We don't need to panic, but we need to get serious.

I wish people would stop referencing metaculus. It's just a random survey platform without any mechanism to filter people w/ authority from randos on the internet. And there aren't enough votes in there for the results to be meaningful anyway. (@dallairedemers and I single-handedly moved the timeline down a few months back with our votes)

Here's what we know to be fact:

1) Quantum computers at sufficient scale will break crypto at the most fundamental level imaginable..
2) Experts like Scott (who advises the EF and has spent his whole career in this field) are striking a different tone about the timeline than ever before.
3) Resource estimates for running Shor's Algorithm have dropped by 20x over the course of this year, reflecting progress in error correction kicked off a year ago by Google's Willow Chip: arxiv.org/abs/2505.15917 (this doesn't even account for the 10x improvement of LDPC codes over surface codes) @hosseeb What does this imply for a Q-Day timeline? It's notoriously difficult to predict how the development of a quantum computer will play out. And because of fatigue around past hype cycles with Quantum, people have just become habitually bearish about the timelines.

My four predictions (featured recently @CoinDesk coindesk.com/consensus-maga…) about the state of zero-knowledge cryptography and what to expect in 2023. Here's the take:

1/ First of all, zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography is a game-changer for ensuring the privacy, security and integrity of applications in both #Web2 and #Web3. The rapid investment and development of zero-knowledge proofs is a signal that the technology is ready for prime time.

2/

Today, I’m proud to share that I’ve been promoted to CEO of @AleoHQ, where I’ll get to be copilot to the incredible @1howardwu and lead the rest of our stellar team as we strive to ship our next-gen platform for secure & scalable apps to the world. A few things I’d like to say 🧵 In my @usarmy career before starting in crypto I’ve seen firsthand how inequitable global finance can be, and how a rigid system that is often corrupted can be at best inefficient and at worst directly harmful, esp. to those outside of the developed world

a16z.com/2019/12/23/a-g…

This week @Starkware announced plans to launch a token to decentralize Starknet: medium.com/starkware/part…

But reading these posts, the plan for decentralization isn’t convincing. Instead, it feels like a naked cash-out opportunity for StarkNet investors and team 🧵👇

1/17 To recap: #StarkNet is an L2 ZK rollup on top of Ethereum. Today, a single party (@StarkWareLtd) fulfills all the roles in that system - it (1) bridges tokens L1 → L2, (2) sequences txs, (3) batch executes those txs inside of a STARK proof, and (4) sends the results back

2/

Zero-knowledge proofs are the future for secure, trust-less, and scalable computing for Web3. How @z_prize is going to help accelerate that future 👇🧵 #zeroknowledge cryptography has countless applications in Web3. At a high-level though, their main utility is to 🔒secure🔒 and 📈scale 📈decentralized networks.