@ethlabs_org is now 3 months old since our June 22nd announcement 🥳 thought I'd share some musings as co-founder, on culture, goals and impact, also prompted by @apriori0x in the recording we made letssgo --- establishing an org culture starts from day one, and I think we've hit it mostly, with moderate hiring since we started that has gelled well so far. I had reflected early on on culture here 3 months in I would say these are the main features: - goal-driven, we're not attached to specific means, we want a clear outcome and we go after it whichever way we need to - high urgency, I wake up in the morning hungry to pick up the tickets and threads that my US frens and EU night owls have left - ai native, this is a superpower and also gives a fresh spin to a lot of work that i used to enjoy doing but wasn't doing much of anymore (data collection/analysis, code/specs). i'm not the biggest consumer either, truly amazed by the strides @fradamt is making with AI-assisted formal verification - user-centric, we're still early and can always refine our approach here, but we really want to be intentional with it. building these feedback loops is imo one of our most critical needs atm. particularly as a non-profit, it's the only way to ensure impact - working in public, it's a healthy default and imo a responsibility given the nature and mission of our org, to work on behalf of the Ethereum community for the betterment of Ethereum. we push updates weekly, putting in some work to keep them engaging and high signal. see here --- the funny thing is it feels still like we are learning about ourselves, and what we can do with this new org. some observations on what's working well from my POV: - i think it is clear that we can have strong impact on core protocol direction and development still. one example, our hegotá view, led by @casparschwa @fradamt and @adietrichs, was a labour of love and rigour, and we held ourselves to a very high standard in coming up with our rankings work on account abstraction, fast finality, fast slots, all ongoing - i think we are growing well to be a "defragmenter" between L1 and L2s, sometimes a relayer helping to signal what one needs from the other, sometimes a more involved builder bridging the gap. @decentrek's work on 8130<>8141 is strong evidence, and @ox_shaman is accelerating quickly on following up its conclusion with a broad effort to maximally defragment accounts. better integration between L1 and L2s, their liquidity and their users, remains a key work stream for us. right now we're zoomed in on blobs, their demand and their supply - i think we've been good at building connections with strong teams working on the private and public buildout of the Ethereum network, and leveraging these connections. this is starting to compound for instance on going-to-market with the fast confirmation rule or the quick slots piece and getting signal on our directions. kudos to @_julianma and @binji_x for doing so much outreach --- but! given these capabilities, are we tackling the right goals? this is a lot of our current internal chatter: - our stated mission is to make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy. ethereum has been unreasonably effective at attracting users and capital to its network, thanks to its unique properties. it is working, we want to make it work better, and maintain its lead + increase its footprint in the world - how can we be more principled with problem identification? we're taking it both bottom-up and top-down. some concrete work emerges organically from internal reflections and external engagement, and we also spend more time now top-down/first principles-refining our intuitions. this helps connect the dots and move up and up to bigger and bigger targets - in particular, feeling like Ethlabs can do more advocacy and work on ETH the asset, rooted in our technical work and ecosystem engagement. ETH is a big part both of the network's utility, and its reach to export the values of Ethereum. this matters. - feeling like there are big opportunities around asset issuance and tokenisation, bringing the global economy onchain, and the role of the L1 in this conversation, as critical node in the transport layer of these assets throughout the network - I like to keep moving and adjust on the fly, as action creates information. no one feels under-allocated. feeling slightly mis-allocated is probably right to keep our heads up and reflect on what is the most impactful thing we could be doing. we might not be going after the biggest fish right now, and we shouldn't be ideological about choosing our targets. it's a conversation we should keep having both internally and externally --- - last point, apart from all this, wow there is a lot of admin! we wanted to hit the ground running asap so decided to backload some of it, there's some more to get through but we're getting there. thank god for @joshrudolf --- that is all for today, back to making ethereum faster 🫡 gn