Steve's Blockchain Tech Group: Web3 Governance DAOs EVM Solidity L1 L2 ZKPs FHE DeFi Crypto Bitcoin

Steve's Blockchain Tech Group Review: Is This The Smartest Web3 Telegram Community To Join In 2025?

Have you ever opened a “crypto group,” seen 300 unread messages… and realized 295 of them are memes, shills, and chart spam?

If you’re anything like me, you don’t need another chatroom screaming about the next 100x. You want somewhere you can actually ask:

• “How is governance in Bitcoin and Ethereum really decided?”
• “Are DAOs anything more than token voting theater?”
• “Can I actually trust a blockchain system in production, or is that just marketing?”

That’s the mindset I had when I went hunting for a serious Web3 community and ended up inside a LinkedIn group with a name that reads like a full Web3 syllabus:

“Steve's Blockchain Tech Group: Web3 Governance DAOs EVM Solidity L1 L2 ZKPs FHE DeFi Crypto Bitcoin.”

Not exactly subtle… but it caught my attention for one reason: it promised what most “crypto communities” fail to deliver—serious, technical, governance-focused discussion without the non-stop token hype.

In this review, I’m going to walk you through what this group really is, who it actually helps, and how it fits into the bigger questions everyone keeps throwing around:

• What’s the biggest problem with blockchain right now?
• Can blockchain actually be trusted in real-world use?
• Who really has power in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DAOs?

Before we get into what Steve’s group is doing differently, we need to talk about the elephant in the room: most crypto spaces are completely broken for anyone who cares about actual blockchain tech.

The real problem: noisy crypto spaces, shallow content, and confusing governance

Let’s be honest: the average crypto community today is a nightmare if you’re trying to learn something real.

You join a Telegram, Discord, or LinkedIn group hoping to understand how rollups work or why Bitcoin’s governance looks nothing like a DAO… and instead you’re hit with:

• 99% price talk — “Wen moon? Wen listing? Is this still bullish?”
• Bot spam, referral links, “DM me for guaranteed profits” nonsense
• Random links dropped with zero context or analysis
• Governance threads that read like half-lawyer, half-academic, 0% practical
• No clear way to ask a serious question and get a thoughtful, technical answer

This wouldn’t be a big deal if blockchain was just about trading. But it isn’t. If you care about where Web3 is actually going, you quickly run into real questions that can’t be answered with “line go up.” For example:

• Scalability & energy: Why are we still struggling with throughput, fees, and power usage, especially in older proof-of-work systems?
• Trust & security: Blockchains are pitched as “trustless” and “immutable,” but then you see bridges hacked, protocols paused, treasuries drained.
• Governance: Whitepapers say “decentralized,” but who actually makes the call on forks, upgrades, or parameter changes?

A lot of people feel this gap instinctively. They know something’s off, but they don’t have a clear mental model yet. Let’s break it down a bit.

When you try to learn, most groups just add noise

Take blockchain scalability. If you go into a typical group and ask:

“Why are gas fees so high on Ethereum, and are L2s a real fix or just a band-aid?”

The responses you’ll usually see:

• A meme about “Ethereum rich only”
• A random shill: “Forget ETH, use my L1, super fast and zero fees”
• Someone saying “Just bridge to XYZ chain” with an affiliate link

What you won’t see very often is someone explaining that:

• Public blockchains face a real trade-off between security, decentralization, and scalability (the classic “blockchain trilemma”).
• Layer 2 solutions like rollups help scale, but they change trust assumptions, data availability, and UX.
• Some “fast L1s” achieve speed by centralizing validators or using weaker consensus trade-offs.

There’s actual research and industry writing backing this up. For example, articles from development studios like Webisoft often list scalability, energy consumption, and integration with existing systems as the biggest blockchain disadvantages. Yet in most chats, that nuance gets drowned out by token shills.

The same thing happens with energy usage. You’ll see dramatic statements like “Bitcoin uses more energy than country X,” but almost no one explains:

• How much of that comes from renewable sources vs fossil fuels
• Why proof-of-stake systems were designed as alternatives
• What trade-offs PoS brings in terms of governance and validator centralization

So you end up with hot takes, not understanding.

“Can blockchain be trusted?” is a good question – and badly answered

Another common frustration: the trust question.

On one side, you have people saying, “Everything on blockchain is secure, it’s cryptography, bro.” On the other, you see weekly headlines of:

• DeFi protocols hacked for hundreds of millions
• Bridges compromised through social engineering
• DAOs voting to reverse decisions or bail out bad actors

So which is it?

Even big firms like IBM emphasize that blockchain has strong structural security—cryptography, consensus, and decentralization give the base layer very good integrity and tamper-resistance. But that doesn’t magically protect:

• Bugs in smart contracts
• Centralized admin keys
• Captured governance processes
• Weak bridges and oracles

In other words: you can often trust the math, but you still have to be very careful about the humans and the code built on top.

Most general crypto groups don’t help you make that distinction. They either treat blockchain as flawless or completely broken. The reality sits right in the middle—and that’s where serious builders and long-term investors need to think.

Governance: the most important topic nobody explains properly

Then you hit the governance wall.

If you’ve ever tried to figure out how Bitcoin or Ethereum governance really works, you quickly realize it’s nothing like the marketing slogans.

• There is no “Official Bitcoin Government.”
• Ethereum doesn’t have a single council pushing a big red upgrade button.

Both networks rely on messy, off-chain processes involving:

• Core developers proposing changes
• Miners or validators choosing what to run
• Node operators deciding which software to accept
• Exchanges, wallets, and users reacting to changes in practice

Legal and policy analyses, like those from Freeman Law, often describe this as decentralized, off-chain governance: no single entity is in charge, but power is very real and distributed across social and economic actors.

Then you step into the world of DAOs and on-chain governance:

• Token voting, delegation, quorum, proposal thresholds
• Multisigs, timelocks, emergency powers, veto councils

Whitepapers make it sound neat and programmable. Reality looks a lot messier:

• “Whale capture” where a few large holders effectively control outcomes
• Voter apathy: huge treasuries, tiny participation
• Rushed “emergency” votes during exploits

If you try to ask about this in many groups, the answers are often tribal:

• “Bitcoin is the only pure decentralization.”
• “DAOs will fix everything.”
• “Governance is just FUD, number go up.”

Again, lots of noise, very little structure.

Why this actually matters if you’re serious about Web3

All of this isn’t just philosophical. It’s practical.

If you’re a builder—whether you’re working on smart contracts, a protocol, or a product—you need a place where you can:

• Test governance models before they control millions
• Get feedback on contract design, upgrade paths, and security assumptions
• Understand how Bitcoin and Ethereum really evolve, so you don’t build on myths

If you’re an investor who actually cares about fundamentals, you need to understand:

• Who can change the rules of the game in a protocol you’re investing in
• Whether a “DAO” is truly decentralized or controlled by a handful of insiders
• How scaling, fees, and security trade-offs affect long-term viability

And if you’re just curious about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Web3 in general, you deserve a place where:

• Experts actually show up and answer questions
• Technical topics are explained without being watered down to slogans
• You can build a daily habit of learning without falling into a casino mindset

The problem isn’t a lack of information. There’s more blockchain content than ever. The problem is that most of it is unstructured, biased, or shallow—especially inside big public groups.

