2026 Q2 Review: Transparency

TL;DR:

This is the second edition of the quarterly review with the new 10-point format: It has 55 bite-size items, and the section titles may keep getting tuned. I'd suggest reading from the top, or at least finishing a section before clicking any hyperlinks. Or just jump straight to whatever interests you — that works too.

Thoughts and ideas welcome at hello@jasonjlai.net.

This review was originally drafted in Chinese and subsequently translated with assistance from Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini.

Contents

· 1 Transparency

· 2 Twin Wins

· 3 Rain Checks

· 4 On Repeat

· 5 Five-Star Finds

· 6 On a Roll

· 7 Fast Failures

· 8 Eight Pillars

· 9 Nine Lives

· 10 Tenfold Thanks

1 · One Theme: Transparency

Keep becoming more transparent in how I think and work — to lower the friction for others to collaborate with me. My hope is that this openness sparks interesting stories and possibilities between me and the world, inviting a little luck and acts of kindness along the way. Beyond my daily Chinese livestream logs and these bilingual quarterly reviews, I'd like to add a biweekly or monthly report in Q3: more output to pull in more input.

2 · Twin Wins

1. PIF12 (Pay it Forward 12) went onchain right on schedule, on the summer solstice. It's a long-term onchain community experiment. Year one is simply about spreading the idea: technology wired the world together yet left us more closed off, and I want to use a blockchain to connect and reconnect the interesting souls in my life. That's all.

2. The Blockchain Lawyers Forum (BLF) — I gave a talk on U.S. digital asset law, and contributed an article: "From Immunity to Accountability: How U.S. Digital Asset Regulation Can Support Both Institutional Adoption and the Crypto-Native Community."

3 · Three Rain Checks

1. Didn't finish my half-marathon self-training
2. Didn't finish the video on Bayesian thinking
3. Didn't finish my review of Tyler Cowen's new book on "Marginal Revolution"

Since this quarterly review is about transparency, I'm honestly logging what didn't get done — without piling up excuses; the reasons belong in the retrospective, in how I made trade-offs. Mostly it comes down to time management and energy allocation: once I said yes to the BLF invitation, there was not much bandwidth left for these. As for Cowen's book in particular: it really requires revisiting marginal utility theory from microeconomics first. I feel like I finished reading it, yet beyond restating the author's points I can't voice an insight of my own — which surely means my understanding isn't deep enough, and that's why the pen still hasn't moved.

As for the half marathon, I've put too much mental pressure on myself, feeling like I need to rush to run a 10K one to three times first, which has actually left me paralyzed and unable to take a single step.

4 · Four on Repeat

1. Yorushika — "Abuku" (OFFICIAL VIDEO)(Japanese) The YouTube algorithm served me this one. What hooked me first was the upbeat tempo and the absurd plot; since I happened to be learning Japanese and liked the song, I saved it. After asking AI, I learned it's written in a minor key — echoing a despairing loop of a life the protagonist keeps punching back at — except the tempo is so light you'd never hear the minor key. And every counterpunch dissolves like a dream, like foam: exactly the title, "abuku" — bubbles. Naturally, I came up with my own smug interpretation. It's always easy to talk from the sidelines, and in this case, from the TV set. There I was, guessing how the protagonist might escape the room… and a few minutes in, it was my turn on stage. "Oh yeah? Let's see you try." (laughs)

2. Toy Story 5 I couldn't remember the plot of the fourth one — only a vague disappointment. But people recommended this one, some even calling it the best of the series, so I went to the theater. I liked it: beyond mirroring our era's predicament — dopamine addiction to our devices — I loved the touch of dark humor, semi-retired Woody, and the way it stacks emotion, turns, and lands the ending inside ninety-odd minutes without going cheap (not one of those "technology bad, back to nature" cop-out endings).

3. BlogBlog.Club (Mandarin) — a place devoted to nudging everyone into blogging The one really worth recommending is Wiwi Kuan: "whatever happens, treat it as the best thing that could have happened right now." Sounds like chicken soup for the soul, but to me it echoes Camus insisting we must imagine Sisyphus happy. This deeply resonates with me; as I've dealt with bodily aging and accumulated small ailments over the past two years, I've found real, comforting benefits in this mindset. I truly believe there is so much more to explore here — so let's break free from the grip of algorithms and join the BlogBlog Club.

