Everything web3, crypto, defi, degen
In brief Bitcoin’s energy consumption remains large, at an estimated 138TWh as of 2025. Recent academic research explores the broader environmental cost of Bitcoin mining, adding in carbon dioxide, water, e-waste, and land impacts. Policy pressure is rising as governments focus on what kind of power Bitcoin mining uses, where it is sited, and what…
In brief Penn State researchers found that “very rude” prompts outperformed “very polite” ones in accuracy. The results contradict prior studies claiming LLMs respond better to a courteous tone. Findings imply that tone itself, once dismissed as etiquette, may be a hidden variable in prompt engineering. Being polite might make you a better person, but…
In brief Salaries and token incentives declined across nearly all roles and regions, according to Dragonfly’s latest crypto compensation report. Western Europe remains a dominant labor hub, while Asia’s hiring share nearly doubled year-over-year. Most crypto firms remain remote-first, with slower hiring and a widening gap between top executives and staff pay. Crypto salaries are…
In brief The 6GW agreement gives OpenAI the option to buy up to 160 million AMD shares while securing Instinct MI450 chips—its boldest hedge yet against Nvidia’s dominance. AMD’s software gap may still haunt the deal, but the equity tie makes OpenAI a partner in fixing it. Wall Street cheered, sending AMD shares skyrocketing as…
In brief Reve integrates web browsing, pulling real logos and references directly into edits. Nano Banana sets a new standard for character consistency, but suffers from strict censorship. Qwen 3 Omni Flash excels at multi-element compositions, but lags on subject fidelity. Local models like Flux Kontext or Qwen Image Edit provide full creative freedom without…
In brief Mitchell Amador, CEO of Immunefi, told Decrypt at Token2049 in Singapore that AI tools once limited to security firms are now accessible to groups like Lazarus, enabling massive attacks. Bug bounties have paid out over $100 million but have “hit the limits” as there aren’t “enough eyeballs” to provide necessary coverage, he said…
In brief Schwartz is concluding his 13-year tenure as CTO at Ripple and will join its board to guide the company’s long-term vision. He plans to spend more time on an XRPL node, exploring new XRP use cases, and engaging in hands-on coding for community projects. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and decentralization remain central to his…
In brief A Minecraft builder encoded a 5-million-parameter language model entirely via the game’s redstone logic, spanning hundreds of millions of blocks. The system works (in principle) but is excruciatingly slow; responses can take hours even with speed boosts. It’s a proof of concept, a technical art piece, and a reminder that computation can live…
In brief Scientists etched working gear trains on a chip, driven solely by photon momentum. The devices could someday power microfluidic pumps, reconfigurable optics, and tiny surgical tools. Efficiency remains extremely low, making the work an elegant proof-of-concept, not a product. Researchers have built microscopic machines—complete with working gears, racks, and pinions—that run entirely on…
In brief OpenAI’s GDPval benchmark tested real jobs—legal briefs, code, reports—and found AI matching human experts at breakneck speed. Claude and GPT-5 outperformed seasoned professionals in 44 occupations, improving threefold in just over a year. The study showed the first wave of disruption will hit office-based jobs, from coders to lawyers and journalists. OpenAI unveiled…