That’s exactly why this LinkedIn group stood out to me. It’s not perfect, but its entire premise is: cut the trading noise, focus on Web3 governance, DAOs, EVM, Solidity, L1/L2, ZKPs, FHE, DeFi, Bitcoin, and real blockchain architecture.

So what is this group actually like from the inside? Who runs it, what kind of people hang out there, and how is it different from the usual Telegram zoo?

If you’ve ever wanted a Web3 community that feels more like a serious workshop than a hype tunnel, you’ll probably want to see this next part…

What is Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group and who is it really for?

When I first saw the name “Steve's Blockchain Tech Group: Web3 Governance DAOs EVM Solidity L1 L2 ZKPs FHE DeFi Crypto Bitcoin” on LinkedIn, I honestly expected another buzzword soup with zero signal.

What I found instead feels closer to a small, nerdy conference that just happens to live inside a LinkedIn group.

There are no animated GIFs shouting “100x soon,” no mystery Telegram admins asking you to “DM for alpha.” It’s mostly founders, protocol people, auditors, policy folks, and long-term investors trying to figure out the same things you probably care about:

• Who actually has power in Web3 systems?
• Which technical architectures are sane and which are time bombs?
• What’s real progress vs a slick deck and a token ticker?

As one member put it in a thread about governance:

“If you can’t explain who can stop your protocol or change its rules in one paragraph, you don’t understand it yet.”

That sentence pretty much sums up the energy inside the group.

Quick overview of the group: name, platform, and vibe

The full name is a mouthful for a reason: “Steve's Blockchain Tech Group: Web3 Governance DAOs EVM Solidity L1 L2 ZKPs FHE DeFi Crypto Bitcoin.” It basically advertises the topics on the tin, and that’s exactly what you’ll see inside.

A few things that shape the experience right away:

• It’s on LinkedIn, not Telegram or Discord.
  

  People post under their real names, with their job histories visible. That alone filters out a lot of low-effort spam and drive‑by shills.

• The tone feels like a professional meetup, not a meme chat.
  

  Threads usually start with a question, a short analysis, or a link to a research article. You’ll see comments like:

  • “Here’s what we saw in our last audit when using this pattern…”
  • “This design basically hands control to a 3/7 multisig; is that acceptable for a ‘decentralized’ protocol?”
  • “Here’s a gas profile from testing this implementation on mainnet.”

• Content is focused around a few recurring themes:

  • Governance debates (Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DAO structures)
  • EVM and Solidity questions coming from actual builders
  • L1 vs L2 comparisons with real trade‑off talk (security, cost, UX)
  • Zero-knowledge proofs and FHE for privacy and compliance use cases
  • DeFi risk, token models, and security incidents instead of “next 1000x” talk

For example, I saw a thread where someone shared a post-mortem from a DeFi hack and asked, “What governance process could have limited this blast radius?” The replies ranged from smart contract mitigation ideas to specific voting and timelock structures used by other protocols, with links to actual governance proposals on-chain.

That mix of technical, economic, and governance angles is what gives the group its unique flavor.

Who is Steve and what’s the focus of the group?

Every good community tends to reflect the person behind it, and this one is no exception.

Steve keeps the center of gravity firmly on tech and governance instead of trading calls. You’ll notice that in what gets engagement and what gets ignored. A post asking “Which L2 token is undervalued?” will quietly sink. A question like “How dangerous is it to give emergency upgrade powers to a 3/5 multisig?” usually turns into a real discussion.

The group’s focus naturally clusters around a few pillars:

• Decentralized governance and DAOs
  

  Expect threads about voting power, delegation, quorums, and all the messy social bits that don’t fit into a whitepaper. People reference real DAO experiments like:

  • How certain treasuries moved from naive token voting to delegate systems
  • Cases where whales blocked proposals that smaller contributors wanted
  • Emergency “pause” powers and when they were (or weren’t) abused

• Smart contract security and best practices
  

  You’ll see frequent mentions of:

  • Re-entrancy, access control, and upgradeability issues
  • Audit checklists and open-source tools like Slither or Echidna
  • Case studies from recent exploits, with people linking to incident reports

  One member shared a comparison of gas usage between two Solidity patterns, with benchmark numbers from a testnet deployment. The replies turned into a mini code review session.

• Scalability: L2s, rollups, sidechains
  

  Instead of “L2s will solve everything,” there’s a lot of:

  • “What guarantees does this rollup actually provide?”
  • “Who controls the sequencer?”
  • “Is this sidechain basically a company database with a token?”

  People reference real incidents: halted chains, rollup downtime, bridge exploits. It’s not abstract.

• Privacy tech: ZKPs and FHE
  

  Threads often ask:

  • “Is this ZK system production-ready or still research?”
  • “What’s the proving cost at realistic scale?”
  • “How do regulators look at ZK-powered identity right now?”

  You’ll see links to papers, blog posts by protocol teams, and sometimes benchmarks from people actually testing these tools.

Underneath all of this is a quiet, consistent question: who controls what, and under which conditions? Whether the thread is about DAOs, rollups, or ZK identity, that question keeps coming back.

Who should actually join (and who probably won’t like it)?

This is not a “everyone welcome, anything goes” type of group. It works because there’s a pretty clear, organic fit for who benefits the most.

You’ll feel at home here if you are:

• A builder: smart contract dev, protocol engineer, or Web3 product person
  

  You’ll find:

  • Concrete feedback on contract patterns and architecture choices
  • People sharing what actually broke in production, not just what looks clean on a diagram
  • Discussions about gas costs, upgrade strategies, admin models, and tooling

• DAO contributors and community managers
  

  If you care about how to run a fair vote or structure a treasury, this is one of the few places where people answer with:

  • Links to real governance proposals
  • Turnout numbers and what improved them
  • Examples of participation incentives that worked (and those that backfired)

  I’ve seen someone ask: “Our DAO has 2% voter turnout. What’s actually realistic?” and get responses referencing existing DAOs that publicly share metrics.

• Crypto lawyers, policy people, and governance nerds
  

  You’ll see:

  • Debates on liability around multisig signers
  • How different jurisdictions think about on-chain votes and tokenholder rights
  • Conversations about aligning legal entities with on-chain control

  It’s a rare crossover of legal, technical, and economic thinking in one feed.

• Long-term investors who care about fundamentals
  

  If you look at a protocol and immediately ask, “Who can upgrade or shut this down?” you’ll probably enjoy being here. Members regularly:

  • Break down token distributions and governance risks
  • Compare security models across chains and L2s
  • Point to past governance failures as warnings

You’ll probably bounce quickly if:

• You only care about short-term price action.
  

  There are almost no “Which coin should I buy?” threads, and when they appear, they rarely get attention.

• You hate reading threads, articles, or technical breakdowns.
  

  Posts often link to research, audits, or long-form explainers. People react to those, not to one-line takes.

• You’re not interested in governance or trade-offs at all.
  

  The group basically runs on trade-off conversations:

  • Security vs speed
  • Privacy vs compliance
  • Decentralization vs coordination efficiency

  If those questions don’t move you, you’ll find the pace slow.

