.@circle set out to put dollars on the internet and make them work everywhere. Now @jerallaire thinks the main users of that infrastructure could be machines. He joins @cdixon to talk about what comes after digital dollars, and what the agent economy needs when software can earn, spend, and hire. Highlights: 1:58 Circle’s original vision for programmable money 7:19 Why institutions started taking stablecoins seriously 12:04 Learnings from building a global financial network 15:03 What gives a stablecoin its moat? 26:28 Crypto’s growing adoption in the shadow of AI 28:11 From making existing things better to creating entirely new markets 32:59 The weirdest experiments being built on Arc 37:02 What happens when AI hires AI 38:04 Why the next big thing starts out looking like a toy 39:05 Can blockchains counter AI’s centralizing tendencies? 44:01 What the machine economy could look like in five years

AI is getting better at solving hard math problems, especially given recent drops. But what does that mean for the cryptography that protects everything from private messages to healthcare to banking and crypto wallets? Stanford cryptographer Dan Boneh, with @eddylazzarin, @SuccinctJT, @liz_harkavy, and @smc90, makes sense of the warnings sounded recently. They cover: - what’s fact vs. assumption - what’s new and what risks cryptographers have long prepared for - where quantum computing doesn't (and does) fit - opportunities for builders Highlights: 00:37 – What sparked the most recent debate about AI and cryptography 01:35 – Signal vs. noise: What the math does and doesn’t tell us 05:29 – Why cryptography depends on open problems 09:25 – Why the stakes go beyond blockchains 10:43 – How AI could strengthen confidence in cryptography 13:50 – Considerations for users and institutions 20:10 – Where AI and quantum threats overlap 22:32 – Building systems that can change cryptographic methods 23:59 – Hash-based versus lattice-based cryptography 33:07 – Opportunities for builders, and better security tools 38:14 – What comes next if there were a cryptographic break?

Tomorrow, the Senate votes on whether to open debate on the CLARITY Act. If the bill becomes law, exchanges serving U.S. consumers will have to adopt safeguards that FTX lacked. If the bill doesn’t, those gaps will remain.

Technologies don't un-invent themselves. The question is... where do they get built? "Every American citizen, regardless of their political position, should want America to be the technology leader in the world." @pmarca on the CLARITY Act and why crypto belongs in the US.

What would the CLARITY Act mean for people building and using crypto? 10 building blocks to understand, from how tokens are regulated to protections for open source developers and self-custody.

Over $35B in traditional assets live onchain, not counting stablecoins. Almost 3x more than when GENIUS passed 1 year ago. CLARITY provides the guardrails for the onchain infrastructure these assets live on. What will this chart look like next year? That’s decided next week.

1/ grateful to @a16zcrypto for recognizing the importance of ensuring financial institutions can use/build on permissionless networks. The article published today gives a brief synopsis of the paper (&framework) @m_mosier_ @malekanoms (link ⬇️).

I've said before that Jolt is a contrarian bet on what a zkVM can and should look like. Some people have prematurely declared victory of hashing-based SNARKs over alternatives. Today, Jolt shows that there's another way. With the integration of lattices, Jolt (i) is post-quantum, (ii) proves 2-3x faster, (iii) uses less memory, all while keeping proof sizes under 100 kB –– nearly a Pareto improvement upon Jolt with elliptic curves. Another reason you should care about the first lattice-based zkVM: diversity. Multi-prover architectures aim to strengthen security by using multiple proof systems, each independently proving/verifying the same statement. But if all of the proof systems are using the same software libraries, cryptographic primitives, and conjectures, the shared surface area for vulnerabilities undercuts this point. While we expect lattice Jolt to be an attractive default for most use cases, a hashing-based Jolt is still on the roadmap. Expect more announcements from the Jolt team soon!

There were $4T+ in stablecoin transfers last quarter, roughly double what it was a year ago. That's the regulated part of crypto. The GENIUS Act gave stablecoins clear rules. Now the rest of crypto needs them. It's time to pass CLARITY.

We have rules for stablecoins. What about the blockchains underneath them? "It’s like having a regulatory framework for cell phones, but not for cell towers.” @cdixon on how CLARITY would do for blockchains what GENIUS did for stablecoins.

Introducing Akita, the first production-ready, lattice-based polynomial commitment scheme for post-quantum security. It’s the first major step in making Zero quantum-secure, and will be implemented in Jolt on day one, thanks to our partnership with @a16zcrypto. Read the full research paper:

Introducing Lattice Jolt ⚡️ A new version of our open-source zkVM (zero-knowledge virtual machine): faster and post-quantum, with compact proofs built on lattice-based cryptography. The key unlock is Akita, a new polynomial commitment scheme. @LayerZero_Core led its development with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Southern California, and our team at a16z crypto. The era of lattice SNARKs is upon us.