Best of hackernoon.com on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
17 stories from hackernoon.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 3 June 2023, with 34 upvotes and 4 comments in total. The latest was shared on 31 May 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- These 13 Hidden Open-Source Libraries Will Help You Become an AI Wizard
A curated list of open-source tools for building reliable AI agents, RAG pipelines and vector search is presented, including Composio, Julep, E2B, Camel-ai, CopilotKit, Aider, Haystack and Pgvectorscale. Composio is described as a toolset that gives agents integrations such as GitHub, and Julep as a framework for production-ready stateful agents with built-in context storage. E2B offers a secure cloud sandbox for running AI-generated code, and Haystack offers composable RAG pipelines. The list claims that Pgvectorscale, an extension of PgVector, outperformed Pinecone's storage-optimized index (s1) and costs 75% less.
- How Can Crypto Enthusiasts Protect Themselves When Starting Staking?
Staking crypto carries risks that newcomers can reduce through research, careful key management and attention to tax obligations, according to the article by Armagan Ercan and Philippe Schommers. It notes that staked ETH has risen 91% since the Shanghai upgrade, and that users can either run a validator node, which requires being online roughly six months of the year, or delegate to a pool through protocols like StakeWise. The article says validators risk having their stake "slashed" for fraud, bad data or downtime, and that on Ethereum and Gnosis Chain an offline validator can lose no more in a day than it would have earned by being online. It also warns that improperly secured private keys can enable theft, while over-securing them can cause loss of wallet access.
- Web3 hiring culture. What can we improve? | HackerNoon
The author, a Web3 growth marketing lead, argues that hiring culture in Web3 needs to be reinvented, citing a mismatch between candidate and company expectations. Daria's LinkedIn poll of 11 people found that smooth hiring experiences are rare, and she describes repeated "hiring ghosting" and feedback such as requirements to come from tier 1 companies or to have 20,000 Twitter followers. The article gives three reasons for the difficulties: projects demand crypto-native candidates, founders prefer alumni of well-known companies, and the industry is inexperienced at hiring non-technical staff. Carsten Munk, a board director at the Cartesi Foundation, says he values problem-solving over leetcode tests and treats inconsistent stories as a red flag.
- The Essential List Of Entrepreneurs In The Star Wars Galaxy
A ranked countdown of Star Wars characters presented as entrepreneurs, from junk dealer Watto at the bottom to Emperor Palpatine at the top. The article says Watto dabbles in pod racing and human trafficking alongside junk-dealing, and that Jango Fett scaled his operation by letting the Republic use him as the genetic source for its clone army. Han Solo is ranked higher than more profitable figures because he is not solely profit-driven, and the article compares him to Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who also moved into philanthropy. Palpatine is credited with negotiation, logistics and branding skills, including the Death Star.
- Now We Know: Exit to Community Is Possible
The author revisits the idea of "exit to community," an alternative to acquisition or public offering in which startups are owned and governed by their communities, and argues that the E2C Collective's new library of case studies shows such exits are possible but face structural barriers. The library, released at E2C.how, includes "snapshots" of cases such as Namaste Solar, Debian, Python, NIO, Defector Media, Gitcoin and SongADAO, with mixed results. The author argues that policy change is needed, citing the 1936 Rural Electrification Act and the 1974 expansion of the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) as precedents for large-scale community ownership.
- Fungible
The author recounts a coffee conversation with derivatives trader David Dredge and argues that US retail crypto restrictions matter less than China-Japan currency dynamics, because capital is fungible. Dredge expects Beijing to devalue the yuan against the yen as Chinese exports falter, and the author compares the current setup to summer 2015, when a PBOC devaluation preceded Bitcoin tripling from August to November. The author also argues that the 2020 direct US stimulus payments fueled retail speculation, and that the Federal Reserve's rate hikes from March 2022 left most buyers at a loss.
- Shattering Barriers: Unlocking Access, Opportunity, and Rewards in the New Era
The author argues that Farcaster, a decentralized social protocol with Warpcast as one client, offers early adopters access and opportunity that established networks lack. Alex describes gaining a data engineering job, about $10,000 (6.9 ETH) to build projects, referrals and mentors after joining, and says the network has about 1,500 followers for him, roughly 15% of the total network. He also cites community contests and grants, such as the competing Purple DAO and Purpler DAO, and startups like unlonely.app that emerged from the Farcaster community.
- Why Bubblemaps’ Expansion to BNB Chain Could Change Onchain Investigations
Bubblemaps has launched V2 support for BNB Chain, adding it as the sixth network in its analytics suite after Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Arbitrum and Polygon. The interactive tool visualizes wallet clusters and token distributions as connected "bubbles," with new features Magic Nodes, which surfaces clusters of wallets linked by suspicious or non-obvious behavior, and Time Travel, which shows how a token's distribution changed over time. Nicolas Vaiman, CEO of Bubblemaps, said BNB Chain has clear demand for comprehensive analytics, citing its more than 1.8 million daily active wallets and over $6.5 billion in total value locked.
