Molly White

https://www.mollywhite.net/ "I research and write critically about the cryptocurrency industry, blockchains, the idea known as "web3", and the tech industry more broadly. I'm a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and an affiliate of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society. I run the website Web3 is Going Just Great , where I highlight examples of how cryptocurrencies, web3 projects, and the industry surrounding them are failing to live up to their promises. I also publish a regular newsletter, and have written a series of essays about blockchains."

Many people have alaready made sense of web3. The problem with web3? People involved in the space don't care. They are either gullible or know exactly what they are doing (scamming and claiming something that has nothing to do blockchains). One of the earliest articles that already made sense is 5 years old this year: - Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-wit… - And the follow up, Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future, https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-… We've yet to see a single "making sense" cryptobro engage with any of the points in the article. I'm not even talking about the more recent ones like Moxie Marlinspike's My first impressions of web3, https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html, or Molly White's collection of posts on blockchains and web3, https://blog.mollywhite.net/ There are more, of course. But they are all dismissed by crypto people because they don't care as long as crypto is useful for getting rich quick schemes. It's not here to save the world, or help the disadvantaged, or whatever other bullshit they sling your way.

You could have a _somewhat_ static blog and incorporate something like Webmentions[0] for comments or replies. For example, Molly White's microblog[1] shows the following text below the post: Have you responded to this post on your own site? Send a webmention[0]! Note: Webmentions are moderated for anti-spam purposes, so they will not appear immediately. I find this method to be a sweet spot between generating content on your own pace, while allowing other people to "post" to your website, but not relying on a third-party service like Disqus. [0] https://indieweb.org/Webmention [1] https://www.mollywhite.net/micro/entry/202511101848

My Substack newsletter is literally a copy and paste from my blog - I built a custom tool for it: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Apr/4/substack-observable/ Everything substantial I write goes on my blog. The one challenge I'm having at the moment is where to put short "thoughts" that aren't accompanied by a link. I used to use Twitter for those, but now I'm cross-posting to Bluesky and Mastodon and Twitter - but cross-posting a "thought" doesn't feel great. Things like this: https://bsky.app/profile/simonwillison.net/post/3lko5bg3c4s2d I may have to invent a fourth content type for my blog (which is currently just entries, bookmarks or quotes) for this kind of very-short-form post with no link. Molly White started doing that recently so I may borrow her design: https://www.mollywhite.net/micro

Molly White had excellent writeups for the entire trial. She even did excellent multi-hour livestreams going over her notes for the portion of the trial where she was physically present at the courtroom. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/s/the-ftx-files

> I wasn't following the case closely enough, but did the prosecution have access to Alameda source code, or was it only FTX? This blog post [0] contains screenshots of git commits that were used as evidence in the trial. It only shows commits to FTX's source code, so I don't know if the prosecution also had access to Alameda's source code. Given how obviously incriminating those snippets are, I don't think SBF really tried to hide his crimes. I'm not sure then why they would architecture FTX such there are no signs of front-running in their code. Personally, my guess is that either A) the prosecution found evidence of front-running but thought that the case was air-tight enough already and they didn't want to confuse the jurors or B) Alameda didn't actually do any front-running. [0]: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-fraud-was-in-the-code

https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/1712461930424631499 This guy has been doing amazing work of live blogging the trial if you want to follow along. The biggest revelation that I found out that wasn't in Michael Lewis' book is that alameda got preferential trading treatment from FTX the exchange. Molly White has also been doing great work of doing daily summaries. https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/the-ftx-trial-day-six The winners of the FTX bankruptcy may end up to be those of us who bought up FTX bankruptcy claims for 20 cents on the dollar after it came out that FTX invested $500M in Anthropic back in 2021. That investment alone could be worth atleast 4x that value now.

Depending on your interests there are a lot of blogs out there. Beautiful Public Data (https://www.beautifulpublicdata.com/) is one of my best finds. Others I read via RSS include: Wladimir Palant's blog 'Almost Secure' https://palant.info/articles/ Ctrl.blog https://www.ctrl.blog/ Troy Hunt's blog https://www.troyhunt.com/ Molly White's newsletter https://newsletter.mollywhite.net

The incomparable Molly White has put together a contagion flow chart, which she is updating regularly: https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion See also her explanatory newsletter https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/

I follow https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ but it's biased and focusses on all the negative aspects of web3. Good glossary and she has written long-form essays as well https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/

I can't recommend "web3 is going great" highly enough for creating digestible explanations. There's good commentary on Axie Infinity (the Sky Mavis game which got hacked) and links to more detailed explanations here. https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=2022-03-29-0 (particularly by Molly White the owner of the web3isgoinggreat https://blog.mollywhite.net/axie-hack/ )

For a good laugh on this matter, I recommend reading this. https://blog.mollywhite.net/cryptoland-thread/ The level of incompetency and ironical jokes is overwhelming.

If (for some reason) you're not expecting it, I'll caution that a guy whose handle I won't promote gets into gross rhetoric on this regarding Jews, women's rights, and so on. Edit: also this transcription linked in the video's description is excellent (and redacts the gross asides I mentioned): https://blog.mollywhite.net/monster-qa

RE: Where the money went - The customer's money was used for the following purposes: 1. To pay for Alameda's (Sam Bankman Fried's hedge fund) and FTX's loses 2. Invest in venture capital and make acquisitions 3. Political donations 4. Charitable donations 5. Luxury real-estate, boats, etc. 6. "loans" (i.e. transfer of stolen funds) to FTX's top executives RE: Intent - Intent was easy to prove. All of Sam Bankman-Fried's fellow executives testified against him. In addition, Sam Bankman-Fried gave several interviews after FTX's collapse where he basically admitted he lied, fucked up, etc. Also, there was a lot of documents proving Sam Bankman-Fried lied. A good example is him saying FTX was fine on Twitter (X) and then it collapsed a few days later. Here are some good FTX resources: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/s/the-ftx-files - Molley White did a good job covering the trial. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/united-states-attorney-announces-… - This site contains the government's indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried. https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/FTX/Home-Index - A lot of the FTX bankruptcy documents are on this website.