   There's also a monthly blog party with themed prompts. I've submitted two pieces so far, and I'll be hosting the September edition — come join us.

4. The Grand Budapest Hotel Only while writing this review did I realize I have a taste for dark humor, though I can't quite define it. Maybe it's the slapstick escape scenes, the killer's breezy indifference to human life, or M. Gustave reminding me that I should learn to flirt — and then the counterpoint: him rising, heroically, to defend Zero against soldiers. The Zweig backstory was a bonus from chatting with AI after the film.

5 · Five-Star Finds

1. Sun Brand Ice (太陽牌冰品): a mid-May trip to Tainan brought me to this old-school ice treat — the most recommendable bite of the whole trip. After all my visits to Tainan, my only regret is not discovering it sooner. We went two days in a row.

2. Wangji Fucheng Zongzi (王記府城肉粽): this one hardly needs my endorsement — Jensen has signed his name there three times. One useful note: dine-in barely has a queue (we went on Dragon Boat Festival day two years in a row and were seated within five minutes).

3. Arashiyama Aged Gyukatsu (嵐山熟成牛かつ專売): finding this place was mildly surreal. I was headed to Taichung for an event, restless on the HSR: a gap before the event, and no idea where to eat or rest. So I quit searching and went on instinct — ride the metro to the neighborhood, then trust luck, or a local's tip, on the walk to the venue. First I stepped into a brunch café with exactly one table of customers. "Sit anywhere you like." So I headed for the second floor —

   "The second floor isn't open." Fine — the four-top by the window, then.

   "Window seats are reserved for larger parties," and they pointed me to a small corner seat.

   Hmm. Why won't you just seat me? "No worries — I'll come back another time," and I walked out with a smile.

   And there stood this gyukatsu shop. Big bites of beef, far beyond expectation — yet another example of "whatever happens, treat it as the best thing that could have happened right now."

4. Morris Chang's autobiography(Mandarin): Although I'm only halfway through the second volume, I've been intentionally pacing myself because it is such a page-turner — I simply don't want it to end. What comes through isn't just a business titan but the warmth of a human being: he remembers the mistakes he made and the knots he carried inside, and shares them without reserve — and on his own hard work, his precise judgment, his growth as a business manager, he holds nothing back either. Worth reading, and reading again.

5. Talk Less Win More: How Lawyers in Business Development Roles Can Turn Meetings Into Revenue: I've been meaning to write a proper review and never started. In early 2025 it struck me that fresh out of college I should have done sales to develop a gift of gab — business school calls it marketing, lawyers call it advocacy, same essence — but street-smart selling, whether 2B or 2C, is only forged in the field. This book is by Alex, a lawyer who moved into sales, writing for legal people. I finished it itching to try.

Honestly, I'm still not sure how to cleanly separate "Four on Repeat" from "Five-Star Finds." Right now, the "Four on Repeat" lean toward the artistic side — representing poetry and distant horizons — while the "Five-Star Finds" are more practical, focused on self-growth, or earthly pleasures (food, desires, and daily life). Yet, I've realized I didn't take in much "artistic" nourishment in Q2. Ultimately, it's just about documenting content worth sharing and recommending. I have a feeling these two categories will just naturally blur together in the future.

6 · Six on a Roll: six habits and sparks

1. Build in public: Writing my quarterly review is part of documenting what I build in public. Recording a daily livestream log is part of the journey. This has been inspired by many sources: Show Your Work, the spirit of early open-source software and Web3's more recent culture of openness, and last quarter's builder-mindset training. I wanted to practice and build in the open too.

   Where I am at the moment is close to what marketing entrepreneur Alex Hormozi describes in "How to catch up in life (Using Logic)" — building capacity. Don't know what to do? Sleep, lift, read, experiment, learn from people who've already done it, volunteer for the experience, etc.

