Connor Stein
As someone who never seriously studied life sciences, I've always thought that the story with evolution was basically one of "random mutations can sometimes increase the likelihood of reproduction." A bird who happens to get a genetic mutation for, say, a longer beak may have an easier time feeding,
Single cell RNA sequencing, known as scRNA-seq, is the process of determining the level of gene expression across individual cells. Before it, we could only measure average gene expression across many cell types in a sample, hiding cell-type-specific responses. In the mid-2010s, special "droplet" ma
I recently found myself with some time on my hands, so I built a news filtering service for myself with Claude. I didn't like scrolling through multiple apps on my phone or newsletters in my email, subject to the whims of each news source's algorithm, and the solutions out there charge outrageous su
2025/early 2026 was a pivotal time for crypto. I was not the only one for whom these core crypto questions bubbled to the surface. The announcement of EVM-based Tempo and Arc in mid-2025 as regulator-compliant, whitelisted validator chains with native privacy features was met with a lot of pushback
As part of the 2020 DeFi wave there was also a big rise in NFT usage. I never saw enormous value in NFTs. Most of the utility is similar to people trading baseball/pokemon cards or gaming skins, which just is not a big priority for me personally. Some people argued that ENS or other kinds of naming
After RC, I took a job at Paxos because, aside from practical reasons like it let me stay in NYC, I interviewed with some engineers who seemed to share this "World Computer" vision.
I spent around 8 years in crypto as an engineer and I'm now exploring other areas of technology. Over the years, my views on the industry evolved into what I'd call a "crypto moderate." This series of posts documents how I came to that position and what it comprises.