The unspoken rule in there feels like: come with questions or insights, not with tickers to promote.

One of the most striking things I noticed is how people handle disagreement. Instead of “you’re wrong,” I often see replies like:

“That’s true under X assumptions. But in a governance attack like Y, here’s why this breaks.”

That kind of back‑and‑forth is rare in public crypto spaces. It’s also where the most learning happens — especially once the conversation moves from “this protocol” to bigger questions about power and coordination across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DAOs.

And that’s where things start to get really interesting: how this group looks at who really controls what in Web3 — from off-chain Bitcoin politics to fully on-chain DAOs trying to replace them. Curious how those two worlds are compared and what lessons people are actually pulling from the BTC/ETH governance model?

Web3 governance & DAOs: how this group really talks about power, voting, and coordination

Most crypto chats treat “governance” like a buzzword you sprinkle into a token pitch.

Inside Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group, it’s treated as what it actually is: a fight over who gets to decide what, and what happens when people disagree.

I see people there constantly asking the uncomfortable questions most projects skip in their whitepapers:

• Who can really block or push through an upgrade?
• What happens if token whales want one thing and users want another?
• Is our DAO structure actually decentralized, or just a prettier multisig?

That’s where the group starts feeling less like “just another LinkedIn group” and more like a live lab for how power actually works in Web3.

“Code is law until someone with enough power decides to change the law.”

Off‑chain vs on‑chain governance: how Bitcoin and Ethereum fit into the picture

One of the most useful patterns I keep seeing in the group is how people connect the old guard (Bitcoin, Ethereum) with the new wave of DAOs and on‑chain voting.

There’s a recurring reminder that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not governed by DAO-style on‑chain votes. They mostly use what researchers like Freeman Law call off‑chain governance — basically a negotiation between groups like:

• Core developers who write and maintain the client software
• Miners / validators who decide which rules to follow in practice
• Node operators who choose which version of the software to run
• Businesses, exchanges, and users who can “vote with their feet” by choosing chains, clients, and forks

In the group, I often see thoughtful breakdowns like:

• Bitcoin: super conservative, slow to change, heavy social coordination around any soft/hard fork.
• Ethereum: more “governable,” with active core dev calls, EIPs, and a community that expects upgrades.
• On‑chain DAOs: explicit voting, but still backed by social consensus and legal reality in the background.

Members compare these models to the more explicit DAO patterns:

• Token holders voting on proposals
• Delegate systems, where a few active people vote on behalf of many
• Councils or committees that sit between the DAO and the core team

The key idea that keeps coming back: governance is not a voting UI. It’s the ongoing process of how power is distributed, checked, and updated over time.

Someone in the group summed it up nicely in a thread about ETH governance: “Ethereum doesn’t have a ‘governance contract,’ but it absolutely has governance.” That kind of framing is everywhere here.

Common DAO debates that actually matter in practice

Instead of “GM DAO fam,” the conversations I see are very specific and very real. A few themes keep showing up, especially from people running or designing DAOs:

• Token voting vs reputation / soulbound systems
  

  People question the usual “1 token = 1 vote” approach. There are threads where founders ask if they should switch to a reputation-based or soulbound model that rewards contribution, not just capital.

  One good example: a contributor from a governance DAO shared how they experimented with non-transferable “reputation points” earned by work. Token holders still existed, but influence over specific working groups shifted toward contributors with a track record.

  They referenced research from projects like voting and token-based governance critiques that show how pure token voting often ends in plutocracy. The discussion wasn’t academic; it was “Here’s what broke when we tried X” and “Here’s how we’d design V2.”

• Delegates vs “everyone votes on everything”
  

  There are long threads on whether you really want thousands of token holders voting on every parameter change. People compare models from large DeFi DAOs like Uniswap and Aave, where delegation creates a layer of active governance professionals.

  Several members share their experience as or with delegates: they talk about attention fatigue, conflicts of interest, and why transparent delegate platforms (with track records, voting histories, and platforms) matter.

• Voter apathy and participation
  

  There’s a recurring frustration: “We have 10,000 token holders and 60 people vote.”

  People talk about tactics like:

  • Quorum thresholds that aren’t impossible to reach
  • “Guardrail” parameters that can be adjusted by smaller councils
  • Better UX and notifications so people actually know when a vote matters

  One member referenced a study on DAOs showing that a tiny minority of addresses dominate most votes in practice. Suddenly, the talk shifts from “we’ll launch a DAO” to “how do we avoid being governed by 12 wallets?”

• Whale capture and plutocracy
  

  Almost every serious DAO eventually runs into the whale problem. In the group, people swap stories about proposals that were obviously against the community’s interest, but still passed because a few large wallets coordinated off‑chain.

  I saw one founder share how they used quadratic voting in a limited context, but had to manage sybil attacks. Others mention “vote‑escrowed” models (like veCRV style locking) to align long‑term holders with long‑term decisions, and why those can still centralize power if you’re not careful.

• Multisigs vs “fully on-chain” governance
  

  Real talk: a huge portion of “DAOs” are still mostly controlled by a multisig with 3–7 signers.

  In the group, there are honest conversations about when that’s reasonable (early stage, emergency response) and when it becomes a hidden centralization risk. Members pull up public data on multisig configurations from explorers and show cases where a DAO treasury worth tens or hundreds of millions is basically controlled by 3 people.

  Instead of finger‑pointing, people compare setups like:

  • Multisig with time‑lock contracts so the DAO can override or react
  • “Executor” contracts that only implement what token voting decides
  • Hybrid models where a multisig can pause but not unilaterally change parameters

How the group helps you think through real governance problems

What I like most is how quickly discussions move from “theory” to “what would you actually do?” If you show up with a real problem, people usually answer with frameworks, case studies, and sometimes blunt warnings.

Here’s the kind of thing I see all the time:

Example 1: Treasury management & emergency upgrades

Someone posts: “We’re launching a protocol and need to control a treasury + upgrade contracts. How should our DAO structure this?”

The replies usually point them toward:

• Existing frameworks like OpenZeppelin Governor or Gnosis Safe + Zodiac
• Incident reports from past disasters (like The DAO hack, or more recent governance attacks on DeFi protocols) to show what goes wrong if you rush it
• Patterns like:

  • Emergency multisig with limited powers and clear sunset conditions
  • Time‑locked upgrades where the community can exit before changes take effect
  • Separating “parameters the DAO can tweak quickly” from “core logic that’s very hard to change”

People share links to post‑mortems and legal analyses so you don’t just copy a pattern you saw in a meme project. It feels like free consulting, but with a room full of people who have seen things go wrong before.

Example 2: “Is Bitcoin / Ethereum governance really decentralized?”

This question pops up a lot: “Everyone says BTC and ETH are decentralized, but who actually decides upgrades?”

Here, members usually bring in:

• Articles like Freeman Law’s explanation of decentralized governance mechanisms, stressing the interplay between devs, miners/validators, and users
• Historical examples:

  • Bitcoin’s blocksize wars and how social consensus stopped certain changes despite miners signaling
  • The Ethereum DAO fork vs Ethereum Classic split, and what that revealed about values and governance

• Concrete details about how EIPs are discussed, how core dev calls work, and why “no CEO” doesn’t mean “no power structures”

The tone isn’t tribal. It’s more like, “Here’s how power actually flows through these systems. Decide for yourself if that’s acceptable.”

