Jev is a new kind of model: it never writes a sentence. You hand it a question and a set of boxes and it hands back probabilities. It also picked this week's Perp of Fortune (long Aster: perps are becoming spectator entertainment, and Seoul is running a live perp-trading competition with a Korean streamer who trades Trump speeches at 50x). Tyler explains what Jev actually is (a classifier layer on an open-weights model, no moat, but a form factor that struck a nerve), Chris wants to vibe-vacuum his house with it, and Jackson's AI notes claim Jev beat Pokémon Red for $1.65, with Claude's help. Headline inflation is out of control. Then the Bitcoin topic: Spark, the Lightning-without-channels layer two. Tyler's teardown: security rests on the operators deleting their keys ("point your Claude at the code"), it's proof of authority with extra steps, one tester spent 80,000 sats to unilaterally exit 20,000, and the operators see every transaction. Some nice things are said at the end. Finale: Chris's slop auction. Flashbots found L2s full of fizzling MEV orders, EIP-1559 taxed them, and the same Tullock-contest math says the bot internet gets fixed by an auction or a wall. We're getting the wall. Plus: what happens when everyone's agent wants the same reservation. Perp of Fortune finishes +$3.72. One of the few. Jev is at 11:53. Chapters: Cold open (0:00) · Talking into chopsticks (0:53) · Perp of Fortune: long Aster (1:57) · Who sponsors a cigarette-smoking competition? (3:30) · Seoul's live perp-trading competition (5:52) · Tyler's conspiracy: the pot doesn't exist (10:34) · The marquee: Jev, the AI that can't talk (11:53) · Headline inflation: Jev beat Pokémon, with Claude (18:29) · Spark: Lightning without channels (23:06) · What is a Bitcoin layer two? (24:46) · The trust model: they have to delete the keys (29:04) · Proof of authority, a multisig between friends (32:04) · Unilateral exit: 80,000 sats to recover 20,000 (34:05) · Privacy: Spark sees everything (36:58) · Ark vs Spark, and some nice things (41:06) · The slop auction (44:00) · Tullock contests: the auction or the wall (49:28) · Agent congestion (54:52) · Like what other people don't (58:02) · Perp of Fortune result (59:22) Recorded fully remote, three tiles on one call. Our opinions are our own, not our employers'. NOT financial advice; Perp of Fortune is a small real-money account we run for entertainment, not a recommendation to long Aster or anything else. Glossary: Jev = a model trained to answer only in typed structures with probabilities, never prose. Transfer learning = training a new head on a pre-trained model with your own data; Jev sells that as an API. Layer two = a network that settles to Bitcoin; Tyler's test is unilateral exit. Spark = a Bitcoin L2 run by a federation (Lightspark, Flashnet, Breez); Spark Service Providers swap in and out to Lightning and on-chain. Delete-the-keys trust model = every Spark payment is a 2-of-2 with the operators; non-custodial only if they really delete the old key. Proof of authority = a network run by a known set of trusted parties, like the Ronin and Wormhole bridges. Unilateral exit = leaving an L2 with only your own keys; on Spark each "leaf" of your balance costs an on-chain fee. Ark = an off-chain Bitcoin protocol with a stronger trust model. MEV = profit from ordering and inserting transactions in a block. Fizzling orders = speculative on-chain orders that fail if the preconditions aren't met; spamming them is positive EV. EIP-1559 = Ethereum's congestion-priced block space, an auction against spam. Tullock contest = the game theory of a raffle; buy tickets until they cost what the prize is worth. The auction vs the wall = price the slot, or gatekeep who gets one. Instinct / Muse = consumer agents that book, buy, and cancel for you. Subscribe for next week: enclaves III (a $200 board forges the attestation), agent week two, is bitcoin back (still no charts), and Korea's 4× yen stablecoin.
