Best of jaack.montaigne.io on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
9 stories from jaack.montaigne.io have been shared on Kiwi News since 2 February 2024, with 33 upvotes and 10 comments in total. The latest was shared on 13 February 2025. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- New ways of monetizing a block explorer
The author argues that block explorers are expensive to run and that advertising will not sustain them for smaller chains in the near term, so new revenue models are needed. Etherscan's Explorer-as-a-Service was paid for by a few chains, including BNB, Fantom and Polygon, but it can cost up to 1.5 million dollars a year, while Routescan starts at roughly 350 dollars a month. The article points to Mempool explorer's new paid service that expedites unconfirmed transactions, noting it had 158,000 dollars in gross revenue over more than a year and about 120,000 daily users.
- My main hot wallet got compromised. Here's what I learned
The author, a crypto user, describes losing about 90% of the holdings in his main hot wallet, an Exodus wallet he had used for over seven years, after being phished at a DEVCON side event and then scammed by someone impersonating a helper. He says the money was not his main concern, since he recovered his ENS, Blast and Avvy domains and saved Mirror articles, which the exploiter and scammer did not take. He now argues for splitting identity across separate wallets for each purpose and using app-specific embedded or smart wallets, while moving valuable NFTs to cold storage.
- The fundamental values of the crypto community
The author argues that blockchains fall into three generations, each with a distinct value system, and that all three advance onchain activity. First-generation coins such as Bitcoin, Zcash, Litecoin, Dogecoin and Namecoin carry a "monetary freedom" ethos of a permissionless global payment system. Ethereum, launched in 2015 with a "World Computer" narrative, added smart contracts and DAOs and an ideal of broad social freedom. Third-generation platforms such as Avalanche, Cosmos, Solana and NEAR were built for high throughput and are more pragmatic and enterprise-focused.
- Some numbers about the Etherscan lock-in for block explorers
Routescan, which previously operated as Avascan, estimates from benchmarks and client conversations that Etherscan earns roughly 25 million dollars a year from its block explorer business, with at least a 50% profit margin. The estimate rests on per-chain fees that it infers: about 1 million dollars a year for an average chain, and around 4 million for BNB Chain, which it calculates from indexing and storage costs. Adding an estimated 1 million dollars from advertising on Ethereum and about 1 million from APIs brings the total to that figure. The post presents these numbers as rough calculations rather than confirmed figures.
- How to sustain block explorers for L3s? | Jaack's Notes
Routescan is not yet indexing any L3, which it says is a consequence of the market rather than a choice it made. Responding to Syndicate's post on the economics of L3s, the author argues that block explorers are a major cost for L3s because they must retain full chain history and cannot simply rely on subgraphs. Using an assumed storage price of $5 per million transactions per month, the author estimates storage alone for a DeFi-style chain at about 3 TPS would total $73,200 over five years, while a gaming chain at 75 TPS would total $1,830,000. The author says they do not have solutions and presents the problem for discussion.
- About L2s and how some of them don't fund independent builders
Routescan says it will shut down its Mantle-specific explorer, mantlescan.info, because Mantle never paid for the service and Etherscan was chosen instead. According to the post, Routescan offered a service contract in 2023, built requested features, and ran the explorer as a demo, but Mantle stopped responding in August 2023 and told Routescan on January 11, 2024 that it was going with Etherscan. The post says Routescan spent thousands of dollars keeping the indexing running and that Mantle declined to fund it through grants, while the explorer held about 10% of unique users in November 2024. Routescan says it will keep indexing Mantle, redirecting mantlescan.info traffic to its multichain routescan.io platform, and describes the move as a stand against chains not paying for explorers.
- What changes iOS 18 & co. will bring to my Apple setup
The author lists which Apple features announced for iOS 18 and its companion platforms would replace or change their current setup, and what purchases or cancellations follow. Gentler Streak is being sherlocked, so the author plans to cancel its subscription, and Training Peaks is partly sherlocked, with workout planning no longer needed. Day One may be replaced by Journal if iOS 18 adds a tagging system, which iOS 17 lacks. The iPhone 14 Pro Max and an iPad Pro 11" do not support Apple Intelligence, so the author plans to buy new devices, and the author would keep a MacBook setup because of iPhone mirroring. The author also expects to cancel 1Password and still needs AllTrails for a year because new Maps hiking routes are only available in the U.S. and Japan.
- About L3s and the Superchain, or the Modularity Mess
The author asks how to identify an OP Chain in what they call a "modular mess," given that new L3s built on the OP Stack may not clearly meet the Law of Chains, which requires an Ethereum bridge identical to other OP Chains, a multi-sequencer scheme, and fee revenue accruing to Optimism. The post notes that the Law of Chains (v0.1) does not mention L3s, and it lists seven questions about whether L3s that settle or post data on OP Chains, use single sequencing, or run non-EVM VMs would count as OP Chains. It also raises the concern that many L3s may not justify decentralized sequencing because revenue may be low.
- Fully onchain ticketing with ZK proofs
The author, writing about ETHDenver ticketing, argues that fully onchain ticketing with zero-knowledge proofs can let event organizers check in attendees without learning their identity, as long as the ticket implies identity without requiring an integrity check of the ID. The author describes collecting a passport or ID at reception for large events, and says they were not asked for identification when collecting their ticket. In the proposed flow, attendees self-attest personal information onchain with a zk proof, include that attestation in the ticket payment transaction, and show the ticket's QR code at reception. The author notes this model does not verify whether a document is genuine, which would require solving the harder problem of identity issuance.