Example 3: Coordination failures and governance attacks

Whenever there’s a major governance exploit or a failed coordination event, someone in the group posts a breakdown. Not just “Wow, that’s bad,” but a structured look at:

• What the attacker leveraged (low voter turnout, tightly‑held tokens, rushed proposal, oracle design, etc.)
• What security layer failed:

  • On‑chain checks?
  • Social review of proposals?
  • Multisig signers not paying attention?

• How the community and team responded:

  • Did they coordinate an emergency fork?
  • Did they pause contracts via admin keys?
  • Did they compensate users, or redefine “code is law” for their case?

Every time something like that gets unpacked, it becomes easier to spot weak points in your own design. You stop thinking about governance as “we’ll add a token vote later” and start treating it like a core security surface.

Why this goes way beyond DAOs and “doing the right thing”

Here’s the part that quietly changes how you look at almost every Web3 project after spending time with these conversations.

Governance isn’t just about “being fair” or “giving the community a voice.” It directly shapes:

• Protocol forks and upgrades
  

  Who can push through a hard fork? Who decides to adopt a contentious upgrade? In Bitcoin and Ethereum, it’s all about off‑chain coordination. In DAOs, the question becomes: can a small group exploit voting rules to ship something nobody actually wants?

• How security bugs are handled
  

  When there’s a critical bug, does your protocol rely on:

  • A tiny multisig and some emergency function?
  • A DAO that might not hit quorum in time?
  • An off‑chain agreement between teams and infra providers?

  The group has members who’ve been through these incidents and are very honest about what worked and what was theater.

• Token economics and rewards
  

  Token model “fixes” are governance changes. Emissions schedules, fee splits, staking yields — these are all subject to whoever holds power. Some people in the group bring up research and historical charts showing how many protocols silently shift their incentives once early adopters are locked in.

After a while, you stop trusting the “decentralized” label on a website and start asking:

• Who controls upgrades?
• Who can pause the system?
• Who can change my economic assumptions with a single proposal?

That’s exactly the kind of mindset this group builds: not paranoid, just clear‑eyed about who actually controls what.

And once you start asking those questions, it naturally leads into another huge area the group spends time on: the technical side of things. Because even if your governance is solid, you still have to choose where you deploy (L1 vs L2), how you write contracts (Solidity patterns, EVM quirks), and what trade‑offs you’re making on scalability and fees.

So here’s the real question: if the way you structure power can make or break your project, what happens when you mix that with the wrong L1/L2 choice or fragile contract patterns? That’s exactly what the next part tackles — how this group helps you think through EVM, Solidity, and the whole L1 vs L2 puzzle without getting lost in hype.

EVM, Solidity, L1 vs L2: how technical does the group really get?

One of the fastest ways to tell whether a Web3 community is serious or not is simple: how long does it take before someone mentions gas refunds, proxy patterns, or data availability instead of “wen moon?”

Inside Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group, the shift happens almost immediately. The EVM and scalability conversations feel like you’re sitting in on the technical side of a protocol standup, not scrolling through a random “crypto chat.”

EVM & Solidity discussions: from beginner questions to advanced quirks

The group doesn’t assume everyone is a protocol engineer, but it absolutely treats people like they want to understand what they’re doing on-chain. That shows up in the kind of EVM and Solidity posts that keep coming back.

Typical themes you’ll see:

• Gas optimization in real contracts – not just “use unchecked” memes, but actual explanations of:

  • When it makes sense to pack storage variables to share a single 32-byte slot
  • Why a simple mapping(address => uint256) can be cheaper than a complex struct array for certain use cases
  • Trade-offs of using calldata vs memory for function arguments

• Upgradeable contracts and proxy patterns – people comparing:

  • OpenZeppelin’s transparent proxy vs UUPS proxies in production
  • Why a team regretted not setting up a time-lock on their upgrade admin
  • How to communicate upgrade risk clearly to users and token holders

• Classic security pitfalls – but grounded in actual incidents:

  • Re-entrancy attacks tied back to well-known hacks like The DAO or more recent DeFi exploits
  • How a missing onlyOwner or poorly designed accessControl pattern gave one multisig far too much power
  • Poor randomness patterns using block.timestamp or blockhash getting called out as exploitable

• Security process, not just snippets:

  • Checklists for pre-deployment audits: formal verification, fuzzing, static analysis (e.g. Slither, MythX style tools)
  • How to structure a bug bounty and what good disclosure guidelines look like
  • Debates about whether to keep an emergency pause function – and who should control it

I remember one thread where a newer Solidity dev shared a staking contract and asked, “Is this safe enough for production?” Instead of the usual “Looks fine bro,” a few experienced members walked line-by-line through:

• Missing checks on edge cases (zero address deposits, huge values)
• Unbounded loops that could make some calls fail once there are too many stakers
• The risk that a single mispriced gas refund could brick the contract for normal users

It felt less like a dunk contest and more like a free mini code review. That’s rare in public groups.

“Smart contracts are just law with no mercy: whatever you write is what executes.”

That unspoken rule hangs over most of the technical talk. You feel it when builders question their own patterns in public instead of pretending everything is bulletproof.

Who actually benefits from this?

• Newer devs coming from Web2 – they can ask rookie questions (“What’s a re-entrancy guard really protecting?”) and get practical answers, not sarcasm.
• Senior devs shipping high-value contracts – they use the group to stress-test upgrade paths, permission design, and deployment strategies with people who have been through real incidents.

L1 vs L2 and scalability questions

Scalability is where the conversations start to connect to those big, almost philosophical questions:

“What’s actually holding blockchain back?”

“Why are we still paying $20+ to move tokens sometimes?”

In that Webisoft-style framing a lot of people use, the biggest pain points are:

• Scalability – limited throughput, slow finality, high fees
• Energy use – especially on PoW chains
• Integration complexity – getting real-world systems to talk to blockchains safely

The group doesn’t treat those as abstract bullet points. They show up as real design dilemmas:

• “Should we launch on an L1 or L2?”

  • Founders weighing Ethereum mainnet security vs cheaper EVM L2s
  • Concerns about user friction: bridge steps, extra tokens for gas, fragmented liquidity
  • People sharing user analytics that show huge drop-offs when bridging is required

• Rollups vs sidechains vs appchains

  • Rollups inheriting L1 security but dealing with data availability costs and posting overhead
  • Sidechains offering cheap fees but relying on smaller validator sets or multisigs
  • Appchains promising custom logic and performance, but fragmenting composability

• Data availability and security trade-offs

  • Threads explaining why “put less on-chain” can weaken your security guarantees
  • Discussions around emerging DA layers and whether they’re actually decentralised enough
  • Honest talk about the real-world cost of giving up L1-level security for UX wins

I’ve seen founders walk through actual numbers: expected transaction volume, target user gas cost, and settlement needs. Then members respond with comparisons like:

• “On mainnet, that pattern is going to cost your users $10–$30 per interaction in congestion spikes.”
• “On this L2, it might drop under $0.10, but your exit guarantees depend on a small operator set today.”

