Verkle Trees
I always enjoy reading Vitalik&#x27;s posts.<p>I remember many years ago back when Bitcoin was fun. I traded it back and forth with friends for pizza and such. I even used it once at a hip restaurant in town. Some Bitcoin forum (the name of which escapes me atm) had a bitcoin drip, which would give you a free Bitcoin every once in a while. But then Bitcoin&#x27;s value exploded, it&#x27;s not very <i>useful</i> anymore since transaction fees are so high and its value is so volatile, no one can mine it on their home machines, and its ecological disaster. But it used to be just a cool, kind of hacker niche, and was fun to think about the underlying technology and possibilities.<p>Vitalik&#x27;s explorations with Ethereum have kind of a similar vibe to me. It&#x27;s neat to think about the tech and how it works, and to try to come up with attacks and such. And if it ever moves to Proof of Stake, I won&#x27;t have that guilty conscience playing with it. Of course, all of this on top of a $100 billion valuation is kind of frightening and weird. I hate to say it, but I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;d mind a crazy crypto crash, just to explore this technology some more without the crazy monetary incentives.