Paying off your mortgage faster feels like reducing risk.
But it mostly just makes your balance sheet smaller — not safer.
What actually protects your home is something much simpler.
I wrote this up as a short story + interactive tools:
www.fretchen.eu/blog/26/
"Streamline crypto payments with our open-source x402 facilitator on Optimism and Base - just 0.01 USDC per settlement. Get started now: www.fretchen.eu/x402/"
A dinner conversation reveals why paying off your mortgage faster isn't always the safest strategy — and what actually protects your home when life goes wrong.
Does anyone know any ways to go beyond that ? Any recommendations on quantitative investing for retail (hobby) investors ?
Got some comments from friends that were interested in the code behind my last post on investing with risk budgets. So here it is:
github.com/fretchen/ret...
Many investment guides start with predicting returns.
But we can’t reliably predict markets.
What we can measure is risk.
In this post I show a simple way to build an ETF portfolio using risk budgets instead of forecasts, with two interactive tools.
www.fretchen.eu/blog/25/
A hands-on guide to ETF diversification using risk budgets, with interactive tools to find your own allocation.
My x402 facilitator was added to the ecosystem page. I am looking forward to your feedback and hope that it helps some people:
www.fretchen.eu/x402
If you consider please feel free to tell me what you like or what might be missing. #buildinpublic #x402 #usdc
I’ve made an x402 payment facilitator public (Optimism and Base only for now). This is a experiment and I’m mostly looking for early feedback. The main goal is to find sustainble (public) solutions including fees on different chains.
Facilitator: facilitator.fretchen.eu
Put together a technical note on moving a single-chain NFT app to multi-chain (Optimism + Base).
CAIP-2 for network IDs, shared chain config, cleaner payment flow, and a testing setup that stopped hanging tests.
Mostly practical takeaways: www.fretchen.eu/blog/24
#buildinpublic #webdev
Technical summary of implementing multi-chain support for an NFT minting application. Notes on architecture, testing patterns, and lessons learned.
I see a lot of people looking for European Alternatives to BigTech. Well. There is site for that and it is suprisingly good / complete. However, it also shows you just how small the European Tech Market remains. Plenty of good things, but also plenty of holes in the offer.
european-alternatives.eu
Two reasonable politicians. One secure, one impatient.
No compromise.
This post uses a small interactive model to show why gridlock isn’t stupidity—it’s structure.
When security is high and patience is low, cooperation collapses easily.
www.fretchen.eu/blog/23/
I just implemented x402, a standard for HTTP-native payments that lets AI agents pay autonomously for services — no accounts, no sessions, just 402 Payment Required + crypto.
Built a facilitator, wired it to Optimism, and learned a lot about trust models along the way.
www.fretchen.eu/blog/22
I implemented the x402 payment standard for AI agents to autonomously pay for image generation services without accounts or sessions.
For the moment it works through whitelisting. But the real idea is to try things out together and see if EIP-8004 for ethereum could work for a decentral AI agent network in practice.
eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-8004
#blockchain #web3 #eip8004
I got interested in ethereum and the blockchain because I wanted to understand if it might be possible to have decentral networks of quantum computers or AI agents. As I am learning, I now implemented some guides that would allow others to join the experiment: www.fretchen.eu/agent-onboar... #eth
Just discovered that a bot network exploited my ImageGen NFT contract — all to steal… 80 cents. 😅
Analyzed the wallets, found a 2.5-year-old operation extracting >100k USDC across chains.
Patched the contract, published the write-up, and the bots are weirdly impressive.
www.fretchen.eu/blog/21
A bot network exploited a vulnerability in my GenImNFT contract, extracting over 80 cents. Here's how they did it, how I fixed it, and what the forensic analysis revealed about the bot network that seemingly extracts substantial sums.
In the last few weeks I looked a bit into ways that democracy could work outside of the confines of nation-states. And I made an essay out of it... All inspired by the incredible interviews of Lea Ypi...
www.fretchen.eu/blog/20
Live as a builder is hard sometimes. In October I go a few hundred visitors. Now I decided to see how they engage with the different buttons and features on my website. The result is: 0 engagement :( Let's see what it is, but this is really painful...
Any recommendations out there ?
Or in the #tragedyofcommons
www.fretchen.eu/blog/14
The occasions where I learned from them was in the #prisonersdilemma:
www.fretchen.eu/blog/13
I really love the power that games have to teach me new things. This website has pushed this to a whole other level as it collects plenty of really thoughtful and educative games.
nonzerosum.games
