The CAKE (Chain Abstraction Key Elements) framework creates four layers of responsibility – applications, permissions, solvers, and settlement – that are independent of one another but critical for a clean crypto UX. The “permissions” layer deals with user transaction authorization and private key storage. Though current methods like MetaMask require both a “sign” and “submit” step, account abstracted (AA) wallets only require “sign.” Going one step further, policy-based agents require one “approve” step and then deal with everything else, like managing multiple networks and sub-transactions. This is the design employed by Telegram bots and Flashbots' SUAVE.
Farcaster has created a simple way for users to access Polymarket, making it easy for users to cast bets on Polymarket using Frames.
Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups allow assets to move quickly and securely between Layer 1 and Layer 2 without long delays, extra fees, or third parties, all thanks to cryptographic proofs.
Digital asset manager Grayscale has launched a new AI fund composed of Bittensor, Filecoin, Livepeer, Near, and Render.
This Dune dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of EigenLayer, Symbiotic, and Karak and information about liquid restaking tokens.
Coca-Cola's new cans for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games feature a design with two arms locked in an embrace, symbolizing hope and inclusivity. This innovative packaging aligns with Coke's branding strategy, suggesting a visually unified presence in Paris during the event. Critical to successful brand activations, these cans exemplify thoughtful design in sponsorships.
Figma has completed a tender offer valuing the company at $12.5 billion, allowing current investors, employees, and early stakeholders to sell their shares. This valuation follows the collapse of Adobe's $20 billion acquisition bid and involves new investments from firms like Fidelity, Franklin Venture Partners, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The City of Visalia is embroiled in a logo design controversy after replacing its 20-year-old design with a minimalist one, much to residents' displeasure. In response to the backlash, the old logo was reinstated temporarily, only for the city to open a public competition for a new design later. Now, with a third logo under consideration and feedback being sought, the debate appears far from over.
The framework for design system maturity includes three pillars - Leadership and Approach, Design System Assets, and Outcomes - each with five sub-dimensions. It assesses the quality of design and code kits and the organizational conditions essential for success, emphasizing the importance of business rigor for focused strategies and structured evaluation of growth.
2024.07.19·links.tldrnewsletter.com·12 min read·TLDR Design Transitioning from a designer to a design team lead involves embracing new responsibilities and a different mindset. Mastering technical skills, leadership qualities, and familiarity with various design roles are essential. Effective communication, continuous learning, and a passion for guiding others are crucial for success.
As designers advance, meetings often replace time for deep work. Introducing friction into your workflow can help manage these demands and preserve time for design. Techniques like automated block scheduling and detailed emails can create necessary boundaries. Balancing meetings with dedicated design time ensures high-quality output amidst increasing responsibilities.
2024.07.19·dataanddesign.substack.com·7 min read·TLDR Design Autodesigner 2.0 combines ChatGPT's conversational flow with Uizard's generative design capabilities and drag-and-drop editor. Designers can use it to generate brand kits, prototypes, screens, and themes.
An AI image generator from Icons8 trained on the illustrations created by its team of artists so designers can generate illustrations without ethical concerns.
Cosmos is a home for designers to collect and curate anything interesting they can find online.
Dyson's new OnTrac headphones aim to disrupt the market with features like over-ear cups, a 13-degree tilt, and a unique headband for comfort. With 2,000 possible combinations, these customizable headphones focus on acoustic quality, comfort, and aesthetics to evoke a sense of pride in ownership.
Galina Bakinova's abstract illustrations use geometric and organic shapes and a strategic color palette to create dynamic visuals. These elements improve user experience by seamlessly guiding attention across the screen. Bakinova's portfolio on Behance demonstrates her expertise in blending aesthetics with functionality in digital design.
Apple and Amazon faced user backlash for moving the search bar to the bottom of their interfaces. Users resisted the sudden changes due to their conditioned reflexes and muscle memory. While new design patterns can be met with reluctance, users may adapt over time. Experimenting with novel designs is often more accepted in AI platforms, games, and new hardware.
2024.07.19·links.tldrnewsletter.com·5 min read·TLDR Design This curated list includes stationery products like the versatile Pen Fan and the ergonomic Gravity Pen.
World Emoji Day reveals seven new emojis and highlights fun facts, from creation timelines to customization options.
The Eames Institute's new Richmond location hides a treasure trove of Eames designs.
2024.07.19·links.tldrnewsletter.com·3 min read·TLDR Design Sponsored
When you're building a company, speed is everything. If your back office is struggling to keep up, it becomes a major distraction that blunts your competitive edge.
Recent data from 7,764 startups reveals that equity splits among founders are often unequal, contrary to the common assumption of 50/50 splits. Vesting schedules are crucial for protecting the company and maintaining VC investability. Founders should approach equity decisions openly and fairly, using data to guide their choices and implementing vesting schedules to align long-term incentives.
AI is poised to revolutionize education by enabling personalized learning, empowering teachers with new tools, and providing alternatives to traditional college. However, the adoption of AI in education will likely be hindered by bureaucracy, entrenched habits, and debates over who should pay for these technologies. Despite these challenges, AI has the potential to make high-quality education more accessible and equitable, ultimately leading to increased productivity and economic growth.
Nvidia and OpenAI dominate the AI infrastructure market, thriving on AI scaling laws that enhance model performance. This trend can't last indefinitely due to potential data and hardware constraints. The post-scaling landscape will require startups to innovate in small models, fine-tuning, multi-model systems, and data curation, marking a pivotal shift from scale to optimization.
Understanding the user journey is crucial for building an effective full lifecycle journey for your product. By mapping out the user experience from initial awareness to long-term retention and advocacy, you can tailor your messaging and interactions to guide users effectively through their journey. This process involves analyzing data, identifying patterns, defining stages, diagramming the journey, creating content, and continuously iterating based on feedback and performance data.
2024.07.19·productledgrowth-newsletter.beehiiv.com·5 min read·TLDR Founders Shifting from focusing on outputs to outcomes is crucial for product teams to create real value. Outcomes measure the impact of a team's work on customers or the business, while outputs are simply what is produced. Setting the right outcomes requires negotiation between product leaders and the product team, and teams should ideally focus on one outcome at a time for multiple quarters to gain deep expertise and have a significant impact.
When writing copy, it's crucial to be mindful of whether you are talking to your customers or about them. Talking to customers means focusing on their problems, frustrations, and how your product or service can help them, while talking about customers often involves topics that are more interesting to other stakeholders, such as investors or industry peers. To effectively engage your target audience, identify who your primary customer is and tailor your messaging to speak directly to their needs and interests.
An email-based AI Research Agent for founders.
Accelerator program for AI startups. Deadline is 11:59 PM PT on Friday, August 9th.
Product analytics that surface your biggest causal insights.
The PayPal Mafia refers to the group of early PayPal employees and founders who went on to start and invest in many other successful tech companies. Though not immediately recognized as legendary, this network of entrepreneurs drove innovation and supported each other's ventures in the decade after leaving PayPal. This post reveals, through a series of first-hand accounts shared on Quora, the early culture, strategies, and dynamics that made PayPal successful and spawned this influential group.
This article breaks down the economics of venture capital, explaining how the 2/20 model and fund structures influence VC decision-making. Understanding this framework is crucial for founders, as it illuminates why VCs seek high-potential startups aiming for significant exits. This knowledge can help entrepreneurs tailor their pitches to align with VC expectations and demonstrate how their startups can support the fund's economics.
The trend of startups publishing open handbooks is gaining momentum, with companies like GitLab and Basecamp leading the way. These public handbooks offer transparency into company operations, values, and processes. While this approach carries potential risks, it can also generate buzz, streamline onboarding, and foster continuous improvement. Founders considering this strategy should weigh the benefits of transparency against competitive and confidentiality concerns.
Nikita Bier, founder of Gas app and TBH, found that for consumer products, letting investors experience the product firsthand was far more effective than traditional pitch decks.
In a recent email to his board and employees, Tanay Tandon, the founder of Commure, emphasized the importance of speed and velocity in achieving success, drawing inspiration from iconic CEO Frank Slootman.
A branding exercise is more than just creating a new logo.
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These days, DSPM (data security posture management) is a must. But BigID [4] isn't just jumping on the bandwagon – they're leading the pack when it comes to coverage, classification, risk management, and integrations.
Morphisec discovered an unauthenticated, zero-click (for trusted senders) RCE vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook. It has warned that this vulnerability could lead to data breaches, unauthorized access, and other malicious activities if abused. A patch for the vulnerability was included in July's Patch Tuesday patches. The researchers will be presenting more technical details at DEFCON.
Cisco has fixed a critical vulnerability that allows hackers to add root users and crash SEG devices using malicious email attachments. The flaw involves an absolute path traversal weakness in SEG content scanning, enabling attackers to replace files on the system. Cisco advises updating vulnerable appliances to prevent exploitation and contacting its Technical Assistance Center for assistance.
Businesses all over the world, from hospitals to banks and other companies, are reporting IT outages. Microsoft started noting issues on its Service Health page in the early hours of today. Shortly thereafter, outages became widespread. CrowdStrike says that a faulty update is causing crashes in Windows systems - Mac and Linux devices are unaffected. The issue stems from invalidly formatted .sys files causing the top level driver to crash. Recovery will be very difficult.
A bug in the Linux Kernel's eBPF verifier can lead to a system compromise by allowing attackers to manipulate register values. The vulnerability was fixed in July after being reported in June. It requires specific permissions and is not widespread among applications or containers.
Fog Security investigated 51 different AWS resources and found that only 76% of them were encrypted by default, with 22 of those being encrypted with AWS Owned Keys by default. Even when encrypted by default, services that used AWS Owned Keys were shared between AWS accounts and don't typically offer more access controls. AWS Managed Keys are controlled by AWS and typically implicitly grant access to IAM principals in the same account, so they may offer less protection than expected. Fog Security recommends enabling encryption by default where possible and also opting for the use of AWS Customer Managed Keys where possible.
This blog post discusses in detail how to analyze malicious MSI files used for software installation on Windows. MSI installers can hide malicious code within legitimate packages to avoid detection by security tools. Threat actors often use custom actions in MSI files to execute harmful code during installation.
This blog post discusses how automated firmware analysis tools like EMBA enhance security by scanning for vulnerabilities in device firmware. EMBA's open-source approach allows for deep analysis, detection of unknown threats, and customized testing. Leveraging EMBA can significantly improve product security, protect critical devices, and streamline the firmware analysis process.
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What defines a “material” cybersecurity incident?
Whispers is an information security analysis tool designed to identify hardcoded secrets in structured text and static code.
Lemma is a Python-based AWS Lambda package and client designed to execute packaged command-line tools in a scalable, remote environment. It makes use of Lambda's response streaming to stream real-time stdout to the client.
Pumbin is an implant generation platform written in Rust that supports the Extism plugin system. It populates implants with randomized data so that each generated implant is unique.
AWS has released a language agnostic local HTTP service that can be installed in compute environments to read and cache secrets from Secrets Manager. TTL, cache size, maximum connections, and HTTP port can be configured in the agent. The agent also includes SSRF protections by default.