# Top stories on Kiwi News, week 50 2024

Mon 9 to Sun 15 December 2024
Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/weekly/2024-W50

The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 9 to Sun 15 December 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 52 comments in total. Most-shared sources: ethresear.ch, x.com.

Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article.

## 1. A few of the things we’re excited about in crypto (2025) - a16z crypto

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/A-few-of-the-things-were-excited-about-in-crypto-2025-a16z-crypto?index=0x67569f8badc76f4bf3829de0a2638ff03f85bb667c3c779548ff32dd1f58c0f2dff4053d
- Source: https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/big-ideas-crypto-2025
- Submitted by 0x0040...09E1, 8 upvotes, 1 comment

a16z crypto partners outlined what they expect to matter in crypto in 2025, with each partner naming one idea. Carra Wu argues that AI agents will increasingly custody their own crypto wallets, signing keys and assets, and may eventually operate the first AI-owned blockchain. Sam Broner expects enterprises, starting with small and medium-sized businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops, to increasingly accept stablecoins for payments. Miles Jennings says the DUNA, a decentralized unincorporated nonprofit association, will become a standard structure for U.S. crypto projects, following Wyoming's 2024 law recognizing DAOs as legal entities.

## 2. PumpSea - Pump.fun but for NFTs

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/PumpSea-Pumpfun-but-for-NFTs?index=0x675c61bc8647ff6696cc74db023701f091f3c5ee7e51cbc4a2e006d3622c779abc1ccd64
- Source: https://pumpsea.io
- Submitted by tim, 6 upvotes, 6 comments

## 3. The Cypherpunk Endgame & Real World Ethereum

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Cypherpunk-Endgame-and-Real-World-Ethereum?index=0x675769c919b6e264002775aa7e463ccedd066a4a4caee1a4c0211ce0b67c73063325b0aa
- Source: https://daimo.com/blog/real-world-ethereum
- Submitted by 0x4DD0...85D9, 5 upvotes, 6 comments

## 4. My main hot wallet got compromised. Here's what I learned

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/My-main-hot-wallet-got-compromised-Heres-what-I-learned?index=0x67599015834273f86c69da38826e9ad805b6af822821638e5d81db46beb571eb0cb86f38
- Source: https://jaack.montaigne.io/my-main-hot-wallet-got-compromised-here-s-what-i-learned
- Submitted by jaack.eth, 5 upvotes, 4 comments

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.

## 5. 2024 Crypto Developer Report

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/2024-Crypto-Developer-Report?index=0x675b59ab039b0d65afbe706a925142329c8f06ab5a92c94cd34778f4fc367a515e2aec7d
- Source: https://www.developerreport.com/developer-report
- Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 9 upvotes, 1 comment

Electric Capital's 2024 Crypto Developer Report, part of its annual series from 2018 to 2024, analyzed 902 million code commits across 1.7 million repositories. Total developers declined 7% in 2024, but established developers with at least two years of tenure reached all-time highs, growing 27% year-over-year and committing 70% of all code. The report also found that 1 in 3 crypto developers worked on multiple chains.

## 6. Bringing privacy to EVM applications using confidential computing

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Bringing-privacy-to-EVM-applications-using-confidential-computing?index=0x6756e587f723452ecf6b20ef1727af7c9e03b56cef34f9ed90f8e613b24a4ae399698621
- Source: https://ethresear.ch/t/bringing-privacy-to-evm-applications-using-confidential-computing-via-co-processors/21217
- Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 8 upvotes, 0 comments

The article proposes bringing privacy to existing EVM applications through off-chain co-processors that compute on encrypted data using privacy-enhancing technologies such as FHE, with encrypted ERC20 tokens and batched, differentially private order settlement as core components. It argues that transparent public-chain transaction flows deter privacy-conscious users and expose users to front-running, and that prior approaches like threshold-encrypted mempools and shielded pools face high barriers, complex key management, UX problems, and regulatory concerns. The design is inspired by Penumbra's Zswap DEX, which uses sealed-bid batch swaps. Orders are aggregated before decryption so individual amounts stay hidden, and the return amount for each user is calculated homomorphically.

