https://shikhar.xyz Selected essays and writings across AI systems, product engineering, onchain infrastructure, and protocol design. en-us https://shikhar.xyz/writing/ten-projects-retrospective https://shikhar.xyz/writing/ten-projects-retrospective Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Engineering Looking back at a year of hackathon builds and side projects: prediction markets, onchain resolutions, AI NPCs, identity scores. What I got wrong, and the one question I now ask before writing any code. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/building-on-canton https://shikhar.xyz/writing/building-on-canton Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT Blockchain Infrastructure Most developers dismiss permissioned chains. Canton's sub-transaction privacy solves a problem public chains genuinely can't. Here's what building OpenFluid on it actually looked like. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/identity-future https://shikhar.xyz/writing/identity-future Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMT Identity Existing identity systems make you pick two of three. Here's the architecture I built for NebulaID to get all three, and where it still falls short. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/cross-chain-architecture https://shikhar.xyz/writing/cross-chain-architecture Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT Development What actually breaks when you build across chains, from the Espresso sequencer integration in NFTsea to a synchronization bug that would've let two people buy the same NFT. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/agent-payment-layer https://shikhar.xyz/writing/agent-payment-layer Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT AI Infrastructure Every agent framework treats payment as an afterthought. Here's the architecture I ended up building for UACP, and why it took longer than I expected. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/nexusfi-restaking-architecture https://shikhar.xyz/writing/nexusfi-restaking-architecture Sat, 20 Jan 2024 00:00:00 GMT DeFi Protocol Design In early 2024 I co-founded NexusFi, a liquid staking and restaking protocol on Nibiru. Cosmos vs EVM, EigenLayer vs native restaking, and a 9% APY target we had to hit. Here's what the architecture actually looked like and what I'd redo. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/cross-chain-bridges-trust-minimized https://shikhar.xyz/writing/cross-chain-bridges-trust-minimized Sun, 20 Feb 2022 00:00:00 GMT Infrastructure In Feb 2022 Wormhole lost $320M. In March, Ronin lost $625M. I was mid-way through a bridge integration when both hit. What they had in common, and what 'trust minimized' really requires. https://shikhar.xyz/writing/liquidity-aggregators-inside https://shikhar.xyz/writing/liquidity-aggregators-inside Fri, 15 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMT DeFi I spent months building swap routing and execution at DecenLabs. Here's what the docs don't tell you about route splits, slippage, and silent failures.