   It hit home this quarter when a new friend invited me out and I had to decline because my insomnia had worsened. That's what insufficient capacity feels like: not enough health in the tank. And why do it publicly? Transparency makes trust easier to earn.

2. The morning playlist: A new habit since roughly the start of Q2 — giving the morning a small ritual instead of reaching for the phone on waking. I manage four or five days out of seven. Keep building; maybe rotate the playlist every six months for freshness.

   https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DV0QJTmgCL4sRnVe3sSuU?si=QI1pDr-wQPGsj8hghM2TLQ

3. Growing my hair out — nearly six months without a haircut now. New experience, new habit. For now: keep it until forty — though first, let's see if it survives this summer.

4. Practicing analogy, metaphor, and simile: I've always wanted to train the knack of reaching for the example close at hand — a truly creative analogy makes me slap the table — but I could never find the way in. Then recently, through AI, I learned "forced association": weight training for the brain, and perhaps, at last, my entry-level program.

5. A new input method — voice-flow dictation. Honestly I can't articulate how it differs from old-school voice input; probably that AI now corrects your words at speed. The main players are Typeless and Wispr. While I'm still adjusting, whenever I occasionally slip into a flow state, it's an absolute game-changer. That said, there are also some privacy concerns over using this new tech that may require a trade-off.

6. Ongoing conflicts and contradictions: no-self × high agency. Cultivating humor partly means practicing not taking myself so seriously — no fixation, no self-centeredness, laughing along with life. Yet last quarter's theme of high agency demands the opposite posture: going permissionless after what I want. Reconciling the two modes — and switching between them — is the next habit I want to train.

7 · Seven Fast Failures

A log of the setbacks and the slumps.

1. Coach bot goes on break: I had built an assistant-cum-ADD/ADHD coach out of the Anthropic API + Cloudflare D1 + a Telegram bot + Google Sheets. Its mission: reach out proactively four or five times a day, log my daily minutiae, and coach me to stay on what matters. The difficulties were many. First, logging must be deterministic, while coaching with emotional intelligence needs to be stochastic — and by the time I shut it down, the bot was still weak at judging which of the two to use, erring constantly, not to mention the tokens ($$$) I burned on debugging. Second, I had to feed it my own progress reports — and when I'm busy, I have zero bandwidth for that. Starved of input, both the coach and the assistant turn useless. So it's on break for now. Stop burning money.

2. PIF12 never submitted its Emergent Ventures application: self-limiting, plus not yet knowing how to tell the story — a long-standing soft spot of mine: so many things reach 90%, and then I inexplicably stop.

3. Still too much time scrolling social media — but I did dump the valuable, interesting things I found in Q2 here, for anyone curious¹. And if this struggle is yours too, this one might help — a little, just a little. Designing a system, and going easy on the self-criticism, is the first step.

4. Attempting atomic habits and a digital filing system: continuing from above — I want to design systems. After a friend's introduction and an earlier course from Raymond (雷蒙), I wanted my information flow sorted more automatically. The plan said tidy every five days; a month and a half evaporated, and I only started sorting in early July, while writing this review. It devours mind and spirit.

5. Insomnia: it worsened in Q2. In May, during the Ministry of Health and Welfare's young-adult counseling program, my sleep seemed to be turning a corner — then June fell off a cliff: either I can't fall asleep, or I wake in the small hours. There are the "let the mind wander unreasonably" falling-asleep trick that comedian 貓兵衛 shared, and an insomnia toolkit I collected from Dr. Good Dream (好夢醫師) and other sources. Where things stand: easier said than done, I should still shout it out. These techniques include: (1) The 10-3-2-1-0 rule establishes a sleep-friendly routine by cutting off caffeine (10h), food (3h), work (2h), and screens (1h) at respective intervals before bed while reserving the bed strictly for sleep. (2) The 4-7-8 breathing technique calms the nervous system through a rhythmic pattern of inhaling for 4 seconds, holding for 7, and exhaling for 8. (3) The military method combines progressive muscle relaxation with mental visualization of peaceful scenes like lakes to quickly induce sleep. (4) Paradoxical intention reduces sleep anxiety by encouraging individuals to keep their eyes open instead of forcing themselves to fall asleep. (5) Weighted blankets (about 10-15% of your body weight) utilize deep pressure stimulation to boost serotonin and melatonin while lowering cortisol levels for a more restful night.

