alina schanz
independent blockchain researcher and producer in berlin.
i spend most of my time on the parts of crypto that sit below the market layer: protocols, wallets, identity, privacy systems, repositories, transaction data and the people building them.
sometimes that becomes a note or a script. sometimes it turns into a longer research project or a collaboration.
right now i am spending a lot of time on privacy-focused infrastructure, blockchain identity and smaller open-source networks whose engineering interests me even when almost nobody else is talking about them.
what i actually do
how i work →most days start with a question.
sometimes it is something small, like whether a number being repeated on x survives contact with the chain.
sometimes it is a protocol i do not understand yet, so i open the repository, read the docs, trace a few transactions and keep going until the architecture starts to make sense.
i write small python tools when an explorer or a dashboard cannot answer the question. i keep the useful ones public.
i also spend time talking to developers, researchers and people building things around these systems. a lot of what i learn that way fits in no dashboard.
current
the now page →the things taking up most of my attention at the moment.
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darkfi
i have been reading darkfi's privacy model, network architecture and development history, most of it from the repository.
the system carries a lot of structure inside, and almost none of it is meant to show from the outside. i keep returning to that gap.
i am keeping technical notes as i go.
notes so far · dark.fi · github -
penumbra
private state gets more interesting once it covers trading, staking and governance as well as transfers.
i am trying to understand what an outside observer can still learn once those parts of a network are shielded.
penumbra.zone · github · protocol spec -
identity
collecting wallets is easy, and connecting them to people is the hard part.
i spend a lot of time on how to connect wallets, profiles and public identities without pretending weak evidence is stronger than it is.
of all the questions here, this is the one i return to most often.
more on the about page · ens-lookup
further down the same list, for the same reasons: anoma, nym, namada and tari. these are projects i am working on, and i represent none of them. a place on this list is my own work on the system, with no endorsement and no commercial relationship behind it.
the longer thoughts, one or two a month, four or five minutes each. old notes stay up, and a wrong one gets its correction under it.
- what a dollar earns onchain this week: 3.6% on aave, 4.4% on compound, and why usds on aave earns 0.15% supply and borrow rates read from the aave v3, spark and compound v3 contracts at one block: seventeen pools, from 0.15% to 4.40% for a stablecoin, and the utilization behind each rate. lendingstablecoinsrates4 min read
- an hour of ethereum's blob space cost $1.94. who bought it 1,576 blobs in 297 blocks, 5.3 a block against a target of 14, at a fee on the floor. robinhood chain ahead of base, an inbox nobody has named, and 49 people sharing multicall3. blobsrollupsfees4 min read
- week 38 in numbers: a 6.3-gwei spike, the same two pegs off, and $566m that went in circles the second weekly set: a 6.3-gwei spike in a week that cost 0.061 gwei at the median, nine stablecoin pegs with the same two off, and an hour of large transfers where $566m went in circles inside single blocks. gaspegsflows5 min read
background
the dates →i started spending serious time around blockchain data in 2021.
ethereum came first. it was easy to lose an evening following addresses, contracts and transaction histories through etherscan.
over time i moved from explorers to scripts, rpc endpoints, repositories and protocol documentation.
by 2023 i spent more of my time on systems than on single transactions: how data is produced, how identities connect across networks, how protocols expose state and where public observation ends.
in 2026 i started publishing more of that work instead of keeping it in local folders.
projects and conversations
write to me →some research stays as research. some of it turns into something with other people.
i like working with developers, researchers and artists when a technical system deserves a look from another angle.
the current work covers privacy infrastructure, protocol history, identity systems and ways of representing a digital system outside the usual dashboard or product interface.
away from the chain
berlin, this month →i live in berlin.
i read more technical documentation than is good for me, and i also like old paintings, long walks without headphones and places where nobody expects a laptop to appear.
the bull beside the column, on a screen wide enough to show him, is a detail of paulus potter's painting from 1647 in the mauritshuis. i like his face.
two of my notes so far price a transfer in coffee. that says as much about my mornings as about the gas market.
principles
the long version →- show the source.if a number matters, you can see where it came from.
- no paid coverage.nobody pays for a note, a post or a conclusion. a commercial relationship, if one exists, gets disclosed.
- no trading around research.i do not use something i am about to publish as a trading signal.
- corrections stay visible.a wrong note gets its correction under it, and the earlier version stays in the history.
- interest is not endorsement.i can spend weeks on a system without believing its token should be worth anything.
- the claim is mine.llms, explorers, dashboards and scripts do the legwork. the final claim is still mine.
scripts and data
all thirteen, with live status →small python scripts on the standard library and public json-rpc endpoints, without an api key. if a number in a note looks off, rerun the script that produced it.
- gasweekthe base fee by hour of day over the last week, as a table and an svg, to find the cheapest hour.
- stablepegwhether each stablecoin still trades at a dollar: uniswap v3 spot and twap, a curve 3pool quote, coingecko next to it.
- bigmoveslarge stablecoin, weth and wbtc transfers in the last n blocks, with exchange and bridge labels.
- blobwatchwho bought ethereum's blob space in the last ten minutes, and what they paid, rollup by rollup.
- lendratessupply and borrow rates on aave, spark and compound, and the sky savings rate, read from the contracts.
- l2feeswhat a transfer and a swap cost right now on ethereum and thirteen rollups, by each chain's own fee oracle.
seven datasets grow by one row a night, csv in the repositories: ethereum base fee, stablecoin pegs, lending rates, block builders, staking yields, public rpcs and rollup fees.
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contact
is this really me? →research, blockchain infrastructure, privacy, identity, obscure open-source systems and unusual technical projects are all good reasons to write. i read everything and answer most of it. an account with my name that is missing here belongs to somebody else.