- RGB++: Advancing Bitcoin's Layer 2 with Innovation
RGB++ is an extension protocol that uses UTXO isomorphic binding to bring RGB-style capabilities onto Nervos CKB, as introduced by Cipher, a CKB co-founder, on February 13th. The author, DaPangDun, argues that RGB faces slow development, a small developer base, and dependence on external factors such as the Lightning Network standard bifrost, and that RGB++ addresses these challenges. The article also presents RGB++ as a way to strengthen CKB's position as a Bitcoin L2, citing features such as transaction folding, leaderless contracts and non-interactive transfers.
- Cryptocurrency Lingo 101: Your Essential Guide to Crypto Abbreviations
This article is a glossary of cryptocurrency abbreviations aimed at newcomers, covering terms such as BIP, DAO, DPoS, EIP, Lightning Network (LN), PoW and SegWit. It defines each term in simple language, for example describing a BIP as a formal document proposing changes to the Bitcoin protocol and PoW as a consensus algorithm in which miners solve mathematical puzzles. The entries also note that PoW has faced criticism for its energy consumption and that SegWit separates digital signature data from transaction information to increase network capacity. The excerpt ends partway through the technical section, at the DDoS entry.
- Token Engineering: A Blueprint for Building Sustainable Decentralized Economies
This guide presents a systems-engineering approach to token engineering, which it defines as the design, verification, and optimization of token-based complex economic systems. It walks through three phases of developing decentralized crypto-economic systems: System Requirements Analysis, System Analysis, and System Design. The guide states that these phases align with systems engineering frameworks and with Outlier Ventures' Discovery, Design, and Deployment framework for token-based ecosystems. It credits Michael Zargham, Angela Kreitenweis, Krzysztof Paruch, Trent McConaghy, and Dr. Achim Struve as key figures in the field.
- On the nature of privacy
The author argues that individuals should take primary responsibility for their own data privacy, and that people should minimise their digital footprint rather than wait for companies or governments to protect it. After requesting their Google data, the author reports finding over 100 gigabytes of personal data tied to one account, including a record of every page visited containing Google or Facebook ad trackers and a six-year GPS location history. The article distinguishes security, meaning protection from unauthorised access, from privacy, meaning limits on what can be derived from data, and it lists practical steps such as using a VPN without logs, uBlock Origin, and disabling Google and Facebook tracking.
- In Web3, Community, Not Content, Is King
The article argues that in web3, community comes before product: a goal-oriented community forms first and the product is built around it, reversing the web2 pattern where communities form after products launch. It cites Bitcoin, Ethereum and Uniswap as examples, asking whether Bitcoin could have survived without a dedicated community of maximalists in its early days. It adds that such communities drive adoption through ambassadors and collective effort, and it recommends transparency, clear goals, active engagement and moderation to grow one.
- Backed founder on the future of asset tokenization
Backed, a Swiss company co-founded by Adam Levi, issues ERC-20 tokens that track the value of real-world assets such as stocks and bond ETFs, and it chose Switzerland because of the Swiss DLT Act. In an interview series, Levi said the tokens are freely transferable, fully collateralized by the underlying assets, and issued in compliance with Swiss regulation. Its flagship product, bIB01, tracks the iShares IB01 ETF, and Backed issues and redeems tokens at net asset value plus a small fee, with oracles such as Chainlink supplying the price on-chain. Levi said the Swiss DLT Act adds distributed ledgers as a method of registering asset ownership and does not address privacy.
- Online communities are still catching up to my mother's garden club
The author argues that online communities default to what they call "implicit feudalism," in which admins and moderators hold nearly unchecked power, unlike the democratic bylaws that let a neighborhood garden club govern itself for decades. Ordinary users have little way to hold admins accountable, and online democracy usually appears only through extensive planning and custom software, as in Wikipedia and Debian. Pointing to steps such as the Contributor Covenant, the Python board elected after Guido van Rossum resigned in 2018, and the layered Linux ecosystem, the author calls for institutional diversity and modular governance tools that communities can adopt as easily as apps.
- Eye for an eye; Hacking the competition
The author, identified in the text as the former founder of Ink, writes that he now rejects the "hack back" reasoning that led to his prosecution, and that he no longer believes the ends justify the means. He describes hacking back against a competitor's customers after an employee who had left for that competitor allegedly took files and IP, and he says he sent anonymous emails to the competitor's prospects. After a misdemeanor plea deal, he was sentenced on April 20th to 18 months in federal prison, and the judge said he wanted to deter such conduct. The text also cites his attorney Kellen Dwyer saying he knew of no other Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charge where the motive appeared purely defensive.
- Tiptoeing the DAO Tightrope: Centralization vs. Decentralization
DAOs face a real tension between centralization and decentralization, and the article argues they need some centralized direction to operate effectively while keeping community accountability. It gives examples such as a $1000 expense that cannot wait for a vote, and says functions like accounting, treasury management, account credentials, discourse, Snapshot and voting need centralized parties. Suggested approaches include working groups or councils with delegated duties, foundation companies that provide legal protections, KYC requirements, and voting processes that let members remove centralized parties who fail in their duties.