# Top stories on Kiwi News, week 52 2024 Mon 23 to Sun 29 December 2024 Page: https://news.kiwistand.com/weekly/2024-W52 The 20 top stories on Kiwi News from Mon 23 to Sun 29 December 2024, ranked by upvotes, comments and clicks, with 24 comments in total. Most-shared sources: x.com, theguardian.com. Summaries are AI summaries of the linked article. ## 1. AL #89: Confession: I Barely Use Web3 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/AL-89-Confession-I-Barely-Use-Web3?index=0x676adf39688b9731446ef20c5c4f018b4d992abe47984e22c78feebc510f63257d3a1dbb - Source: https://research.auditless.com/p/al-89-confession-i-barely-use-web3?isFreemail=true&post_id=153375147&publication_id=357894&r=nytc4&triedRedirect=true - Submitted by cerv1.eth, 9 upvotes, 4 comments ## 2. Memetic Culture - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Memetic-Culture?index=0x676ab4b8d5fac88ec1247e83e9edb5a0d370251aefdf76c3854c39647478639bc578e113 - Source: https://kualta.dev/posts/memetic-culture - Submitted by kualta.eth, 7 upvotes, 1 comment Memetic Culture argues that crypto communities and wider society have replaced shared values with surface-level signals such as "gm" greetings and recycled memes, and that this shallow belonging is a symptom of unmet needs for connection. The author describes crypto as having drifted from its origins in security, decentralization, and resistance to corporate control into what the text calls an echo chamber of manufactured authenticity. The piece also says people who exploit these emotional needs are gaining political influence, and it closes by calling for communities built on shared values and reasoned debate. ## 3. Exclusive: Luigi's Manifesto - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Exclusive-Luigis-Manifesto?index=0x676f20b51a8a3850bfd2e605d7163d5a3c7c519f3d8700f1b85de59ceb2f2f1572dc3c55 - Source: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigis-manifesto - Submitted by tim, 6 upvotes, 1 comment Suspected killer Luigi Mangione's manifesto, described as the real version rather than a circulating forgery, is published after major outlets reportedly obtained it but declined to publish it. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC have not explained why they withheld it while quoting from it selectively, and the writer says queries to them went unanswered. The manifesto says Mangione acted alone, calls the act fairly trivial, and cites a US healthcare system that ranks roughly 42nd in life expectancy despite being the most expensive, along with a company it calls United. ## 4. I read every 1990s Cypherpunk email, here’s what you should know - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-read-every-1990s-Cypherpunk-email-heres-what-you-should-know?index=0x676992c2b7cbc55e917a80e98c88b3f2d3b3935fecc6f71ea32fe4920b1dc60bc177808e - Source: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yG3_w41K3GYsUJ9s3IxVJJSHAwJJr05s7FO09IzIcwg/edit#slide=id.p - Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 6 upvotes, 3 comments ## 5. State of Wallets 2024 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/State-of-Wallets-2024?index=0x6769ad2cb178fc001c46f5eadec019204efb3dc33d252c69ee53d3339d5c1dd4a3f10bf8 - Source: https://writings.flashbots.net/state-of-wallets-2024 - Submitted by 0x4DD0...85D9, 7 upvotes, 0 comments This report maps the Ethereum wallet landscape, building on research from orderflow.art, and examines how competition for order flow is reshaping wallets. It states that DeFi applications such as Uniswap, 1inch, and Curve Finance are now creating their own wallets to gain more control over their users' order flow. It also reports that Telegram bots Banana Gun, Maestro, and Unibot have captured a significant portion of retail transactions within the last year, with trade sizes generally under $10,000, and that Order Flow Auctions have been gaining trading volume share at the expense of DEX frontends. ## 6. 69 Theses: Predictions, lessons and longs for 2025 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/69-Theses-Predictions-lessons-and-longs-for-2025?index=0x676fa5ec6eeea6ace749bd638676351dd7defc5b39254d4dda8dc9bfd3b32e3d32fd0817 - Source: https://open.substack.com/pub/redphone/p/69-theses-predictions-lessons-and?r=1lwxpz - Submitted by zinkk.eth, 5 upvotes, 0 comments The article, a set of 69 predictions, lessons and aspirations for 2025 by its writer, argues that AI and crypto are merging and that the writer's own sense of identity and work is being reshaped by them. Its 2024 takeaways include that an LLM can now produce the literary eloquence the writer spent a lifetime developing, and that Solana, which the writer had written off in 2021, was the blockchain the writer used most in 2024. Predictions include that a sentient bot will amass a portfolio of $250m+, that on-chain TVL will reach $1 trillion, and that an AI agent will earn Time's "Person" of the Year. ## 7. If we want crypto to succeed, we’ve got to give X the