Everything we publish is open, dated, and written to still be worth reading in five years.
Reports are long-form surveys of a quadrant. Essays argue a single idea. Analysis follows the data. Notes are fieldwork in progress.
The Sovereign Stack: local-first software meets confidential compute
Two research programs that grew up apart — applications that keep data on the device, and hardware that proves what it ran — are converging into a single architecture. This report maps the stack layer by layer, profiles eleven teams building it, and models the financial infrastructure it unlocks: custody without custodians, compliance without disclosure, markets that settle in attested enclaves.
Intent is the new order book
Solver networks now route a majority of large DEX flow. We measure concentration across 90 days of fills and ask whether intent systems re-created the intermediary they were meant to remove.
Attestation as a market primitive
Remote attestation lets strangers trust hardware they don't own. The financial applications begin with custody and end with markets whose matching engines can prove their own fairness.
Sync engines and the end of the request
A technical reading of five production sync engines — replication semantics, conflict behavior, offline windows — and why the request/response web is quietly becoming a replication web.
The FHE cost curve, revisited
Fully homomorphic inference was 10,000× slower than plaintext in 2021. We re-run our benchmark suite on 2026 hardware and schemes, and chart what the curve implies for private finance.
Stablecoins are the eurodollar of software
Offshore dollars rebuilt global banking outside its regulators once before. The parallel is closer than it looks, and instructive about where settlement migrates next.
Field note: running a light client where the internet is bad
Verification on commodity hardware over unreliable links is the real test of decentralization. Notes from three weeks of measurements outside the data-center map.
Who is liable when the agent trades?
Autonomous agents holding balances collide with a legal system built for persons. A survey of the doctrine, the precedents, and the contractual workarounds emerging in practice.
Annual survey: the state of the frontier, 2026
Our yearly reading of all six quadrants — what compounded, what stalled, and the three theses we retired in public.
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