## 7. Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Meet-Willow-our-state-of-the-art-quantum-chip?index=0x6757352ef03aee991729e1c41a905a7fb2392c7f01a41aefd14007c02842f0712669b9b2
- Source: https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip
- Submitted by ministryofmemes.eth, 7 upvotes, 5 comments

Google announced Willow, its latest quantum chip, which its post says demonstrates error correction and performance that paves the way to a useful, large-scale quantum computer. Willow reduced errors exponentially as qubits were scaled up across 3x3, 5x5 and 7x7 grids, cutting the error rate in half each time, a result the article calls "below threshold" and says was published today in Nature. On the random circuit sampling benchmark, the article says Willow completed a computation in under five minutes that it estimates would take one of today's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years.

## 8. Vocdoni Protocol: Decentralized Voting for the Masses with ZK Technology

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Vocdoni-Protocol-Decentralized-Voting-for-the-Masses-with-ZK-Technology?index=0x675b3c8b1ea64325d9debaffb3d8bdb9b963aac2c809d4986dc2e14b71ec4975b2d02526
- Source: https://ethresear.ch/t/vocdoni-protocol-enabling-decentralized-voting-for-the-masses-with-zk-technology
- Submitted by ferran.eth, 9 upvotes, 0 comments

## 9. ElizaOS: Operating System for AI agents

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/ElizaOS-Operating-System-for-AI-agents?index=0x6759a508033c7ff2978ef6a2568e2483d8d4d4f9f268734b89c85bdf50787dccbf07922b
- Source: https://elizaos.ai
- Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 6 upvotes, 1 comment

Eliza Research presents Eliza, a personal AI agent that remembers, schedules, connects to tools and acts across the user's devices, built on elizaOS, which it describes as a fully open source operating system for agents. The page says elizaOS is auditable, extensible and can run anywhere, from a laptop to a phone. Eliza Research also promotes slop.cash, a platform where users post problems, fund them, and contributors, human and machine, earn rewards for moving them forward.

## 10. Onchain Login with User Info

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Onchain-Login-with-User-Info?index=0x675f44bc53e64f5b25a402ab8eb99c4f80094774cb6266a2030d14726a542a948b4ca1a5
- Source: https://hackmd.io/@ilikesymmetry/onchain-login
- Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 5 upvotes, 2 comments

## 11. Deep Funding

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Deep-Funding?index=0x675d67d69efa4e7b311e893a71a1395de4479db2f77215ce7d364805dc4c5909fa754c3d
- Source: https://warpcast.com/vitalik.eth/0xaced7a72
- Submitted by misha, 5 upvotes, 2 comments

Deep funding proposes combining two ideas: treating value as a graph, where the question becomes how much of the credit for one project belongs to another, and using distilled human judgement, where an open market of AIs proposes weights for all edges and a human jury spot-checks a random subset. The author says the graph approach has grown as a paradigm because contribution is hard to measure in the abstract, while "local" comparisons such as whether A or B is more valuable to C are more tractable. Under the proposed method, the submissions most compatible with the jury's answers determine the final output. The article links to deepfunding.org for the project.

## 12. babe, what's clanker?

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/babe-whats-clanker?index=0x6756f12d699a1b83b5a584c9aef17908eab7a2cda02a5db28a3d44004a5d8fb159bd157d
- Source: https://youtu.be/BOE5dOnKjOI?si=xt0nVUK2wfvuOG-0
- Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 3 upvotes, 5 comments

## 13. eu/acc

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/euacc?index=0x675d7b379ba610e34d278c1f3cab31ab6e2f68a3cf4dc07317d06d79e90512af200e16d5
- Source: https://euacc.com
- Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 5 upvotes, 4 comments

European Accelerationism (eu/acc) is a movement started in April 2024 that crowdsources a manifesto of proposals for saving Europe, with recommendations for cutting regulation, easing skilled immigration, and repealing the cookie consent law. The page reports that several proposals have since moved forward: the European Commission proposed cutting back the GDPR in April 2025, and a November 2025 digital omnibus proposal was described as drastically reducing the GDPR and AI Act. It also states that Ursula von der Leyen announced in January 2026 that the EU will create a pan-European business entity called EU Inc., and that the Netherlands will tax stock options when sold rather than when exercised from 2027.

