Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid) header
Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid) profile picture

Christian, Father, SRE, periodically prolific tweeter. All opinions are my own, or someone else's.

Round Rock, TX
Joined June 2008
Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)Photo by Chris Karabats (@Zaphoid)
Chris Karabats retweeted
"Tolkien's life was unexciting"
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Life Was Unexciting. His Work Is Anything But. D.J. Taylor’s new book is part biography and part critical study of the writer behind “The Lord of the Rings.” nytimes.com/2026/11/05/books… via @NYTimesBooks
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Chris Karabats retweeted
People making this claim are ignorant or are lying to you. We have a dramatically different way of recording infant mortality compared to the rest of the world. That explains the gap.
Largest economy in the world, and it hates babies.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
US infant mortality statistics are inflated relative to many countries by broader registration of extremely preterm/low birth weight live births. US rate was 5.52 per 1,000 live births in 2024. bmj.com/content/344/bm… healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collecti… cdc.gov/nchs/products/…
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I used to think that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was perfect. But WizardofCeles proved me dead wrong.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
Robinhood just turned on its own blockchain @RobinhoodCrypto Chain went live on mainnet today, a Layer 2 built on Arbitrum, purpose-built for tokenized real-world assets. Tokenized Stock Tokens are now tradable 24/7 through Robinhood Wallet in 120+ countries, with those shares also usable as DeFi collateral. @RobinhoodApp Earn also launched, letting users lend $USDG for an estimated 7% yield through Morpho. Whether that specific lending market actually runs on Robinhood Chain itself isn't confirmed. Everything else announced today, wider perp futures in Europe, UK crypto trading, Canada going live, a new AI trading tool, is separate from the chain. General business expansion running alongside it, not built on it. $HOOD up nearly 8% on the day, still about 30% off its October high.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
Offchain Enterprise Services helped @RobinhoodCrypto create production-ready blockchain infrastructure. We supported Robinhood with strategic technical guidance, Arbitrum platform support, and infrastructure expertise as it brought tokenized assets to market on Arbitrum One and progressed toward building Robinhood Chain. This is the next chapter of enterprise blockchain adoption: real financial products, configurable infrastructure, and technical support built for scale.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
This banger was 1 year ago.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
Oops - in Live Nation case, Texas filed a motion to withdraw attorney - that was meant for an entirely separate case in another District, about "aliens as public charges." Meanwhile TX AG unlike other states has not provided a single Public Record on Press request
Morning scan 2: When you wake up to find your How "Ticketmaster Loses the Jury: Live Nation Death Sentence" is the Number 1 New Release in Antitrust Law (surely an obscure category, but hey... Get it while it's hot amazon.com/dp/B0GXFSGYJ1
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Chris Karabats retweeted
installing npm packages in 2026
‼️🚨 UPDATE: The TanStack npm attack is now a full campaign. 'Mini' Shai-Hulud has hit: - OpenSearch - Mistral AI - Guardrails AI -UiPath - Squawk packages across npm and PyPI The malware specifically targets AI developer tooling. It hooks into Claude Code (.claude/settings.json) and VS Code (.vscode/tasks.json) to re-execute on every tool event, long after the infected package is gone. npm uninstall does not fix this.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
Today we’re sharing the next chapter for @Offchain. Offchain Labs -> Offchain may seem like a small move, but it’s highly consequential and represents the evolution of our company and our brand. What began as deep R&D into Ethereum scaling has expanded into a much larger mission: building best-in-class infrastructure for enterprises operating in the programmable economy. Over the years, we’ve brought together some of the best teams in crypto across the stack: - The finance-native blockchain platform: @arbitrum - Advancing L1 consensus: @prylabs - Powering over 5M smart accounts: @zerodev We believe the next generation of financial infrastructure will be programmable by default, and Offchain is the strategic infrastructure partner for the world's most ambitious companies. While the rebrand signals an evolution and expansion from our early beginning in the research lab, our Princeton roots, our academic rigor and culture, and our unique R&D capabilities are still a central part of our identity and aren't disappearing with this rebrand. We’ll still use Offchain Labs when referring to our industry-leading research arm, and we have a dedicated home on the new website for the Labs part of Offchain. offchain.io/offchainlabs  By bringing our research excellence and enterprise product suite together under the unified Offchain brand, we’re building the infrastructure for the programmable economy.
