ETHDenver: What's new in the crypto world

原文标题《   ETHDenver 参会总结：我们看到了哪些趋势   》

 ArkStream Capital

Just got back from Denver. It's been a great week. Share personal feelings and emerging trends throughout the conference. Overall, EthDenver overall felt very good, far better than Consensus, Token2049.

1. Global developer culture

It is said that 35,000 people came to ETHDenver, 7,500 hackers. My hotel is a 15-minute drive from downtown, but almost every day, people can see each other in the elevator and get familiar with each other. Among practitioners, the project side: VC about 5:1. The project partners are quite global. In addition to the United States, China, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Europe is the largest collection. ArkStream and several North American and European portfolios, finally meet. In the VC space, most of the active first - and second-tier funds have people, especially some European regional capital that rarely appeared in the past.

Unlike Consensus, ETHdenver's developer culture has made the whole event very crypto-native. When I met with the project side, I sat down directly, showed demo on the spot, and talked about the product thoroughly in 30 minutes. I love that. I feel like I started in 2017.

Participant guide

ArkStream as a VC, we are the most important source project. Because there are so many activities, the most efficient way is still small activities + targeted search.

Small events usually consist of brunch, seminar and party with 20-100 people. Some good activities to participate in this time are Meet the VC Brekky, Brunch party with Fabric/SevenX, zkNight Afterparty, MIT Alumni founder "s lunch, Cosmos on Tap, IOSG old friend Reunion, Founders Club launch ceremony, harvest a lot of productive conversations, and important connections.

Targeted search is the most efficient crypto social we've seen in the last five years. Before the meeting, the team spent two days to check all the background sources of several sub-venues, such as ZK Day and StarkDenver, and then had a 1:1 coffee chat with the project orientation. After a week of sifting through more than 20 good early projects, we were very excited about the new innovations.

  The track and the New narrative

ETHDenver is divided into several venues, covering Infra, DeFi, DAO, NFT and Impact+Public Goods.

ZK

zk is the center of gravity of this conference, the progress of the race is rapid.

1. Infrastructure projects gradually try to optimize and transform ZK technology, such as Succinct Labs, which is different from the traditional cross-chain bridge or the inter-chain consensus mechanism of cross-chain ultimate network. Hyper Oracle based on The Graph and Chainlink combined with zkWASM technology;

2. Whether it is the well-known zkEVM /zkVM layer 2 Network or the original ZK layer 1 network, many participants will present their progress and ecological expansion, such as StarkNet, Scroll, Manta Network, Aleo, etc.;

3. In terms of the core service index of ZK, the generation of proof is also based on various optimization algorithms. For example, some hardware acceleration project parties have emerged, such as Cysic and Ingonyama

4. There are many full-chain games developed based on StarkNet technology stack. The more abstract and interesting one is Topology.

5. Served as the executive layer service provider of modular blockchain, created SDK of ZK version Rollup, Sovereign Labs, etc.

6. Of course, ZK class application layer is constantly derived DID circuit, not only PSE's underlying technology stack Semaphore under the Ether Foundation, but also the user facing Axiom and so on.

AA account abstraction

Second is the AA account abstraction. Although the volume can no longer volume, but it is still hot tuyere. The recent Pimlico project, proposed by Kristof Gazso, co-creator of the account abstraction proposal IP-4337, now officially introduces the core contract of ERC4337, which is compatible with Ethereum EVM layer. At ETHDenver, development terms like Bundler, UserOperation, EntryPoint are heard every now and then, and as AA moves forward, there are attempts at Gasless, social recovery, and an account experience far beyond the Safe features of multi-sign-up wallets. More AA infrastructure projects, can selectively cooperate with MPC-TSS, SDK and other products, gradually show their skills.

Of course, the original EOA wallets are bound to embrace the evolution of AA. Many Walletcon project parties are also continuously optimizing the aspects of capital security, money access, user experience and multi-chain support. Overall, the improvement of AA will open the door to 1 billion web2 users and is the absolute path to the new cycle.

Social and AI

New narrative, in the social field to see some new application breakthroughs. After experiencing the Social mania of the past two years, this year's project is more focused on how to build social products belonging to web3 users. Game breaking point prediction will come from the membership system based on DID, payment + information integration, and fan economy.

To my surprise, I talked about several AI projects, which were founded by senior AI practitioners. Most of them are built based on OpenAI open source algorithm, which focuses on data +AI+Smart money on the chain. For example, it can realize complex contract operation such as lightning loan and anti-MEV with natural language. This is no small boon for crypto, an algorithm-based dark forest.

As for the future, with the gradual improvement of Layer 2 and other infra and the maturity of entry, the opportunity of the new cycle starting from 2023 will be closer to the application layer. We're going to see games and then social, and we're going to be more connected to the real world.

Chinese entrepreneurs

ETHDenver's Chinese program is about 20 percent, far more than India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Overall, the founder background is much higher than it was in 2020, and there is even momentum at the application level.

Excellent Chinese founding teams generally fall into two categories. One is new entrepreneurs who have successful product experience in web2 factories or startups and have heavy exposure to crypto. Such entrepreneurs will emerge in large numbers at the end of 2021 and have experience advantages in products and iterations.

The other is the founders who have studied and worked overseas for a long time and are very familiar with the English world. Most of them come from New York, Los Angeles and the Bay Area. This kind of entrepreneurs win in BD and financing, and there is no disadvantage in taking overseas financing.

On the whole, with the significant rise of Chinese entrepreneur background, and the emerging wave of application layer. Long China will be a compulsory course for every practitioner.

In 2022, we experienced market undervaluation, epidemic and torture, and our mood was very depressed. ETHDenver is like a pool, with tides coming in from all over the world. Chinese entrepreneurs rushed to the world, new forces one after another.

Original link

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群：https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群：https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号：https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia