phil
@philbugcatcher
Followers
3K
Following
15K
Media
88
Statuses
2K
Breaking down smart contracts | Security Researcher @CertoraInc | @CyfrinUpdraft alumni | Prev @McKinsey
EVM
Joined December 2022
What risks do protocols (apps) inherit from the blockchains they are hosted on? I can think of: - Network halts - Acceptance of invalid txns - Rejection of valid txns - Excessive txn fees - Timeliness of block production - MEV What am I missing?
2
0
17
Spreadsheets
Elon crunching the cost to manufacture a rocket in a spreadsheet during a plane ride in 2002 and realizing SpaceX could do it at 1/50th the cost is the most productive use of a spreadsheet on a plane ride ever
0
0
5
@philbugcatcher although her decision to let her child run all over Kanto and engage in animal fighting is sus
1
1
11
I have never met anyone with as much goodness in their heart as my mom
4
4
56
X would be much more pleasant if all slop bot accounts posted like grok
0
0
3
most ppl don’t really think. they rearrange cached thoughts until they feel smart. true thinking is rare because it’s metabolically expensive (just like thinking models are computationally expensive).
243
635
7K
It goes without saying, but this is something I do for like an hour a week or less Watching youtube all day is not work lol
0
0
5
Also learned a bit more about the engineering challenges of building a mile high building
0
0
2
It is tempting to put our heads down and focus only on work But we must not be too narrow. Development and security are creative crafts, so we must also feed our creativity Cultivate synapses not obviously tied to our work My cheat code is watching random youtube videos that
7
0
45
Opened youtube to learn some things about ancient Rome Learned why Japan, South Korea and China dominate ship building instead
2
0
28
When I was a kid I dreamed of playing on the computer all night, but my parents wouldn’t allow it Decided to do this now that I can, and was severely punished by headache, backache, and relentless responsibilities Life can be cruel sometimes
6
0
49
Wake up honey, new audit strategy just dropped
1
0
39
@philbugcatcher “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.” Seneca, 500*4 years ago
0
1
6
Crypto security twitter feels unusually toxic right now. A big part of this is structural: many of the security researchers are young and grew up without much mentorship or development of relational skills: things like communication, empathy, and working through conflict.
18
5
167
One thing I love about classic literature is realizing people haven’t really changed in the last 500 years
4
1
41
Most protocols spend a lot on audits and bug bounties but have zero internal security Launching https://t.co/c3v75lXHdD to highlight the ones that do Having an internal security team should be in every protocol's New Year's resolutions for 2026
12
16
147
When we believe something is impossible, our mind instinctively avoids it This creates hidden impossibilities, that end up shaping much of what we do The only way to find them is to question everything
2
2
69
2025 isn’t over yet, but I’m already proud of four big wins at Certora: (1) hiring 50% of the top Web3 security researchers, (2) bringing in a fresh CEO to take the company to the next level, (3) open-sourcing the prover, and (4) doubling down on combining LLMs with FV.
6
3
72
Fusaka is live on ETH and it nerfs gas heavy TX. 📈 Block gas cap: 45M → 60M 🧢 New TX gas cap: 16.77M (vs effectively 45M before) The big TX that cleared yesterday will now revert, and this creates a fresh DOS surface for protocols that rely on single gas heavy calls. If
3
6
44