Best of kermankohli.substack.com on Kiwi News
Most upvoted by Kiwi News readers
15 stories from kermankohli.substack.com have been shared on Kiwi News since 4 October 2023, with 35 upvotes and 5 comments in total. The latest was shared on 2 June 2026. They are listed below, most upvoted first.
Text under a title is an AI summary of the linked article.
- RPC Market Competitive Landscape
The author argues that the RPC market is inefficient because pricing is hard to compare, and that large providers can raise costs without customers noticing. The article says compute units, which vary by method, chain and provider, plus per-second throughput limits, let providers change prices silently. It states that one customer's RPC providers increased its costs by 5x to 10x over the past year. It also says that routing requests across multiple providers to avoid lock-in adds significant engineering complexity, and that smaller providers are harder to adopt because their performance is unclear.
- Farcaster: An Example of Permissionless Identity
Farcaster is presented as an example of permissionless identity, where a user's identity and social data are portable across apps built on the protocol. The author says Farcaster uses Ethereum for its identity layer and a peer-to-peer network of Hubs to store messages, and that Warpcaster is one client built by the Farcaster team. Users can link multiple Ethereum addresses to their Farcaster ID so their NFTs appear on their profile, and the Flink app, built independently, displays Farcaster data in a Reddit-style interface. Dune has also integrated Farcaster data, and Paragraph and Bountycaster, launched by Linda Xie, are named as other integrated apps.
- Crypto's biggest use case: Permissionless Identity
The author argues that crypto's biggest use case is permissionless identity: portable, persistent identities that are cryptographically backed, identified through a public key rather than through separate database identifiers on each service. The article contrasts this with Web2, where each service creates its own user identifier and a person's data and reputation stay locked within that ecosystem. It also points to blockchains as a shared time standard, since they assign timestamps to transactions when they are mined, complementing cryptography as a shared authentication standard. The author says permissionless identity can be used on-chain or off-chain and that the key is the innovation, not the blockchain.
- How reliable is your node?
0xArc reports that RPC calls to blockchain nodes succeeded on average 78.5% of the time between 1 August and 20 October 2024, based on 1,492,103,937 requests, of which 1,171,952,063 succeeded and 320,793,140 failed. The article says performance varies by chain, provider, and method, with Polygon averaging about 60% success in August before rising to 80%+ in more recent weeks. It also says one provider, referred to as "orange provider," was among the most reliable overall but had sharp drops in archive node performance on Ethereum for almost a month. Pricing reportedly differs by up to 10 times per provider, chain, and method.
- The Airdrop Trilemma: A Data Problem in Disguise.
The author argues that airdrops face a trilemma between capital efficiency, decentralisation and retention, and that the quality of filtering matters most for retention. Using Optimism's three airdrops, the author found that about 40% of the first airdrop's recipients held a 0 OP balance, while close to 90% of the second airdrop's recipients held none. The third airdrop, which required on-chain governance voting after the prior round, had 22% of recipients at 0, and the author attributes the weaker NFT-creator airdrop's retention to overly broad criteria.
- Follow the (fake) data
The author argues that crypto traction metrics are largely fake because airdrop farming and sybil activity inflate on-chain numbers, and that counting addresses without weighting identity or past behavior sets the bar too low. The piece says airdrop cost-per-acquisition figures from a Dune dashboard are underestimates, since they divide dollar value by addresses claimed without accounting for the 10% to 20% of addresses that typically hold airdrops, which could make them 5x to 10x higher. It also describes airdrop simulators and automation tools such as nftcopilot.com, whose marketing it criticizes as "Help winners win," and concludes that farming stays prevalent while the cost to game an airdrop is below its potential reward.
- Techno-Capitalism
The author argues that a new class of investors, called "techno-capitalists," is emerging as financial markets become intertwined with technology, and that these investors need both engineering discipline and market experience. Per the text, the first generation came from crypto, the second is now entering public equities around AI and semiconductors, and an undersupply of such investors exists. The text also points to on-chain smart contracts and insurance as a future intersection, citing Ilemi's balance sheet graph for modeling token dependencies and risks, and it concludes that capital must be directed carefully to avoid stalling progress.
