Hacker News Reader

Comment by cableshaft | Hacker News Reader

Several of these still have 'eth' or 'nft' or 'crypto' in their new name, just not '.eth'. One even changed their name to 'nftsdoteth'. Not sure that should really be included on this list.

Also seems like a whole bunch changed from '.eth' at the end to '0x' at the beginning. '0x' is how an ETH wallet address (without the ENS domain) begins, so that's still clearly a reference to crypto.

View on HN

I don’t know if that’s a reference to crypto for the majority of people - I’ve worked in crypto for years and I had an 0x name for my white hat hacking related accounts (it was trendy there a while back) but never for cryptocurrency stuff

I should clarify I didn't mean every 0x guarantees it's a crypto reference. However, if their previous name had .eth at the end, and especially if there's a 'NFT' in their new username somewhere, it's almost certainly a reference to crypto.

you really don't know how other crypto people think?

every interaction in the wildly popular EVM space has 0x prefixed to it, for all EOAs, for all transaction IDs, for all smart contracts, and for several large projects and several thought leaders in the space

the consensus model does not require the 0x prefix to resolve a transaction destination but pretty much nobody knows that (some regional wallets omit the 0x), and it is almost purely cosmetic

You're thinking about this from the wrong direction. Parent is saying that not all 0x things are crypto (because it's the general signifier for hex), not that crypto people don't use 0x.

Oh I got that part, its just in a thread about crypto enthusiasts and professionals we are really wondering what/why 0x is being used for because this crypto professional didnt notice the extremely high correlation while using it in their other unrelated persona? kind of absurd, but its nice how polite everyone is being about it

What I meant was that an uptick in 0x account names is not in and of itself a signal on if there's an increase in Eth-related usernames

Not all 0x things are crypto, but it's safe to assume that nearly 100% of 0x things from people who used to have .eth in their name are references to crypto and not to any other context for hexadecimal numbers.

This was originally brought up in the context of saying that certain people removed eth and added 0x which is in context still clearly a reference to crypto, so the username fad just changed, and these probably (sadly) shouldn't be seen as Ethereum/crypto dying or losing popularity. Your implication is that Ethereum and crypto are dying and their users are en masse getting very interested in computer science and the hexadecimal numbering system and all happened to decide to change their names to include 0x for that reason, but it seems a lot more likely that the crypto cult is just playing follow the leader.

> Your implication is that Ethereum and crypto are dying

No it's not. Where did I say that?

0x in and of itself is not necessarily a reference to crypto.

In many programming languages 0x at the start of a number means the number is encoded in base 16 (0123456789ABCDEF) instead of base 10 (0-9).

see 0xDEADBEEF, 0xCAFEBABE, and for the eternal NFT crowd 0xFACEDEED.

What's interesting to me is that there is also a contingent of people that represent hexadecimal numbers with an "h" suffix, like FACEDEEDh. I always wondered what pushed people one way or the other. I learned 0x first but see "h" most in assembly code listings (which was indeed not my first programming language) and hardware datasheets.

That's definitely true.

I think it comes from the preference of the author of an assembler's parser regarding how to recognize a number's base - either by analyzing the string or by forcing the progammer to declare upfront.

The prefix seems better to me because you read it first, and also the x is a more clear marker than h because it’s at the opposite end of the alphabet to the rest of the hexadecimal digits.

"h" suffix is a pain in the ass in MASM and probably other assemblers (a leading 0 is required for hex literals that begin with a letter to distinguish from identifiers e.g. mov eax, 0FACEDEEDh)

I'm aware it means that normally, I've used that while programming every once in a while.

But if their most previous name was .eth, it almost certainly is a reference to crypto.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com