Sam Kessler

Sam is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for tech and protocols. His reporting is focused on decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. Sam holds a computer science degree from Harvard University, where he led the Harvard Political Review. He has a background in the technology industry and owns some ETH and BTC. Sam was part of the team that won a 2023 Gerald Loeb Award for CoinDesk's coverage of Sam Bankman-Fried and the FTX collapse.

Sam Kessler

Latest from Sam Kessler


Tech

Lido DAO Rebukes LayerZero by Endorsing Rivals Wormhole, Axelar for Crypto Bridge

LayerZero launched a Lido stETH bridge last October without asking for Lido DAO's permission. The community responded this week by endorsing a pair of its biggest competitors.

LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino at Crypto Bahamas 2022 (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)

Tech

Ripple's David Schwartz Talks 'Bottom-Up Growth' on XRP Ledger, Rebuts Critics: Q&A

Schwartz spoke to The Protocol about the aftermath of Ripple's SEC win, his method for dealing with XRP's rabid fanbase, the XRP Ledger's controversial approach to centralization, and more.

Ripple Labs CTO David Schwartz sat down with The Protocol for a wide-ranging interview on XRP, the SEC and more. (Ripple)

Tech

Bug That Took Down 8% of Ethereum's Validators Sparks Worries About Even Bigger Outage

The lion's share of Ethereum's validators rely on the same piece of software to power their operations. According to some experts, this could be a big risk.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist, namesake for "proto-danksharding," a major component of Ethereum's upcoming "Dencun" upgrade. (Bradley Keoun)

Tech

MetaMask's Secret Project Could Shake Up How Ethereum Works

MetaMask is quietly testing new tech that uses third parties to route user transactions. It will eventually be made available outside of MetaMask and will be closely scrutinized for how it manages to avoid centralization concerns.

MetaMask has quietly rolled out a limited version of its new routing tech into the new Smart Swaps feature (MetaMask, modified by CoinDesk)

Tech

Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Proposes Gas Limit Increase

Ethereum's gas limit refers to the maximum amount of gas that can be expended in an individual block. A limit increase could improve network capacity and potentially reduce costs for users.

(TechCrunch/Wikimeda Commons, modified by CoinDesk)

Tech

We Tried Fox's Blockchain-Based Tool for Deepfake Detection. Here's How It Went

Fox's new blockchain tool might not help consumers suss out deep fakes, but it could be a boon to publishers struggling to navigate the AI age. We kicked the tires on the new technology.

Verify authenticates the source of a Fox News image from an article about Elon Musk and deep fakes (Verify.fox, modified by CoinDesk)

Tech

Ethereum Validators Forced to Wait Days to Unstake Amid Celsius Withdraws

This means there is now a 5.6 day wait for validators to exit the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum has a backlog of validators waiting to exit the chain. (Koushik Pal/Unsplash, modified by CoinDesk)