It’s a very different energy from “Just launch on whatever’s trending on CT this week.”

Linking technical talk to real blockchain limitations

The best threads are the ones where day-to-day dev pain gets tied straight to the core constraints of blockchains.

High gas fees? People don’t just rant. They talk about:

• Why global consensus on every state change is expensive by design
• How L2s and batching help, but push complexity into bridges and sequencers
• Patterns for reducing on-chain writes: commitment schemes, off-chain computation, event-driven indexing

Slow finality? You’ll see breakdowns like:

• “Your app doesn’t need economic finality for every user action – only for state that involves serious value.”
• Comparisons between Ethereum finality, optimistic rollup challenge periods, and alternative L1 finality guarantees

Bridging risks? This is where the group gets blunt:

• Pointing out how many “bridges” were really just 4-of-7 multisigs with poor opsec
• Highlighting past hacks as case studies: not just headlines, but root causes and governance failures
• Encouraging people to treat bridges as serious security boundaries, not invisible plumbing

The recurring theme is trade-offs, not magic fixes. You’ll see people remind each other:

• More throughput usually means fewer parties in the consensus set, or weaker fault assumptions.
• Cheaper transactions often mean pushing cost or risk somewhere else in the stack.
• “Faster UX” tends to rely on trust assumptions about sequencers, relayers, or bridges.

It’s the kind of talk that keeps you from falling for pitch decks that promise “Visa-level throughput, Bitcoin-level security, zero fees, full decentralization.” That combination doesn’t exist – and nobody in this group pretends it does.

How this helps you as a builder or serious user

If you’re building anything more serious than a weekend NFT experiment, these conversations are not just interesting – they’re expensive mistakes avoided.

As a builder, you can use the group to:

• Sanity check architecture choices

  • “We’re thinking of using an optimistic rollup with a 7-day withdrawal window – is that acceptable for our use case?”
  • “Does this proxy pattern make sense for a protocol that might manage over $50M in TVL?”

• Spot outdated or risky patterns early

  • Old-school ownership patterns being replaced with more flexible role-based access control
  • “Upgradable” contracts where the admin can rug users getting called out as governance risks, not just technical ones

• Understand the real cost of your chain choice

  • Learning which L2 ecosystems actually have active users and tooling, not just marketing
  • Seeing where teams regret migrating chains because of liquidity fragmentation or bridge reliance

As a serious user or investor, you get:

• A bullshit filter for protocol claims – once you’ve seen enough discussions about validator sets, DA layers, and bridge designs, you can read between the lines in any “scaling” pitch.
• A better grasp of hidden risk – you start asking:

  • “Who can upgrade this contract and how fast?”
  • “What happens if the L2 sequencer goes offline?”
  • “Is this bridge really decentralized, or just a glorified multisig?”

What makes it all work is that the EVM, Solidity, L1, and L2 talk never stays purely academic. People constantly connect code-level decisions to real-world risk, governance, and user trust.

And that naturally leads into the next layer of questions: if the base layers and contract logic are this complex, what happens when you start adding advanced privacy tech like ZK proofs or fully homomorphic encryption on top?

Are those tools actually ready for production – or are teams just slapping “ZK” in their marketing to sound smart?

That’s exactly where things get even more interesting next.

ZKPs, FHE, and Crypto Privacy: How Cutting-Edge Is This Group Really?

When I first saw “ZKPs” and “FHE” in the group’s name, my instinct was: is this just buzzword bait, or are people here actually building and stress-testing this stuff?

The short answer: this is one of the very few places where ZK and FHE aren’t treated like magic words. People actually question them, compare trade‑offs, and talk in terms of performance, UX, regulation, and production readiness.

Let’s break that down.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) in Real-World Use

ZK is one of those things everyone says they’re “using,” but very few can explain beyond: “it makes stuff private.” Inside the group, the conversations are much closer to what you’d hear between protocol engineers and product teams trying to ship something that users won’t rage-quit.

Typical threads you’ll see around ZK:

• ZK rollups vs optimistic rollups: People compare real systems like zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, and Arbitrum, not just the theory.
• ZK for identity and KYC: How you can prove “I’m over 18” or “I passed KYC with X provider” without handing over your entire passport.
• SNARKs vs STARKs: Why a project might choose Groth16, PLONK, or STARKs depending on proof size, setup, and hardware constraints.

One thread that stuck with me was someone building a compliance‑friendly DeFi protocol. They wanted:

• Non‑KYC’d users to stay out
• KYC’d users to stay pseudonymous on‑chain
• Regulators to be able to verify that only KYC’d users were interacting

The conversation quickly turned into a practical breakdown of using ZKPs for credential proofs:

• ZK proof you’re in a whitelist (issued by a KYC provider)
• No need to put names, emails, or IDs on‑chain
• Regulator can verify proofs without deanonymizing users

Instead of “ZK is the future,” you get questions like:

• What’s the proving time per transaction going to look like if you onboard 10,000 users?
• Who pays for the proving? The user, the dApp, or a relayer network?
• How do you handle wallets that don’t support the necessary circuits or proving systems yet?

That’s where performance and UX reality checks come in. ZKPs are powerful, but they’re not free. The group regularly brings up studies and benchmarks that show the actual overhead of proof generation and verification, especially on mobile hardware or limited devices.

Someone once shared a research benchmark showing how certain SNARK systems can take several seconds to generate a proof for advanced circuits on consumer hardware. The reaction wasn’t “cool,” it was “okay, so this won’t fly in a consumer wallet unless we hide it behind relayers or batch proofs.”

That’s the tone: excited about what’s possible, but brutally honest about what’s shippable.

Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE): How Deep Does It Really Go?

FHE is the kind of tech that sounds like a sci‑fi cheat code: encrypt data, then compute on it without ever decrypting. On paper, that’s perfect for DeFi, KYC, healthcare records, and every privacy nightmare you can think of.

In reality, FHE is still early and heavy. The group treats it that way.

You’ll see links to articles and preprints about:

• FHE for encrypted computation in DeFi: Things like computing interest, risk scores, or AML flags without seeing user balances in plaintext.
• FHE for compliance: Letting regulators run queries for suspicious behavior without exposing everyone’s full financial activity.
• Architecture patterns: FHE modules as off‑chain services that feed only proofs or aggregated data back on‑chain.

But nobody pretends FHE is plug‑and‑play. Threads often circle back to these questions:

• Can current FHE libraries handle even medium‑scale workloads without ridiculous latency?
• Who are the first real customers: DeFi, banks, or enterprise permissioned chains?
• How do you combine FHE with ZKPs so you don’t leak patterns in encrypted data?

A good example that came up was a hypothetical FHE‑powered lending protocol:

• User data is fully encrypted
• Borrow limits and risk scores are computed over encrypted data
• The protocol only gets a final “approve/deny” output, not the underlying profile

Sounds perfect, but then someone asked:

• How long does that risk computation take in practice today?
• What happens if network latency plus FHE computation makes borrowing feel “broken” to users?
• Can we start with semi‑homomorphic or partially homomorphic techniques instead, and layer in FHE later?