We're now Offchain. A new chapter focused on powering institutions as they move onchain. What we’ve built across @arbitrum, @prylabs and @zerodev is coming together into something bigger. This is just the first step. Stay tuned. offchain.io/
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Chris Karabats retweeted
“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C.S. Lewis
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Chris Karabats retweeted
A new Arbitrum Nitro version 3.9.9 is now available on Docker Hub with the following tag: offchainlabs/nitro-node:v3.9.9-6b0af88-stripped This is an important release containing stability improvements and security fixes, and we recommend teams adopt it as soon as possible. The source code will be published in the coming days. Following that, a non-stripped version of the Nitro node software will be made available under the usual tag. However, we recommend upgrading now using the stripped binary release above. As always, we recommend running the latest stable release of Nitro. Thanks!
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Chris Karabats retweeted
I've never seen a kid's book this beautifully made. Incredible artwork and an incredible team of people who worked together to make this happen. Be sure to check it out.
To celebrate #ChildrensBookWeek, we are offering Volume 1 of This Book Might Explode for only $9.99! explodeyworld.com/sp/light-t… This Book Might Explode is like the whole kids section of a bookstore packed into one book. It's got chapter books, picture books, comics, gag pages, and activities. Every kid we’ve seen with this book loves it. And it makes for the perfect screen-time replacement. We want to inspire and encourage your kid to get active and get creative. Get yours today!
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Chris Karabats retweeted
.@Offchain proudly signed on to this letter and is excited to keep the momentum going on this watershed piece of legislation.
1/ Today, @BlockchainAssn and @crypto_council, joined by a broad coalition of more than 120 organizations from across the digital asset ecosystem, urged the Senate Banking Committee to move forward with a markup on market structure legislation. Years of bipartisan work have brought Congress to an important moment. The U.S. needs clear, durable rules that protect consumers, provide certainty, and reinforce American leadership in digital asset innovation.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
This G.K. Chesterton quote I return to weekly
What’s a line from something you’ve read that you find yourself repeating in your head every now and then?
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Chris Karabats retweeted
come cook with me 😇👩‍🍳
Hiring: Head of Social @Offchain Looking for someone with extensive crypto experience to own our strategy across platforms (including @arbitrum, @prylabs, and @zerodev) Must be a "player-coach" who can translate technical developments into credible narratives across X, LinkedIn, and YouTube 📍Remote (US / EDT preferred) Interested? Drop a comment or DM, or tag someone who fits
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I'm a member of the Security Council & I can tell you we did not make this decision lightly, there were countless hours of debates, technical, practical, ethical and political. But all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, so today, we decided to do something.
The Arbitrum Security Council has taken emergency action to freeze the 30,766 ETH being held in the address on Arbitrum One that is connected to the KelpDAO exploit. The Security Council acted with input from law enforcement as to the exploiter’s identity, and, at all times, weighed its commitment to the security and integrity of the Arbitrum community without impacting any Arbitrum users or applications. After significant technical diligence and deliberation, the Security Council identified and executed a technical approach to move funds to safety without affecting any other chain state or Arbitrum users. As of April 20 11:26pm ET the funds have been successfully transferred to an intermediary frozen wallet. They are no longer accessible to the address that originally held the funds, and can only be moved by further action by Arbitrum governance, which will be coordinated with relevant parties.
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Chris Karabats retweeted
The Arbitrum Security Council has taken emergency action to freeze the 30,766 ETH being held in the address on Arbitrum One that is connected to the KelpDAO exploit. The Security Council acted with input from law enforcement as to the exploiter’s identity, and, at all times, weighed its commitment to the security and integrity of the Arbitrum community without impacting any Arbitrum users or applications. After significant technical diligence and deliberation, the Security Council identified and executed a technical approach to move funds to safety without affecting any other chain state or Arbitrum users. As of April 20 11:26pm ET the funds have been successfully transferred to an intermediary frozen wallet. They are no longer accessible to the address that originally held the funds, and can only be moved by further action by Arbitrum governance, which will be coordinated with relevant parties.
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Hello! As a follow up to Monday’s (March 23 2026) Arbitrum Sepolia network outage and out of an abundance of caution, we are asking all node operators to upgrade all of their nodes to Nitro 3.9.8 at their earliest convenience. This release is available as a Docker Image on Docker Hub at offchainlabs/nitro-node:v3.9.8-4624977. This recommendation applies to node operators for all Arbitrum chains. Thank you for your understanding!
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Chris Karabats retweeted
The Robinhood Chain public testnet is live 🛠️ Developers can now build on a financial-grade Ethereum Layer 2 built on @arbitrum— designed to support tokenized real-world and digital assets. Start building with the core foundation of Robinhood Chain: docs.robinhood.com/chain Learn more on our newsroom: robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom…
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