Dusting Off the Classic 2017 Altcoin Portfolio

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Donald Trump’s announcement​ of a U.S. "Crypto Strategic Reserve" has been making waves this week. The former president, who I remember dismissed Bitcoin as a scam, is now positioning the United States as the “Crypto Capital of the World.”

If 2017 me had heard this news, I would have been over the moon. Back then, the idea of the U.S. government openly embracing crypto and holding a reserve would have seemed like a dream come true. But looking at it now with a bit more experience and skepticism, I can’t help but wonder what is really driving this shift and what it means for the future of the industry.

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The reserve will include Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ADA). It is a mix of well-established assets and some surprising choices. Bitcoin and Ethereum make sense, but XRP, SOL, and ADA caught me off guard. It feels like dusting off a classic 2017 altcoin portfolio, especially with XRP and ADA making the cut. What made it even more baffling was when Trump posted about those three without any mention of BTC or ETH until later.

I can only guess that he was either ill-advised or had ulterior motives. Neither fills me with confidence. While the selection of assets raises some questions, it also shows a level of government interest in crypto that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago. How this reserve will be managed and what the long-term plan is remains to be seen, but it is a significant step.

This announcement also comes just days before the White House Crypto Summit, where Trump is expected to reinforce his pro-crypto stance. The U.S. already holds billions in seized Bitcoin, so turning that into an official reserve could have real implications for regulation, market stability, and national strategy. The real question is what this reserve is meant to accomplish. Is it about fostering innovation, strengthening economic security, or generating revenue?

Right now, this feels like an ambitious move with plenty of unanswered questions. It could shape U.S. crypto policy for years or end up being more about political messaging. Either way, the crypto world will be watching closely, and so will I.

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References:

• ​aljazeera, apnews, time, semafor, cnn, cnbc, reuters​

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Bullish on Pectra

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The Ethereum Pectra hard fork is coming soon.

Here’s what you need to know:

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Where Are We Now?

The Pectra upgrade has been rigorously tested on Ethereum’s major testnets. The Holesky testnet forked on February 24, 2025, while Sepolia followed on March 5, 2025. Despite some hiccups, like a misconfiguration on Holesky and transaction failures on Sepolia, the upgrade is moving forward. According to Tim Beiko, developers will finalize the mainnet launch date during the All Core Developers call today, with deployment expected by mid-March 2025.

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What’s in Pectra?

The official announcement lists 11 EIPs in Pectra.

Two weeks ago we covered EIP-7702 in detail. As a recap, some highlights are:

• ​EIP-7702: Introduces programmable wallets by enabling Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to execute smart contract code temporarily. This brings account abstraction closer to reality, allowing for features like gas sponsorship and transaction batching.
• ​EIP-7251: Increases the validator stake limit from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, simplifying staking operations. For example, a staker with 10,000 ETH can now run just 5 validator nodes instead of 312.
• ​EIP-7002: Lets fund owners trigger validator exits from an execution layer address, reducing trust in delegation.
• ​EIP-2935: Stores 8,192 recent block hashes in a system contract, enabling easier access to historical data for rollups, cross-chain apps, and stateless clients.

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As I've said before, I'm excited about EIP-7702 because I think it will be a game-changer for Ethereum’s user experience. It could make things like sending multiple transactions at once, having a friend cover your gas fees, or recovering your wallet without a seed phrase possible, all from your existing Ethereum account. By making Ethereum easier to use, this upgrade could bring in millions of new users.

EIP-7702 could also lead to more startups sponsoring onchain transactions. We might see companies covering gas fees for users, making it easier for newcomers to interact with Ethereum without worrying about the technical hurdles.

Weekly Foundry commands

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Decoding and encoding calldata is something Solidity engineers do regularly, whether it's for debugging transactions or crafting precise function calls.

The cast calldata-decode and cast calldata commands from Foundry are powerful tools that simplify this process.

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Debugging

I recently hit a strange bug while using Foundry's startPrank cheatcode. It turned into a real head-scratcher. After some debugging, I distilled the issue and opened a GitHub issue on Foundry’s repo. We should only be pranking at the top-level calls, right?