   Any upside? Thanks to the insomnia, the algorithm occasionally fed me 貓兵衛's videos (on top of her "I'll take care of you" clip a friend had shared at the start of the year), so I rounded up friends for her stand-up special — call that the bonus.

   

6. The leaky house: old house, old problems. All of 2024 went into repairs; 2025 finally seemed settled — then in June 2026 it leaked again. Mercifully fixed in early July. The lesson? Not just "go make more money, faster, for a bigger house." The real point is watching my own interpretations. Fact: "a small area is leaking." Inference: "leaks are hard to fix, maybe unfixable — worst case, this drags on through the whole rainy season." Judgment: "ugh, why am I living in a leaky house, am I a loser, should I move, where would I even move to?!" And the outcome? It was the water meter. Fixed within two weeks. What I've learned again: Don't invent problems that don't exist, and be careful what you say to yourself.

7. Making peace with rejected SBTs: PIF12 launched onchain on the summer solstice, June 21, and I sent tokens to friends — a few seemed uninterested (my over-reading: maybe they were just busy, maybe waiting to see, and most likely my 72-hour claim window was simply too short), and I took it a bit personally and felt fragile. The lessons: practice speaking kindly to yourself, count each rejection as game experience earned, don't over-read someone not claiming a gift — and revisit Goethe's quote of "If I love you, what business is that of yours?". And then, of course, AI informed me that for some introverts, merely receiving an SBT is itself a form of social pressure — that one I truly never saw coming.

8 · Eight Pillars: where my focus went in Q2

1. The AI stack: mainly Claude and Gemini, every day. AI tools feel like teenage romance — everyone knows the breakup is only a few years out, yet that first-love, first-mover thrill is irresistible. In early July I had Fable audit my own AI usage; the summary is here.

2. Website updates: after browsing many blogrolls (for instance), my favorite Q2 addition is the seed wall — may it grow into a garden in full bloom. Also refreshed the gamified-thinking pages. The self-training continues.

3. Markets and the lure of money: the two most tiresome small-talk topics of the moment are stocks and AI — and I can't stand myself, because I open with both every time. After all, who doesn't like striking it rich? Most people will never actually buy Treasuries, but if you hold fiat in a bank you already hold bonds: you are trusting the government's ability to govern and lending the bank your money — "deposit" is simply the legally crafted euphemism for that IOU. Cash and bonds usually swing less than stocks — but these past two years, especially in Taiwan, everyone is a master trader. No one knows when the market corrects or where the bubble sits. Mr. Market's moods swing without warning; keeping his company is keeping a tiger's company — tread lightly, take profits gratefully.

4. The blockchain industry: traditional finance diving into RWA². I watch Hyperliquid stand alone — HYPE up 180% this year — and that against a total crypto market cap sliding from $2.7T to $2.1T. I keep meaning to write the full Hyperliquid analysis and map its whole ecosystem, but it stays a wish; my material never feels rigorous enough. On the non-financial side, most of my energy went into my own PIF12; I've also noticed privacy projects — Zcash, for one — running hot, though Zcash, too, faces the risk of latent vulnerabilities.

5. Game of inches: a sequel to last quarter's contradiction — no patience, yet embracing the long game. The way the two coexist is the inch-by-inch game: take an inch every day, and accept the self that occasionally slips backward.

6. Community: Taipei Club of English (TCE) is the in-person community I've invested in most — a crew of spirited, interesting, wonderfully odd young people. It's been great.

7. Law: part of the AI fleet too, but this quarter I dug into the sub-fields of tech law: privacy and cybersecurity, IP, financial innovation, emerging tech, IT and commerce, antitrust, and online media. I also went deep on open-source IP issues.