- Welcome to the $10T Bull Market
The author argues that the crypto market could reach a $10T market cap as the belief that US government bonds are risky spreads, pushing investors toward Bitcoin and crypto. The argument rests on US debt near 100% of GDP, with interest costs exceeding military spending of 3.5% of GDP, and on Fitch's August 2023 downgrade of US long-term ratings from AAA to AA. The author also contends that an inverted yield curve and possible yield curve control would further erode confidence in bonds, and concludes that Bitcoin and crypto represent a fairer, more transparent alternative to the fiat system.
- The Great Memory Trade
The author, who says they have their entire net worth in SK Hynix, Sandisk and Micron as of April 2026, argues that memory is the most bottlenecked and most underpriced component of the AI trade. Memory bandwidth and capacity limit which AI models can run and how much context they can use, and the author says HBM is required for every NVIDIA chip sold. The author cites SK Hynix's expected 2027 profit of $150 billion against a $540 billion market cap, and Micron's expected FY2027 profit of around $100 billion against a $500 billion market cap. The author also rejects the view that memory is a cyclical commodity, pointing to long-term agreements and CEOs saying memory is sold out until 2027 at the earliest.
- Pt 1: Personal Productivity Stack
This article presents the author's personal productivity stack, built around capturing thoughts in Drafts and routing them to Todoist, Notion and Notion Calendar. The author argues that most people use almost no software for personal productivity and that Apple Notes, with its single large note, is a poor place to hold thoughts. Drafts is described as the capture point, where each thought is written briefly and then turned into a "Next Best Smallest Action" using Drafts actions and the Todoist, Notion and calendar APIs. The author says the calendar should hold only external commitments, that Todoist tasks should have due dates only when missing them causes real harm, and that tasks should be sorted into red, orange and blue priorities.
- Memecoins vs Elitecoins: A Cultural Revolution
Memecoins now deliver crypto's original promise of fair distribution, while token launches built on private rounds and airdrops recreate the old insider system. Dogecoin, which had no pre-mine, no presale and no utility beyond its internet joke, has risen about 8,000x since 2014 and outperformed Bitcoin. The $degen tipping token on Farcaster grew in price alongside the platform, and Cooper Turley's public wallet held close to $250k of it from participation alone.
- Introducing RouteMesh
RouteMesh launched as a live RPC aggregator that routes blockchain data requests across a pool of third-party node providers instead of running its own nodes. The company says it has served billions of requests per month since a stealth phase and supports over 1000 chains, with usage-based pricing and no subscriptions or overage charges. It claims customers can save 40-70% of their RPC costs and cites response times as low as 7ms, with retries sent to other nodes when a call fails. The article presents the approach as a response to the growing number of chains, which it argues no single provider can cover, and says the company plans to add Solana, Bitcoin and other VM ecosystems, MEV-protected transaction sending, and more providers and chains.
- Pt 1: Building an AI Native Company
The author describes how their company is building its new AI product line, arguing that business context should be stored in a git repository rather than in a single ChatGPT chat or in tools like Notion or Google Docs. The workflow starts by filling out a Business Model Canvas, extracting it into markdown with ChatGPT, and saving the output as files in a repo folder called "business-canvas" through Windsurf. Those files can then be refined and committed like code, so AI code editors can use the business context directly, and the author says the team needs a shared culture that adopts this approach.
- USDJPY: The Most Important Chart in the World
USD/JPY is presented as the most important chart in the world because it reflects interconnected global debt and carry-trade dynamics. The yen fell about 12.5%, from 140 to 160, between early 2024 and July, prompting Japanese authorities to spend around $50 billion of their dollar reserves buying yen. Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is cited at 260%, and Japan is described as the largest holder of US Treasuries at $1.1 trillion. A 0.25% rate rise by the Bank of Japan on July 31, 2024 made the carry trade less profitable, unwinding leveraged positions and causing a market selloff.
- Starkware Airdrop Analysis
Starkware's STRK airdrop retained few recipients but was relatively inexpensive per user, according to an analysis that credits its spread of allocations across many user groups. Only 39.8% of 1,304,079 eligible claimers claimed, and 13.5% of claimers were retained. Estimating about $100 million in token spend, the analysis puts acquisition cost at roughly $200 per user and $1,341 per retained wallet, below the thousands of dollars it cites for the Arbitrum airdrop.