them all home after they began jumping on and dancing on cars in the street and screaming... ...at 1AM in the morning!!! WHERE. ARE. THE. PARENTS?!!!! YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE AT 1AM?!!!!!

Missed our first livestream of 2026? We sat down with Tommy (@alice_und_bob) and @harbour_ind_cap to break down @Polkadot Second Age — from strategy and products to economics. Here are the key takeaways 🧵👇 1️⃣ Polkadot Hub: From Infrastructure to Interface The long-awaited EVM compatibility (Revive) goes live on Jan 20. EVM support is no longer a “premium feature.” But embedding EVM directly into the Polkadot Hub is a big deal — it dramatically lowers the barrier for developers. No need to build a parachain from scratch. You can tap straight into Polkadot’s core execution power. 2️⃣ Blockchain is an application platform first, economics comes second Under @gavofyork’s direction, a clear system is taking shape: EVM → baseline programmability Polkadot stablecoin → the unit of account Polkadot People → identities/users interacting with capital A fully programmable system on top → enabling real economic activity 3️⃣ Parity’s 180° strategy shift @paritytech is moving from “decentralized platform builder” to product-driven pioneer. Think a “Google-style” approach: Actively building first-party, high-impact consumer products on top of Polkadot Not just enabling others — but setting the product standard themselves At the same time, Parity will introduce a protocol-level identity layer designed to counter AI bots. Proof of Personhood (PoP) is not just infrastructure, it’s a product direction with massive growth potential. Very few people truly understand @Polkadot's raw computational power, which is why no one has built applications that fully unlock it. So only @paritytech can build these products, because only Parity truly understands Polkadot’s native computational power. 4️⃣ 2026: Beyond DeFi, the golden age of indie developers Crypto is moving beyond pure DeFi. With Polkadot App and the App Portal, anyone can deploy an app — and have it surface directly inside the Polkadot mobile app. For the first time, distribution becomes native. This is how independent developers win. 5️⃣ Tokenomics 2.0: The end of the high-inflation era March 2026 marks a historic supply-side shift for Polkadot. Inflation will drop sharply to ~3.1%. Supply is being structurally addressed. Next comes the harder part: demand. The focus may shift toward pUSD, Polkadot’s native stablecoin — using DOT as over-collateral, increasing collateral and utility demand. 6️⃣ Predictions for 2026 The era of treasury-funded marketing is over. As @harbour_ind_cap put it: “Paid agents are dead. Long live independent agents.” And @alice_und_bob belive a wave of cypherpunks is coming to Polkadot. Those who still care about the original values of the internet — freedom, privacy, and real social impact. In 2026, Polkadot technology becomes something you can touch, feel, and use.👇

The FBI's annual internet crime report puts crypto-related fraud at more than half of all internet crime losses. Not half of crypto crime. Half of all internet crime. Legacy compliance providers are working from off-chain data sources with multi-hour or multi-day tagging delays. New wallets spin up constantly. Bad actors move across chains to obscure activity. The tooling that works for traditional payments does not map to this environment. Real-time fraud scoring is not optional infrastructure. It is the baseline requirement. Our recent webinar with @reown_, @reserveprotocol and @wavedigital_ goes deep on what real-time onchain detection actually requires, and why the compliance tooling most institutions already have is not sufficient on its own. Watch the full recording on demand:

Short n sweet Sui updates - ✨ @SuiNetwork CME futures are live ✨ Predict on @DeepBookonSui goes live ✨@rootlets_nft get third SEND airdrop ✨ @WalrusProtocol boosted strategies are permanent on @SlushWallet ✨ Sui Builder House in Athens May 27-29 ✨ @tradeportxyz launching TCG platform ✨ Sui Overflow annual hackathon launched - $500k in prizes ✨ Hydropower Fellowship wraps this week - teams in the batch will be celebrated soon ✨ gasless stablecoin transactions launch ✨ @matrixdock launches silver on Sui ✨ @t2000ai offers agentic payment infra for hackathon builders