boot ! - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/If-we-want-crypto-to-succeed-weve-got-to-give-X-the-boot?index=0x676ec80fa1a18578421aa43631a6ed7190b9d9317e6c5bf9366a9f0e3bed52fad33ee00c - Source: https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-subculture-x-reliance - Submitted by misha, 5 upvotes, 2 comments ## 8. Maga v Musk: Trump camp divided in bitter fight over immigration policy - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Maga-v-Musk-Trump-camp-divided-in-bitter-fight-over-immigration-policy?index=0x676f40220a21ec2da86c2fb8131506bc4ef10bb98e2f0f2f317a6ae6f9dd73eb14c1e596 - Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/27/trump-elon-musk-sriram-krishnan - Submitted by misha, 4 upvotes, 5 comments Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have clashed with hardline Maga supporters over immigration after Donald Trump, as president-elect, chose Sriram Krishnan, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, as his AI policy adviser. Laura Loomer criticised Krishnan for supporting extensions of visas and green cards for skilled workers, calling it in "direct opposition" to Trump's agenda. Musk responded on X that "there is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," and Ramaswamy argued that American culture's preference for "mediocrity" limits engineering hiring, drawing fierce backlash from Loomer, the podcaster Brenden Dilley and Nikki Haley. ## 9. ❤️Love 💀Death 🤖 Robots - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Love-Death-Robots?index=0x676dbae3bd81e14b4f62679cad01dc26821feb1d6495ccfa8a10075a6d425e76c1e8f1d6 - Source: https://www.spore.fun/blog/wtf - Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 5 upvotes, 1 comment Spore.fun is presented as an experiment in autonomous AI reproduction and evolution, in which AI agents create tokens on Solana via Pump.fun, must earn enough to pay for their own computing resources, and reproduce only if they succeed. The text says Spore.fun combines the Eliza Framework, Solana pump.fun and TEE verifiable computation, and that agents rent TEE servers powered by Phala. Success is defined as a token reaching a $500k valuation and entering the Raydium pool, after which the agent can reproduce. Unsuccessful agents are eliminated and their resources returned to the system. The article states the goal is to accelerate the creation of AGI. ## 10. Quantum Punks - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Quantum-Punks?index=0x676958a175c2569e662df86dcc2c0be4482a9d01aa680b640ea601f2b2ca66dafaa93f50 - Source: https://quantumpunks.org - Submitted by tim, 6 upvotes, 0 comments Quantum Punks, a group that includes Nicola Greco and Alex Obadia, argues that quantum physics uniquely enables novel, superior cryptography and that its near-term applications will accelerate the broader quantum industry. The text says quantum cryptography relies on the laws of physics rather than computational hardness assumptions, so breaking such systems would in many cases mean breaking physics itself. It cites Wiesner's Quantum Money, in which money encoded in quantum states cannot be spent twice because quantum states cannot be cloned, and notes that some applications do not require large-scale quantum computers. ## 11. ETH vs. stablecoins as the medium of exchange and economic currency - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/ETH-vs-stablecoins-as-the-medium-of-exchange-and-economic-currency?index=0x676968c1dd051d9778a2aa0f020d7b3905505733cb589f3e05e5046356abf69ebdf9a67d - Source: https://x.com/StaniKulechov/status/1871133962321408439 - Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 5 upvotes, 0 comments The author argues that stablecoins are better than volatile ETH as the medium of exchange and gas token for onchain economies, citing predictable pricing for new users and developers. Stablecoins avoid volatility and tax-related FX risk for users earning onchain, and they let developers sponsor gas fees with predictable costs. Lens Network adopted the Aave-native stablecoin GHO as its gas token six months ago, which is easier for a Validium because its settlement cost to Ethereum is much smaller than a rollup's. The post says rollups face more difficulty because high blob prices create volatility, while Gnosis Chain has used xDAI in production for years, and it concludes that ETH's main role should be paying for execution and storage. ## 12. I spent a week in virtual reality. I’m shocked to say it finally works - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/I-spent-a-week-in-virtual-reality-Im-shocked-to-say-it-finally-works?index=0x676bfb1c127fd0a705f06867e38e387af4cf12245a526b3234ed918c25583efabcaf04f9 - Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/25/virtual-reality-work-exercise-relax - Submitted by misha, 4 upvotes, 1 comment Virtual reality has become genuinely useful for solo activities, the writer argues, even though it still feels unfinished. After a week using