This is where comparisons with ZKPs come up a lot:

• ZKPs: Great for proving a property of data without revealing the data.
• FHE: Great for computing on encrypted data without decrypting it, then releasing only the result.

A thread might end with something like:

• “Use ZK if you already know the computation you need to prove.”
• “Use FHE if you need to run lots of evolving queries on sensitive data and don’t want to keep going back to the user.”

That distinction sounds subtle, but to builders it’s the difference between picking a realistic roadmap and promising something you can’t ship for another five years.

Can Blockchain Be Trusted? How Security Gets Framed

Privacy tech always drags a bigger question into the room: if we’re building ZK and FHE into everything, what are we actually trusting?

One recurring theme in the group could be summed up like this:

“Trust the math, question the humans and the implementation.”

There are regular references to how blockchain at the protocol level has some strong security properties thanks to cryptography, consensus, and decentralization. This matches what big players like IBM highlight when they talk about blockchain security structures — append‑only ledgers, cryptographic hashes, distributed verification, and so on.

But inside the group, the conversation doesn’t stop there. People push into the layers where most of the real failures happen:

• Validator sets: How many parties really matter in a given network? Are you trusting 5 entities or 5,000?
• MEV and ordering games: Even if the chain is secure, can block builders extract value at your expense?
• Bridges: Are they genuinely trust‑minimized or just a 4‑of‑7 multisig behind a slick UI?
• Admin keys & multi‑sigs: How many protocols still have a “god mode” behind the scenes?

A typical security thread might go like this:

• Someone shares a new ZK‑powered privacy project.
• People quickly ask:

  • Who can upgrade the circuits?
  • Who controls the proving keys or trusted setup, if any?
  • Is there a kill switch or emergency admin function?

So even if the protocol uses state‑of‑the‑art ZK or is experimenting with FHE, the group mindset is:

• Base protocol: Often cryptographically sound, assuming honest majority and mature code.
• Smart contracts: Always potential bug farms if not audited and battle‑tested.
• Governance: Can be captured by whales, insiders, or regulators if power is centralized.
• Bridges/oracles: Usually the weakest link in any “multi‑chain” story.

That’s where the question “Can blockchain be trusted?” turns from a philosophical debate into a checklist:

• Do you trust the cryptography?
• Do you trust the validator set?
• Do you trust the people who can change the code or parameters?
• Do you understand where the data comes from and how it can be censored or manipulated?

The group often encourages people to separate these layers mentally instead of dumping them all into one binary “trust / don’t trust” bucket. Once you see it that way, you stop asking “is blockchain safe?” and start asking “which part of this stack am I actually trusting?”

Why These Privacy and Security Talks Actually Matter to You

All of this is interesting in theory, but it only matters if it changes how you build, invest, or use crypto.

If you’re building, you’ll quickly notice a pattern in how people respond to new ideas:

• Is it production‑ready or research‑grade? Someone will almost always ask which libraries, which circuits, which proofs, and which audits you rely on.
• What’s the failure mode? If the ZK or FHE layer fails, what exactly leaks? What’s the blast radius?
• Can users understand the risk? If you can’t explain it in a few sentences, you probably need a safer default.

That’s incredibly useful if you’re thinking of marketing your protocol as “ZK‑powered” or “privacy‑preserving.” The group will implicitly force you to back those claims up with specifics:

• Which proof system?
• What’s the proving overhead?
• Who controls upgrades and keys?

If you’re more on the user or investor side, the value is different but just as important:

• You start to recognize when “ZK” or “FHE” is slapped onto a landing page as pure theater.
• You learn which questions to ask before you lock money in a “privacy DeFi” or “encrypted DeFi” protocol.
• You understand that privacy and security are trade‑offs, not magic, and that every system has a weakest link.

I’ve seen people join the group thinking privacy tech is a binary checklist item and leave with a far more nuanced toolkit. Instead of “Is this safe?” they ask:

• “Safe for what threat model?”
• “Private from whom?”
• “At what performance cost?”

Once you start thinking that way, you end up cutting through a lot of marketing noise across the entire crypto space.

And that raises the next big question the group keeps circling back to: if ZK, FHE, and strong cryptography are getting better every year, why are so many of the biggest failures still happening in DeFi protocols and even around Bitcoin and Ethereum themselves?

The answer sits right at the intersection of incentives, economics, and design — which is exactly where the discussions around DeFi, Bitcoin, and the broader crypto context inside the group really start to heat up. Ready to see how that plays out when real money, governance power, and narratives collide?

DeFi, Bitcoin, and the wider crypto context inside the group

When I first joined Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group, I wanted to see how they handled the stuff that usually sends other communities off the rails: DeFi, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.

Most groups that touch those topics end up turning into a “Which altcoin 100x?” pit. This one doesn’t. The conversations lean into risk, design, and long-term sustainability instead of chasing the next shiny farm.

DeFi: risk, design, and economics focus

Let me be blunt: if you’re only looking for the next 500% APY yield farm, this group will probably annoy you.

When DeFi comes up, members immediately go into:

• Smart contract risk – “Who wrote this?” “Was it audited?” “Is there an upgradeable proxy hidden behind this ‘decentralized’ protocol?”
• Tokenomics and emissions – “Is this just inflation-funded yield?” “What happens when rewards drop by 80%?”
• Governance control – “Can one multisig pause the protocol, change fees, or drain the treasury?”

An actual example I saw discussed looked almost exactly like the classic “high APR, new farm, TVL exploding” story. Instead of cheering, members were pointing out:

• The contracts were unaudited
• Admin keys were in a 2-of-3 multisig controlled by the core team
• Emissions were front-loaded so early farmers were basically subsidized by latecomers

Someone compared it to the patterns highlighted in several DeFi exploit reviews on Rekt and similar post-mortems: aggressive emissions, opaque governance, and complex contracts that haven’t been properly tested.

That’s the pattern in this group: instead of “How do I farm this?”, you see people asking:

• “What’s the worst thing that can happen with this contract setup?”
• “Is the protocol cash-flow positive, or is the token just bleeding?”
• “What happens to governance power when rewards end?”

It lines up with what we see in research too. For example, multiple academic studies on DeFi governance have shown that:

• A tiny minority of addresses often control a majority of votes
• Governance proposals are frequently passed by very low turnout

In the group, this isn’t treated as a nerdy side note. It’s part of the core question: Can this protocol survive a bear market, or is it structurally set up to collapse when token incentives run out?

So when I’m evaluating new DeFi tools and protocols over on Cryptolinks, I actually use many of the mental models I see being discussed here. Things like:

• “Is the governance attack surface bigger than the advertised ‘decentralization’?”
• “Are token incentives aligned with users or just early insiders?”
• “Is this protocol usable without constant emissions?”

That’s the kind of framing you get exposed to regularly if you stick around.

Bitcoin and Ethereum: narrative vs reality

The group is also one of the few places where people can talk about Bitcoin and Ethereum without turning into tribal warfare.