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going. First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My input has been largely on technical questions. The board is in the process of expanding, and my own power within the org will continue to decrease, which is honestly what I want. The 2025 era brought many important improvements to EF and its ability to execute. Many issues were resolved, and EF continues to benefit from its improved efficiency and greater focus on concrete goals to this day. And so with those problems resolved, early this year, the largest remaining hole that I perceived was something different nagging at me: I would regularly spot people saying things like "vitalik says these beautiful things about ethereum needing to be decentralized, and have privacy, and be a sanctuary technology, but why do the EF's actions not reflect that?" Now, you may have been hearing something different. You may not have been sensing a feeling of crisis at all, and maybe were hearing people saying that finally we were taking execution and BD seriously and the main task for us is to keep going that way and be even better and faster. Then probably there is genuine difference between you and me, in what kinds of criticism I take most seriously, and what kinds of critics through their criticism are most able to make me feel pain. As an analogy, let's briefly switch over to a different domain. One belief you can have about Google is that it is a success story, and has brought a lot of good to humanity in organizing the world's information. Another belief you can have about Google is that they had a beautiful idealistic beginning, but at some point the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they slowly bit by bit completely abandoned the "don't be evil" slogan. My belief on Google specifically is probably somewhere between the two. BUT, if you had taken me back in time to ~2008, and offered me a button to press to make Google one or two standard deviations more "dogmatic", eg. give Richard Stallman permanent veto power over some key policies, I would immediately press it. Why? Because a choice for one company is not a choice for the world, or even one country. Google existed and exists in the context of a technology industry generally drifting away from early idealistic don't-be-evil roots and toward greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craven capitulation to (or worse, active participation in) government pressure for ideological control, surveillance and war. And so *one company* doing something different, positioning itself to be what George Bernard Shaw calls the Unreasonable Man, resisting the trend of the times, would have been better for freedom, balance of power and stability of society as a whole, than *all* large companies bending to dominant trends. This is a part of my version of pluralism. This line of thinking is not just mine, but I also is not too far off from what Aya and others had in mind with the Mandate. Now how does this all get to the role of the EF? EF is not a "center of Ethereum", rather EF is "one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes". We've always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem (and even within the EF) wanted us to be the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter. This is particularly important because EF is a limited organization, with limited resources and limited organizational capacity. The EF has only ~0.16% of all ETH (less than many other individual ETH holders), whereas among other blockchains it's common for "the central foundation" to have 10-50%. Fiscally, the EF was originally designed to fulfill a limited work scope defined in the token sale docs and other pre-launch materials (building the chain software; getting through Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity), which was fully completed in 2022; it was not designed to be an eternal steward. And so today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH). The EF focuses *specifically* on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect becoming outside of the EF. People of great technical talent, public respect and even alignment with the mission and CROPS being outside of the EF is in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital. This also means the EF taking opinionated stands culturally. This is all intended in cooperation with all other parts of ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the ethereum world highly respect CROPS and related values. But highly respecting is not the same as choosing to specialize and totally dedicate to a domain (Compare in a different domain: I think reducing animal cruelty is important, and I like vegan food, but am not full unconditional vegan myself) EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months. What are the guiding principles of this new form? Again, I am only one person, but I can give my answer from a technical perspective (there are also critical non-technical aspects). At the core, *Ethereum must be impressive*. We are living in an age of highly intelligent AI and all kinds of other technological acceleration. "Status quo EVM, with a hard fork or two a year to optimize for short-term needs of users" is not interesting. To some, "impressive" means: 250ms latency and 1M TPS. I think Ethereum trying to go that route is a mistake. Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it we will lose. I think Ethereum should scale. But I think Ethereum should strive the hardest to be deeply impressive in a different dimension: the CROPS dimension. This means things like: * Provably bug-free Ethereum. This is a goal that all cybersecurity researchers would have thought is absurd and impossible, up until roughly 6 months ago. Now, it's on the cusp of being possible, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification. So we should be frontrunners in doing this. * Available chain consensus. Ethereum is, and with lean consensus will cotninue to be, the ONLY chain that has both (i) traditional-BFT style properties that it's safe under asynchrony up to a high level of fault tolerance, and (ii) the bitcoin PoW-style property that under synchrony it's safe up to 49% attackers. As far as I can tell, literally no other chain has this or is planning for it; bitcoin goes for (ii) only and most other chains go for (i) only. Some will remember I fought hard for this, Unreasonably insisting that it is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline. It's OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It's not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash. * Intermediary minimization. The fact that smart contract wallets, protocols like railgun, etc have to send transactions through intermediaries to get included onchain is honestly embarrassing, and it's a constant point of fragility. Hence the work on FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and 7701 and years of work before) to make transaction sending intermediary-minimized with public mempool and strong inclusion properties, in a truly general-purpose way, that covers not just eg. secp256r1, but also privacy protocols and much more. Kohaku is pushing intermediary minimization at the user layer, pulling Ethereum away from the dystopian status quo world where our wallets don't even verify the chain, send our private data out to a dozen third-party servers, and toward a brighter CROPS future. Some of these goals are Unreasonable - maybe Ethereum would be "fine" getting only 50% of the way - what if we depend on intermediaries, but make it easy to switch? But going 50% of the way would not make Ethereum Deeply Impressive in the CROPS way. So we push for 100%. Fortunately all these goals are compatible with high TPS, this is a major focus of research (esp. on scaling the state). Well-designed L2s can also help, especially L2s optimized for specific applications (eg. high-volume trading, privacy...). These goals are even compatible with significantly lower slot times, thanks to Raul's work on erasure-coded P2P, and many other optimizations. The most high-value "product" of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH. The types of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH, and most of the remainder is ~$40m of onchain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated for some open-source biotech or software or hardware initiative. That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset - *necessary* aspects even - that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support. EF will be a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one - in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend - but a longer-lasting one, and one suited to making sure that ethereum brings something meaningful to the world. We are grateful to all those inside and outside the EF who are helping to make this happen.