## 14. AL #87: Ethereum's New North Star

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AL-87-Ethereums-New-North-Star?index=0x675877d847eed005bac0e41d6d4191e03b8eab744853ed157d0aea307b56b2b54187fa42
- Source: https://research.auditless.com/p/al-87-ethereums-new-north-star?isFreemail=true&post_id=152756842&publication_id=357894&r=3ptcv&triedRedirect=true
- Submitted by tim, 7 upvotes, 1 comment

Jon Charbonneau argues that Ethereum needs a North Star and that it should improve the L1 for apps, a view the author of this piece calls a surprising shift from advocating rollups. The author says choosing the wrong North Star is a risk, since EOS, Tron and Neo were seen as credible threats as recently as 2019 but no longer appear in the same sentence. The author is more confident in staying close to developers than in betting on which architecture, such as enshrined rollups, will work best for most use cases.

## 15. Is crypto still a protest movement?

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Is-crypto-still-a-protest-movement?index=0x675af287a408763dbf385d64e69294481a7e5b924772a690039ea21ecc92d33ccd0bacba
- Source: https://www.danielmcglynn.com/is-crypto-still-a-protest-movement
- Submitted by danielmcglynn.eth, 6 upvotes, 0 comments

The author, Daniel McGlynn, argues that Open Money should remain protest money: an alternative to the dominant narrative and the legacy financial system rather than a mainstream product line. He points to crypto ETFs, institutional money, and political involvement as signs that crypto has begun to feel like part of the establishment over the last 12 to 18 months. He presents Open Money's permissionless, non-custodial, and interoperable features as ways for individuals to insulate themselves against coming economic and demographic change.

## 16. ‘It’s a pure form of gambling’: memecoins boom after Trump election

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Its-a-pure-form-of-gambling-memecoins-boom-after-Trump-election?index=0x675aa305939d1603929f32401ee73264c319914af456d3abe9ce1bce01ea749e2b5b9aea
- Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/12/gambling-memecoins-donald-trump-hawk-tuah-girl-haliey-welch-crypto
- Submitted by misha, 5 upvotes, 3 comments

Memecoins have boomed since Donald Trump's election win, but experts quoted in the article say they have no fundamental value. Carol Alexander, a finance professor at the University of Sussex, says "There is no value whatsoever," and trader Sam Baker calls them "a pure form of gambling." The Hawk memecoin, linked to Haliey Welch, was worth $490m hours after its 4 December launch but had fallen to a market capitalisation of $17m, with Coffeezilla describing the launch as a "rug pull." According to CoinMarketCap, memecoins were valued at about $20bn at the start of the year and are now worth $118bn.

## 17. Daimo Pay

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Daimo-Pay?index=0x675758a972d5576c9246781446c92bec36ffccd739a13e33c1574953b54a6f708523d7e5
- Source: https://x.com/daimo_eth/status/1866180466442940661
- Submitted by tim, 5 upvotes, 2 comments

## 18. CEO Murder & the Dark Enlightenment

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/CEO-Murder-and-the-Dark-Enlightenment?index=0x6756e4cef0ac82d3991b707926802fa9001d0885f1f7d22655bac46aa7e2b805a535ae38
- Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/joshuacitarella/p/ceo-murder-and-the-dark-enlightenment
- Submitted by misha, 4 upvotes, 3 comments

The author argues that the killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on December 4th marks a decisive political shift, with legal legitimacy eroded across the spectrum. Citing online celebration of the shooting, the piece says the internet from both left and right cheered it, and that a Facebook post by United Healthcare about the death drew over 23,000 laughing emojis before removal. It argues that Alvin Bragg's Trump prosecution, the Trump conviction and Joe Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden have made law appear a political tool, and that liberal Enlightenment values, which the piece describes as a victory of the left, may be abandoned as power politics returns.

## 19. It's time to vote for the winners of the Devconflict writing contest

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Its-time-to-vote-for-the-winners-of-the-Devconflict-writing-contest?index=0x6757144d302693af5937eab86e7aa54d4390645975ce2b9de2d7868d5281e59075952fa2
- Source: https://x.com/KiwiNewsHQ/status/1866150153805242744
- Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 6 upvotes, 0 comments

## 20. Solana Roadmap

- Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Solana-Roadmap?index=0x675ef6dc26c044405c477f2bc84f094cb38f344d95bfed10129531d04e63cd53229b03d4
- Source: https://www.solanaroadmap.com
- Submitted by tim, 3 upvotes, 6 comments