Common themes you’ll see:

• Bitcoin: digital gold vs payments network
• Ethereum: settlement layer vs world computer
• How decisions actually happen, not just what the marketing says

For Bitcoin, people often bring up the old debates:

• Block size wars
• SegWit activation
• Soft forks vs hard forks

Not as history lessons, but as governance case studies: who really had power, and how was it used?

In Ethereum’s case, the group talks about:

• The DAO hack and chain rollback as an early governance stress test
• The transition to proof of stake and what that means for validator incentives
• How EIPs actually move from idea to live upgrade

What I like is that members constantly compare the narratives with the operational reality.

For example:

• “Bitcoin is fully decentralized.”

  
  Okay, but miners, node operators, and a relatively small set of developers still coordinate upgrades. What happens if those groups disagree?

• “Ethereum governance is transparent because of public EIPs.”

  
  Sure, but how many people actually read EIPs end-to-end? Who has the time and skills to meaningfully review them?

This ties back to the broader point we touched on earlier: both Bitcoin and Ethereum use off-chain governance at their core. That doesn’t make them “bad” – but it does mean you can’t just assume that “code is law” and walk away.

Inside the group, you’ll often see someone link to a deep governance breakdown, then others jump in with:

• Real-world examples of forks and contentious upgrades
• How big mining pools or large validators can influence outcomes
• Where user sentiment truly matters and where it’s mostly symbolic

The result is that you come away with a much more realistic picture of how Bitcoin and Ethereum move forward, stall, or compromise. Helpful if you’re building on these chains or trying to understand long-term risk as an investor.

Using external resources and tools to go deeper

One thing I really appreciate is that the group doesn’t act as if it’s the only place that matters. Members constantly share external links and tools to back up their points.

Typical resources you’ll see linked:

• Articles on the disadvantages of blockchain – energy, scalability, integration hurdles, operational risk
• Explainers on blockchain security – cryptography basics, consensus models, “honest majority” assumptions
• Legal and policy analyses on decentralized governance – who is liable, how decision-making is structured, what “decentralized” really means legally

When those links appear, I usually do the same thing I do when I’m researching a new wallet, exchange, or protocol for Cryptolinks:

• Read the article or paper
• Compare it with what people in the group are saying
• Then cross-check it with on-chain data or independent tools

For example, if someone claims a DeFi protocol is decentralized and safe, but others point out:

• The multisig is controlled by a few known addresses
• The governance token voting is highly concentrated

…you can verify those claims yourself with a block explorer or DeFi analytics platform. That “don’t just trust, go check” mindset is something I try to push on my own platform as well.

How this helps you cut through hype

What makes the whole thing powerful isn’t just the individual discussions – it’s the mix of people in them.

• Technical builders who can read smart contracts, talk about gas patterns, and explain why some bridges are ticking time bombs
• Governance and DAO people who understand how power actually gets used, not just how it’s described in whitepapers
• Legal and policy folks who can say, “That’s cute, but here’s how regulators are going to see this structure”

When a new DeFi protocol, L2, or Bitcoin/Ethereum upgrade shows up, you end up getting:

• A technical view: “Is this architecture sane or fragile?”
• A governance view: “Who can change the rules, and how fast?”
• A regulatory view: “Is this likely to be in a gray area or a storm zone?”

That’s extremely useful if you’re:

• Designing a new protocol and want to sanity check your idea
• Trying to understand whether a DeFi yield is real or just masked risk
• Thinking long-term about Bitcoin or Ethereum instead of week-to-week price moves

And this is exactly where the next part gets really interesting, because once you understand how the group thinks about DeFi, Bitcoin, and Ethereum in practice, the natural questions kick in:

What are the biggest problems blockchain still hasn’t solved? Can you actually trust these systems? And who really makes the final calls when things go wrong?

Those are the questions I’ll tackle next – with clear pros and cons of joining the group at all.

FAQs, pros & cons, and is Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group worth your time?

Let’s wrap this up the same way I use the group myself: by being practical.

When people message me on Cryptolinks or comment on reviews, the same three questions always come up:

• “What’s actually broken with blockchain right now?”
• “Can any of this really be trusted?”
• “Who’s actually in charge of Bitcoin and Ethereum?”

Steve’s group doesn’t magically solve those questions, but it does give you a place where smart people attack them from different angles – technical, economic, governance, and legal.

FAQ: Biggest blockchain problems, trust, and governance – answered

Let me answer those same questions the way I see them, plus how the discussion usually plays out in the group.

Q: What is the biggest problem with blockchain right now?

If you look at serious industry breakdowns (like the kind of stuff Webisoft lists when they talk about blockchain drawbacks), the same four issues keep showing up:

• Scalability – Throughput, latency, and fees. Ethereum’s gas spikes in 2021–2022 were a real example: during NFT mania, simple swaps could cost $100+. You can’t build mainstream apps on that.
• Energy consumption (for PoW) – Bitcoin’s energy use is always in the news. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance has consistently tracked Bitcoin’s energy footprint at the level of a small country. It’s not as simple as “bad” or “good,” but it’s a real trade-off people argue about a lot.
• Integration complexity – Getting a traditional bank, logistics company, or government registry to integrate with a chain is still hard. Legacy systems, compliance, data formats – it all adds friction.
• Governance and upgrades – How do you push protocol changes without splitting the community, breaking apps, or centralizing power? That’s not a solved problem at all.

Inside the group, these show up in very concrete ways:

• A founder asking if they should launch their product on a high-throughput L2 because gas fees on mainnet would kill their user base.
• Someone from a traditional finance background asking if Bitcoin’s energy mix is actually improving, then members linking to data on renewable usage vs fossil fuels to argue both sides.
• Teams complaining (politely) about how long it takes to get enterprise sign-off to touch anything “blockchain” because of compliance and integration risk.
• DAO contributors struggling with how to coordinate an upgrade that affects token economics without triggering a governance war.

So if I had to summarize the “biggest problem”:

Scaling blockchain to real-world usage, without wrecking decentralization or governance, is still the main bottleneck.

The group doesn’t pretend there’s a clean fix. You’ll mostly see people talking trade-offs: a bit less decentralization here for better UX there, or vice versa.

Q: Can blockchain be trusted?

The honest answer is: it depends what layer you’re talking about.

At the protocol level, on a mature chain like Bitcoin or Ethereum:

• You’ve got cryptography, distributed consensus, and economic incentives working together.
• IBM’s own explainers on blockchain security point out how the structure (linked blocks, hashes, distributed ledgers) gives you strong tamper-resistance if you have a majority of honest participants.

In practice, for big, battle-tested chains, that base layer is pretty trustworthy. Attacking Bitcoin or Ethereum directly is insanely expensive and visible.

But at the application and governance layer, it’s a different story:

• Smart contracts get hacked. Think of the classic DAO hack in 2016, or more recently the string of DeFi exploits where a single missing check or poorly designed oracle resulted in millions lost.
• Admin keys and multi-sigs concentrate power. A protocol can market itself as “decentralized,” but if five people on a multi-signature wallet can upgrade contracts at will, you’re still trusting humans a lot.
• DAOs can be captured. A whale or coordinated group can swing votes in their favor if the design leans too heavily on pure token-weighted voting.

In the group this often gets summed up as:

“Trust the math, question the governance and implementation.”