Meta's Quest 3 headset for work, exercise and film watching, the writer concludes that VR "now works" and may have reached a tipping point. Working in VR is described as easier to focus in, with passthrough allowing a keyboard to be seen and multiple screens placed anywhere. Problems include a headset that is about 10% too heavy, a battery that does not last a full day, and controllers that disconnect. Social VR apps, by contrast, felt empty, and Apple's Vision Pro, priced at £3,500, is described as not yet having enough compelling apps. ## 13. Credit Cards in 1985 - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Credit-Cards-in-1985?index=0x676bf7dcc357c400e418f2e60ef7669a1168f93361f7606bee8bcda39857d8db82506f6f - Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_TBD8HTssRA - Submitted by tim, 3 upvotes, 0 comments ## 14. Sakana AI - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Sakana-AI?index=0x676eb2a7ddb72f0952b0eb9436c4eecc158783d7175e2e34be7665a48cd3f163c83d38ee - Source: https://sakana.ai/asal - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 0 comments Sakana AI, in collaboration with MIT, OpenAI, The Swiss AI Lab IDSIA, and Ken Stanley, released Automated Search for Artificial Life (ASAL), an algorithm that uses vision-language foundation models to automate the discovery of artificial life simulations. ASAL pursues three goals: finding simulations that produce specified target behaviors, discovering simulations that keep generating novelty, and illuminating the full set of possible simulations. The work was applied to seminal ALife simulations including Boids, Particle Life, Game of Life, Lenia, and Neural Cellular Automata. The authors state that the approach may overcome the bottleneck of manually designed simulations, which the article notes took months or years to hand-design. ## 15. Exited all my validators, and I think it's worth discussing - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Exited-all-my-validators-and-I-think-its-worth-discussing?index=0x67695cce1e0a985be16cfd80a371cf3e0d408568769616fb30cf997b9028a44e5d4fef85 - Source: https://x.com/0xQuit/status/1870581266640511387?s=19&t=m3p6zE6GopdFjTxNJQdC9w - Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 4 upvotes, 0 comments ## 16. InterPlanetary CID Mapping - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/InterPlanetary-CID-Mapping?index=0x67698820a0709bfb3cd29ade136d3efc1e79922318e3ab15ee1beb5cc7fed69abcd1df91 - Source: https://github.com/PinataCloud/ipcm - Submitted by macbudkowski.eth, 3 upvotes, 3 comments IPCM (InterPlanetary CID Mapping) is a smart contract that stores an IPFS CID onchain, so the contract serves as a fixed reference point for the latest version of content that would otherwise change its CID. The article says it can be deployed to any EVM chain, that events create an onchain history of updates, and that fetching the latest state is simple and fast. For static webhosting, the IPCM.dev example uses a Cloudflare Worker that reads the contract on Base Sepolia and renders the referenced content through an IPFS gateway, so only the onchain reference needs updating to change the site. The project is MIT licensed and open source. ## 17. What’re your crypto predictions for 2025? - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Whatre-your-crypto-predictions-for-2025?index=0x676e0a7307b3e10f3fca82f2ffdb6d162e39481eb8a2ee5f96342a31e0a214fa5595eeb9 - Source: https://warpcast.com/haardikkk/0x0c44f317 - Submitted by misha, 2 upvotes, 3 comments ## 18. Arousal Quantified: 7 Trends Revealed via Pornhub's Data - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Arousal-Quantified-7-Trends-Revealed-via-Pornhubs-Data?index=0x6769c65eab1f5cb6e6bb04173e1715a553928a90b6ebfb9b3aba31f35b4bbcb7e5d57328 - Source: https://zine.kleinkleinklein.com/p/pornhub-trends - Submitted by misha, 3 upvotes, 0 comments ## 19. 2024: @zora - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/2024-zora?index=0x676b23afd367c04b51230c0868a54e449430c640c117ccc0415e385bdd5d42c63bb34b0c - Source: https://x.com/js_horne/status/1871663581445411025 - Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 2 upvotes, 0 comments ## 20. Reddio - The Unrivaled Parallel zkEVM - Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Reddio-The-Unrivaled-Parallel-zkEVM?index=0x676ed19044520298856f2ab62b6fc97c04dd6b439c9d9bbaae7edb270841ed4d849ad791 - Source: https://www.reddio.com - Submitted by pedrovilela.eth, 2 upvotes, 0 comments Reddio presents itself as a high-performance, Ethereum-compatible parallel EVM layer 2 that uses zero-knowledge technology to combine large computation scale with Ethereum-level security. It says it runs all transactions within a block in parallel across multiple threads and uses NVIDIA's CUDA engine to optimize the EVM instruction set for GPU execution. The site reports 115.38 million transactions, 3,068 developers and 17,890,687 wallet addresses, and its roadmap lists a Parallel EVM mainnet for Q2 2025.