> I want novel use-cases outside of just finance. There was a layman's NFT video suggesting they'd work as a way of doing concert tickets Most of those "novel ways" either make no sense or make trivial things hard and hard things nearly impossible. Most people peddling (there's no other word for it) these solutions have no idea how the real world works, or what the real world needs. > I'd love to see a readable, not-super-technical blog post that lays out the ideas people came up with (and which, if any, panned out) 6 years ago these two articles already described how many "novel ways" make no sense, no matter the intention. All the issues described remain, regardless of how many new buzzwords people come up with in the crypto space: - https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case… - https://medium.com/@kaistinchcombe/decentralized-and-trustless-crypto-… For newer descriptions of how these systems fail, see Molly White: https://blog.mollywhite.net/is-web3-bullshit/ (and other essays and talks) Edit: There's also The Edited Latecomer's Guide To Crypto https://www.mollywhite.net/annotations/latecomers-guide-to-crypto/

(I am the author of the op-ed. A better version is at [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer ].) I am very familiar with Agile and Scum, and I have seen the advantages over older paradigms such as waterfall. That being said, there are certain basic principles that the old methods and the new methods have in common. One such principle is the basic idea of having some sort of contact with the people who will be using the finished software and understanding their needs. The WMF does not do that. Instead, they build something in secret, throw it over the wall, and watch as the Wikipedia editors reject it as the steaming pile of crap that it is. They have done this again and again. Visual Editor. Flow. Mobile App. Knowledge Engine. All failures. All built without any input from the people who would be using them. Now I KNOW that the developers are not stupid or ignorant, and I have checked as best I can and it appears that every one of them was able to create high quality software that meets the customer's needs when they were working other places. That leaves me with management as the probable culprit. And I don't think that the problem is product managers like the author of the post above this one. I think the blame is at the very top. I would advise anyone who really wishes to understand these issues to at least read the pages linked to on my [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer ] page, especially […

so much japing, so little substance and to make a point LETS JUST SWITCH TO CAPS and round it off with a reddit comment - this is capitalism baby! Also, what is this headline even about? Why the bashing on fintech? I worked for 4 fintechs and communicated with many more, not a single one was blockchain related. Why is this even on hn? If you want to read proper criticism of blockchain, read Molly White's essays instead https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/

There's a more recent one: https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/

> He is describing stock exchanges: Good for him, whomever that is. She, on the other hand, talks a lot about crypto: https://www.mollywhite.net/resume/

This makes me speechless. Utter madness... Helpful reading by the same author: https://blog.mollywhite.net/cryptocurrency-market-caps-and-notional-va…

Molly White also wrote a review of this book: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/review-michael-lewiss-going-infini… The book exists in a strange space where it was mostly written before SBF's downfall (FTX collapsing and SBF fraud charges).

I just read a similar review: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/review-michael-lewiss-going-infini… > Far from providing an incisive inside view into a historic collapse that saw billions of dollars go up in flames at the expense of multitudes of people who were financially ruined, Lewis has still produced the hero story he originally set out to write. By the end of Lewis’s first ever conversation with Bankman-Fried, he writes: “I was totally sold”.

Molly White points out [0] that they seem to have gotten awfully vague about what they store, emphasizing in some contexts that the hashes on the chain are all that technically HAVE to be retained (and encouraging the assumption that those themselves are rigorously impossible to extrapolate personal information from)— but also insinuating to people at en-Orb-ment that they need to opt in to letting the company store full imagery of their iris scans in case the company decides to change the hash algorithm someday. [0] https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/worldcoin-a-solution-in-search-of

One thing to consider is that katherine became CEO at a very turbulant time at WMF. The previous ceo (lila) was extremely unpopular and facing a staff revolt [1]. Morale was terrible. Maybe katherine had a big severence agreement because she was walking into a shit show. [1] https://www.mollywhite.net/timelines/wikimedia/

Yikes. Does anyone have an idea of which orgs have significant exposure (like Molly White's FTX contagion graph[0])? [0] https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion

More in detail here: https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/oasis-defi-centralization

Molly's career is now based on being a 'cryptocurrency critic'... so as long as cryptocurrency is around, the answer is: until she stops She owns crypto and is paid by a Filecoin fund... https://www.mollywhite.net/crypto-disclosures

> Should a product officer be judged on whether the economy/financial markets change their mind on the value of risky things like crypto? Yes, absolutely. The whole point of product management is to find sustainable locations in the product space to create lasting value. People have been warning for years that the rise of crypto was unsustainable, a grift supported by locating dumb people with dollars to cash out the people who had large supplies of magic beans to sell them. It's not like FTX was an outlier. FTX was the largest and most spectacular failure so far. But it's part of a rich tradition of crime, grift, and plain old collapse going back at least to Mt Gox in 2014. And it's part of a large network of other failures and soon-to-be failures: https://www.mollywhite.net/etc/ftx-contagion

I agree. Four years ago I dove deeply into blockchain and token models for a marketplace project I was working on and failed to find any startups or initiatives that looked anything like a customer facing product or platform. Four years on and nothing has changed. Still no case studies, no success stories. Here's an illuminating transcript from Molly White (crypto sceptic) around the idea that blockchain is a 'solution looking for a problem' https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain-solutionism-lecture/