I’ve seen threads where someone posts a “ZK-powered” DeFi protocol, and the first comments aren’t “wen token?”, they’re:

• Who controls the upgrade keys?
• Is there a pause function? Who can hit it?
• Has this been audited, and by whom?
• Is the ZK piece essential, or just marketing?

So can blockchain be trusted?

• Yes, at the protocol level on mature chains, with the usual assumptions.
• Conditionally, at the app and DAO level – where you have to treat it like any other high-risk software + human system. Read the code if you can, read the audits if you can’t, and scrutinize the governance.

The group is useful here because it keeps forcing you to separate those layers when you think about “trust.”

Q: How is governance handled in Bitcoin and Ethereum?

This is one of the biggest sources of confusion for newcomers. People assume “on-chain voting” = “governance,” but Bitcoin and Ethereum don’t work like most DAOs.

Both are mostly governed through off-chain processes, which legal and tax-focused writers like Freeman Law have described as “decentralized governance mechanisms” that rely on social consensus, not just code.

Roughly speaking, the pattern looks like this:

• Developers propose changes – Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs), Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).
• Node operators choose which software to run. If they don’t like an upgrade, they can refuse it.
• Miners / validators signal support through what they run and what blocks they accept.
• Exchanges, wallets, businesses, and users create economic pressure. If Coinbase, major wallets, and a big chunk of the userbase treat one chain as “real Bitcoin” or “real Ethereum,” that heavily influences outcomes.

There’s no simple “vote” button.

Inside the group, discussions about BTC and ETH governance often turn into comparisons with DAOs, which try to bring governance on-chain:

• DAOs use token-weighted voting or more experimental models (quadratic voting, reputation scores, delegation, etc.).
• Votes directly trigger contract actions – parameter changes, treasury moves, upgrades.

This makes the rules more explicit and programmable, but it also introduces new attack vectors:

• Flash loan attacks on governance if token voting isn’t properly protected.
• Low participation, where a tiny slice of holders decides everything.
• Delegation cartels, where a handful of delegates effectively become “politicians” controlling the protocol.

In one thread I remember, someone asked whether Ethereum should “just turn into a DAO” for governance. The responses were basically:

• Ethereum already uses multiple overlapping layers of governance: core dev calls, EIPs, client teams, validators, social consensus.
• Turning that into a single on-chain vote would probably centralize power faster, not decentralize it.

The takeaway:

Bitcoin and Ethereum rely on messy but resilient off-chain governance; DAOs try to formalize that on-chain, but bring their own social and technical risks. Neither path is “perfectly decentralized.”

Pros and cons of joining Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group

Here’s the part most people really care about: is this group actually useful, or is it just another place to scroll?

Pros

• Serious focus on governance, security, DAOs, and scaling
  

  If you want to understand why things like The DAO hack happened, how MakerDAO handles collateral and governance changes, or why L2s rely so much on honest multisigs today, you’ll find people who can walk through those details.

• Healthy mix of technical and non-technical members
  

  You’ll see Solidity devs, DAO contributors, policy folks, and long-term investors in the same threads. That mix is rare. It also means someone will probably catch the angle you missed, whether that’s legal, economic, or technical.

• LinkedIn environment cuts a lot of nonsense
  

  Real names and professional backgrounds reduce random meme spam and low-effort scams. It’s not perfect, but compared to Telegram or Discord, the signal-to-noise ratio is noticeably better.

• Great for a daily learning habit
  

  Think of it like a curated feed of “serious crypto problems people are actually working on.” Spend 15 minutes scrolling the group and you’ll usually come away with a new thread to think about, a paper to read, or an example of something that broke in the wild.

Cons

• Not a trading or meme hangout
  

  If you want chart spam, meme coins, or “next 100x” calls, you’ll be disappointed. That’s a feature for me, but it might be a bug for you.

• Some threads are dense if you’re brand new
  

  If you’ve never heard of EIPs, BFT, rollups, or multisigs, certain conversations will feel like walking into a grad-level seminar halfway through the semester. You can still learn, but expect to Google a bit or ask clarifying questions.

• Quality varies by post (as always)
  

  Any open group gets the occasional low-effort link or surface-level hot take. The difference here is that low-effort stuff usually sinks, and thoughtful posts tend to get the attention.

How to get the most out of the group

The group works best when you treat it like a workshop, not a passive feed. Here’s what’s worked for me and for people who email me about it later.

• Set a time budget
  

  Decide up front: 15–20 minutes a day. That’s enough to scan new posts, engage with one or two threads, and save useful links – without falling into an endless scroll.

• Ask specific questions
  

  Vague questions get vague answers. Sharp questions get gold. For example:

  • Instead of: “How DAO?”
  • Ask: “We’re planning a treasury of $X. Should we use simple token voting, or a delegate system with a security council for emergencies?”

  You’ll often get responses from people who’ve actually shipped similar designs, plus links to case studies or post-mortems from other DAOs.

• Bookmark strong threads and follow up
  

  When you see a breakdown of an exploit, a governance drama, or a new L2 design, don’t just read it once and forget it. Save it, then:

  • Read the linked articles or research papers.
  • Check what the on-chain data says using explorers, analytics tools, or security dashboards.
  • Cross-reference with education and tools listed on Cryptolinks so you’re not just taking anyone’s word for it.

• Share your own experience, even if you’re not an expert
  

  Some of the best threads I’ve seen start with:

  • “We tried X governance model; here’s what broke.”
  • “We shipped on L2 Y; here’s the UX issue we hit with bridging.”

  You don’t need to be a famous founder. Being honest and concrete about what you’ve built or tried is enough to spark useful discussion.

Conclusion: Should you join Steve’s Blockchain Tech Group?

Here’s my bottom line.

You’ll probably get a lot of value from the group if you:

• Care about how blockchain actually works, not just “wen Lambo?”
• Want to understand governance, DAOs, EVM chains, L1/L2 trade-offs, ZKPs, FHE, DeFi, and Bitcoin in the context of real incidents and real design decisions.
• Prefer a professional, grounded environment instead of anonymous chaos.

If your main goal is fast trading tips or memes, this is the wrong place. But if you’re building, investing for the long term, or just trying to get genuinely smarter about Web3, then yes – it’s absolutely worth joining and checking regularly.

The way I see it, you can use the group as your:

• Discussion layer – where you ask questions, challenge assumptions, and watch smart people argue about hard problems.
• Signal filter – to see which topics, tools, and risks serious builders and governance folks are actually paying attention to.
• Starting point – then you back everything up with independent tools, explorers, and learning resources (the kind I list and review on Cryptolinks.com) so you can verify things yourself.

In a space that’s still full of noise and hype, having a place like this in your daily stack makes a real difference. If you do join, don’t just lurk forever. Ask, share, test ideas. That’s where the real compounding happens.

CryptoLinks.com does not endorse, promote, or associate with LinkedIn groups that offer or imply unrealistic returns through potentially unethical practices. Our mission remains to guide the community toward safe, informed, and ethical participation in the cryptocurrency space. We urge our readers and the wider crypto community to remain vigilant, to conduct thorough research, and to always consider the broader implications of their investment choices.