4 Projects I'm keeping my eye on

Random post, I guess.

As a parent, it can be hard to focus. And, by focus I mean come back to the same thing over-and-over enough and with enough of a cadence to get deep. Nothing like picking up the book at the side of the bed and realizing it hasn't been opened in a week or two.

Anwyays, Monday morning thinking... the four projects I'm most intersted in at the moment, in no particular order:

1. Ethereum home staking; this is meant to be an important part of the merge. It's not hard but it's got to get easier and simpler and that's the sort of problem I like to dig into. I've written a little intro to staking for those curious.
2. Lightning; this project has just been quietly building and eating the world. It's amazing to watch. I was just reading about Taro, being built on top of Lightning. It's amazing how few technical writeups have a line like this to explain an idea simply: "At a high level, Taro makes Bitcoin and Lightning multi-asset networks." Which means that today you put Sats into Lightning to move value across the network, but with Taro you can put any asset in and the network transparently converts it to BTC to move it anywhere in the world.
3. WalletConnect; They're building a protocol for web3 interconnectivity. What Twitter should have been for Web2.
4. ENS; Ethereum Name Service. Started as a DNS-like abstraction for complex Ethereum wallet addresses, got caught up a bit in the NFT craze (because your ENS name is an NFT), and maybe transitioning to a protocol layer on which things are being built.

It's funny. I wrote this becasue I wanted to be able to  remember what I'm interested in now when I look back from a few months or years in the future. But writing has this effect on thinking. Do you notice what the above has in common? I didn't until I wrote them all down.

They're all protocols. Layers on which people can innovate because the infrastructure is smarter. I accidentally built my career on integration protocols, but it turns out maybe it wasn't such an accident?

Additional reading:

ENS

Microsoft calls blockchain domains ‘the next big threat’ and you might want to listen

Blockchain domains will eventually replace website addresses

TechRadar proLars Seier Christensen

Lightning

If you want to get started quick and easy check out Umbrel.

WalletConnect