Author: Allen Su
Original source: ArkStream Capital
Just got back from Denver and had an amazing week. Share your personal feelings and new trends delivered throughout the conference.
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1. Global developer culture
It is said that 35,000 people and 7,500 hackers came to the entire ETHDenver. The hotel I live in is 15 minutes away from the downtown by car, but basically every day I can see the participants in the elevator. Everyone gets to know each other immediately after seeing the badge. Among the practitioners, the project side: VC is about 5:1. The project party is quite global. In addition to the United States, China, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Europe are the largest collections. I have several North American and European portfolios with ArkStream, and finally met. In the field of VC, most of the active first- and second-tier funds have come, especially some European capitals that rarely appeared in the past.
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2. Participation Guide
As ArkStream is a VC, our most important thing is the source project. Because there are too many activities, the most efficient way is still small activities + directional search.
Small events generally consist of brunch, seminar and party with 20-100 people. Several good events I participated in this time include Meet the VC Brekky, Brunch party with Fabric/SevenX, zkNight Afterparty, MIT Alumni founders lunch, Cosmos on Tap, IOSG old friend Reunion, Founders Club launch ceremony, and gained a lot of efficient conversations, and important connections.
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3. Tracks and new narratives
ETHDenver is divided into several venues, covering Infra, DeFi, DAO, NFT and Impact+Public Goods.
ZK
zk is the focus of this conference, and the major tracks are progressing rapidly
1. Infrastructure projects are gradually trying to optimize and transform ZK technology, such as Succinct Labs, which is different from traditional cross-chain bridges or cross-chain ultimate network inter-chain consensus mechanism transmission, and Hyper Oracle, which combines zkWASM technology on the basis of The Graph and Chainlink ;
2. Whether it is the well-known zkEVM-type/zkVM-type two-layer network, or the original ZK one-layer network, they have come to the conference to show their progress and ecological expansion, such as StarkNet, Scroll, Manta Network, Aleo, etc.;
3. In terms of ZKs core service indicators, proof generation is also based on various optimization algorithms. For example, some hardware acceleration projects have emerged, such as Cysic, Ingonyama
4. There are many full-chain games based on the StarkNet technology stack. The more abstract and interesting one is Topology
5. The execution layer service provider of the modularized blockchain, build the SDK of the ZK version Rollup, Sovereign Labs, etc.
6. Of course, the ZK application layer is constantly deriving DID tracks, not only Semaphore, the underlying technology stack of PSE under the Ethereum Foundation, but also Axiom, which is directly facing users, etc.
AA account abstraction
The second is AA account abstraction. Although it cant be rolled anymore, it is still a hot spot in the air. A while ago, the Pimlico project proposed by Kristof Gazso, the co-sponsor of the account abstraction proposal EIP-4337, officially ushered in the ERC 4337 functional core contract compatible with the Ethereum EVM level. In ETHDenver, from time to time, I hear development terms such as Bundler, UserOperation, and EntryPoint. I will also try Gasless, social recovery, and account experience far beyond the Safe function of multi-signature wallets during the promotion of AA. More AA infrastructure projects can selectively cooperate with MPC-TSS to build products based on SDK and gradually show their talents.
Of course, the original EOA wallets will inevitably embrace this AA evolution. Many Walletcon project parties also continue to optimize in terms of fund security, deposits and withdrawals, user experience, and multi-chain support. In general, the improvement of AA will open the door for 1 billion web2 users to enter, which is an absolute track for the new cycle.
Social and AI
In terms of new narratives, we have seen some new application breakthroughs in the social field. After the social frenzy in the past two years, this years project is more grounded in thinking about how to build social products belonging to web3 users. The prediction of the breaking point will come from the membership system based on DID, the integration of payment + information, and the fan economy.
Surprisingly, I talked about several AI projects, many of which were founded by senior AI practitioners. Most of them are built based on OpenAIs open source algorithm, focusing on on-chain data + AI + Smart money, such as realizing complex contract operations such as lightning loans in natural language, anti-MEV, etc. This is no small boon for an algorithm-based dark forest like crypto.
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4. Chinese entrepreneurs
The ETHDenver Chinese project accounted for about 20%, far exceeding India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Overall, the background of the founders has been greatly improved compared to 2020, and there is a momentum of evenly split in the application layer.
Excellent Chinese founding teams are generally divided into two categories. One category is new entrepreneurs who have successful product experience in major web2 companies or start-up companies and have serious exposure to crypto. This type of entrepreneur will start to appear in large numbers at the end of 2021. Their products There are experience advantages in both iteration and iteration.
The other category is 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 type of entrepreneur is better at BD and financing, and there is no disadvantage in taking overseas financing.
On the whole, with the significant increase in the background of Chinese entrepreneurs, and the rising tide of the application layer. Long China will be a compulsory course for every practitioner.
In 2022, everyone has experienced market underestimation, the epidemic and torture, and their emotions are very depressed. ETHDenver is like a pool where tides from all over the world rush into. Chinese entrepreneurs went to all over the world, and new forces emerged one after another. Entrepreneurs who need financing are welcome to send deck to offical@arkstream.capital.
