Coinmonks

This "long-held fervor" that culminated in WASM started back before Node.js existed, so back then, "Javascript" was just a thing browsers did (except for, say, Windows Scripting Host's support of it.) The fervor back then wasn't really driven by a desire for a ubiquitous anything; it was driven specifically by people thinking about browsers, and what is required to program web-apps in browsers.

What people have wished for, since... oh, 2001 or so, is the ability to write web-app frontends without needing to grok and deal with the awful runtime semantics of Javascript—the way you do when you write Javascript, yes, but also the way you do when you write in a language that directly transpiles to Javascript, like TypeScript or ClojureScript.

Languages like TypeScript may add semantics on top of the JS runtime's semantics, but they can't get away from the fact that the JS runtime is the "abstract machine" they program, any more than e.g. Clojure can get away from the fact that the JVM is the abstract machine it programs. That's why none of these languages were ever seen as a "saving grace" from the "problem of Javascript", the way WASM is.

WASM has its own abstract machine (which runs efficiently in browsers), which finally frees people from the tyranny of the Javascript-runtime-as-abstract-machine.

It's great that it's also now replacing the Javascript-runtime-abstract-machine in other contexts (e.g. Node-like server-side usage, plain-V8-like embedded usage) but that was…

I have been building and managing communities for eight years, three in Blockchain for the Cardano Foundation and Komodo Platform. Lots of wins. Especially interested in privacy-preserving tech. My background is in digital marketing. I'm good at initiation, delivery, and I'm adaptable.

Let's talk about winning.

- Network Operator Course. From the decision to deliver, it took five weeks to deliver a course. We got 2.6K sign-ups and a 40% completion rate.

- Third-Party App Program. I conceptualized and delivered a third-party app program which is now the largest channel in terms of clicks for that project (around 3K to 4K a month). In contrast, the impact of the annual virtual summit got about 10K. So it's x4 for $0 budget.

- Viral Campaign. I ran an infographic contest that generated some great visuals and grew an email list by 20% (from 10K to 12K).

- Guides. I wrote 'How to Twitter' (https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-twitter-f0f6f339c40e) and a couple of pocket guides for Komodo (published on Coin Monks), and Verus Coin.

What have I learned? My meta approach explores value chains and brokers relationships. Top-down models and hierarchy can be virtuous. However, they also limit decision making and the number of actions that can be taken. If you apply the same top-down models in your organization across a community, it will inherit these limitations. You will limit content and engagement.

What does a good community look like? A good community is one in which its…

That is never going to happen.

This is a constant theme on Reddit at r/programming. It is based upon nothing but fear of web technologies (yes, I literally mean fear as a raw and savage emotion) and a lack of understanding what WASM is. It is best to think of WASM as an embeddedable VM for JavaScript rather than opposed to JavaScript. https://webassembly.org/

First of all JS cannot ever be replaced by WASM. This is a stated project design goal of WASM. You have to understand that Web Assembly is there to fill the proprietary application add-in void of things like Flash using open standards safely in a way that is technology agnostic. Web Assembly is not there to serve as a crutch for people afraid of web technologies.

Secondly, there will never be direct DOM access from WebAssembly for security reasons. While that is the nail in the coffin on this matter there is the more practical consideration that developers, even those who write JavaScript full time for a living, tend to be deathly afraid of touching the DOM. If this were a reality the inevitable overhead (think of all the dependencies, frameworks, and abstractions developers cannot live without because the DOM is scary) would likely be just as high, or higher, than writing your own DOM library embedded within your WARM instance.

Thirdly, you can have a DOM interface in a WASM instance. This is part of the web components API, but DOM trees created for the WASM instances are islands to the WASM instance…

A hardware wallet is a physical device that stores some private keys in a tamper-proof secure element. Those private keys can be regenerated from a recovery phrase[1] which acts as a seed to regenerate the keys in a deterministic way.

The hardware device is typically itself secured by means of a pin. Without the pin, the device can’t be unlocked so can’t be used, too many incorrect pin attempts will brick the device.

So the answers to your questions are:

1) If you entrust it to a safe deposit box then if someone steals it, it is worthless without the pin.

2) If the safe is itself destroyed and with it the device (this is also the case if you have it in a safe deposit box and the depository is burned down or something) then the private keys (and transitively the funds) can still be recovered using the recovery phrase. So if you have securely stored your recovery phrase and are able to retrieve it even this kind of problem won’t cause the accounts to be lost.

So what people tend to recommend is choosing good secure storage for your pin, keeping reasonable physical care of the device, taking the recovery phrase and splitting it into parts and storing those parts separately. If one of the parts is destroyed then you will need to urgently replace the hardware wallet, move the funds and securely store the new recovery phrase because if not you don’t have a fallback if the hardware wallet is destroyed, but otherwise you are good.

[1]…

DeFi is a very innovative field indeed. What I find most appealing is that some popular derivative protocols are yet inefficient in some ways, which means there is a lot of room for new solutions to come along.

For instance, I'm interested in options trading, and there is a lot of competing protocols [1] each one with it's advantages and disadvantages. One of the most popular, Hegic [2], employs liquidity pools pricing options at a really expensive value due to a simplified pricing model (good for writers).

Shameless plug: I myself have been playing with smart contracts in my free time and deployed a tokenizable options trading decentralized exchange [3] (on kovan testnet nonetheless!) trying to address some os these points. Learned a lot implmementing it, and I find amazing that anyone can come up with their own DeFi solution.

[1] https://medium.com/coinmonks/an-update-of-a-comparison-of-decentralized-options-platforms-91b14d3a6170

[2] https://www.hegic.co/

[3] https://github.com/TCGV/DeFiOptions

I see this take a lot, and there's some truths to it, but I'd like to take the other side of the argument.

These stablecoin issuers are enormous buyers of US treasuries: "Tether Holdings owned $97.6 billion worth of US Treasuries in June 2024, a new high. Hence, Tether now owns more US Treasuries than the governments of Germany, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Australia. Hence, Tether is now the 18th largest holder of US Treasury bonds" (https://medium.com/coinmonks/tether-usdt-is-the-third-largest-buyer-of-us-treasury-bonds-a91374a93a7a)

Dollars are also more dominant as a reserve currency in stablecoins (~97%) than they are in real-world trade (https://digitalchamber.org/stablecoinreport/).

I.e., we see stablecoins as extending dollar dominance, not reducing it.