8. Health: with rain as my excuse, exercise dropped sharply, sleep wobbled along with it, and the resulting anxiety made both worse — a real bind, because health can't be ignored. The goal stands: sixty pull-ups by year-end (20 pull-ups, 20 chin-ups, 20 neutral grips; one minute of rest between sets).

9 · Nine Lives: nine comfort-zone tests

From harder to easier.

1. Three talks in English (challenge: medium) — the Blockchain Lawyers Forum, plus hosting two TCE sessions. As of July 7 I'm at six talks for the year, still a distance from the 24-talk goal. Onward — and I'll take all the help I can get: invitations of every kind welcome.
2. Going live from the HSR platform (challenge: medium): one episode of the livestream diary began right on the high-speed-rail platform, travelers packed around me — genuinely uncomfortable. I kept thinking of this video and this one.
3. Formatting the quarterly review (challenge: medium). This is probably the format from here on — holding at fifty-five items. Next improvement: borrow from IPO prospectuses and add more forward-looking hopes and expectations.
4. Joining the ETHTaipei organizing team (challenge: medium)
5. Deploying the smart contract, onchain on schedule (challenge: medium-low)
6. Introducing PIF12 to new friends (challenge: medium-low)
7. Serving as an interviewer for a club (challenge: medium-low)
8. In-person meetups of online communities × 2: Waki's community and Manny's (challenge: low)
9. Growing my hair long; joining an amateur makeover event in Taichung (challenge: low)

"Nine Lives" is a new idea that came out of rethinking the review format. Five levels of challenge: high (serious money, reputation, and time at stake — or extreme discomfort), medium-high (money, reputation, and time, or real discomfort), medium (reputation and time, or a dose of minor discomfort), medium-low (reputation or time), low (a novel experience without much risk). I hope my Q3 carries more high and medium-high entries.

10 · Tenfold Thanks

1. The TCE crew — whether at the sessions I hosted or the ones others prepared with such care: pickleball, digital note-taking systems, EMT, etc. I came away richer every time.

2. The WPRC & XueDAO crews — thanks to J.H. and R.X. for the invitations to two whitepaper reading sessions, on agentic payments and the EF Mandate / EIP-7805 — and I co-hosted the second one with the team. A bear market is exactly the season for tilling and building. Old faces and new — is it not a delight to have friends come from afar?

   

3. ETHTaipei: this year's edition runs 9/13–15, and I'm glad to have joined the organizing team. I had dinner with the crew yesterday, and I'm looking forward to working closely in Q3.

4. Thanks to A.H. in New York for handling a personal matter.

5. Thanks to E.H. and A.L. for the farewell-lunch invitation — we talked US–China relations and Mencius's "we thrive in hardship and perish in ease," echoed across the centuries by Will Durant: "A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean."

6. A chance encounter on the street with C.Y.W., a senior schoolmate, turned into lunch — more than fifteen years since we'd last met, and our paths turned out strangely alike. We talked about everything inside the profession and out. Thank you for the warmth and the generous treat.

7. A reunion with old colleagues over dinner at a buzzing restaurant.

8. Catching up with my friend Terry, losing track of time; a high-school reunion of karaoke and dinner — rare and precious.

9. Thanks to birthday star T.H. for proposing and planning the Tainan trip — the reason I got Sun Brand ice twice!

10. May's Mother's Day doubled as the family birthday gathering. A faint sense of ritual, that aesthetic distance of a traditional family where words of gratitude are scarce — still worth a line in the ledger.

Epilogue

Beyond ETHTaipei and ETHTokyo, I want Q3 to come down to drilling one thing. Just one. Master one move a thousand times instead of a thousand moves once. Be like Zenitsu from Demon Slayer — the swordsman who mastered exactly one technique.

That one thing might be Japanese, writing a book, going deep on AI × Legal, or hunting overseas collaborations. A few days ago I told a friend my focus is AI × Legal × Crypto × Gamification. In my head, I envisioned the intersection of the four, which felt like focus. Looking at my actual behavior, I've been taking the union. A domain that size is absurd. Time to fix that, now!

賴建順 Jason Lai

2026.7.8

Last updated: 2026-07-08