Devcon is an important event hosted by the Ethereum Foundation, primarily targeting developers, artists, makers, and other types of ecosystem builders in the Ethereum ecosystem. Since 2014, Devcon has been held eight times and has become one of the largest showcases for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum:
In the past week, the Ethereum mainnet has released many interesting updates. On November 7th, the Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of a short-term testnet called "Mekong", aimed at testing the upcoming Pectra upgrade. The main changes include: improving the user experience of crypto wallets and account abstraction; increasing the maximum staking limit for validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH; and updating the deposit and exit mechanisms.
On November 12th, at the Devcon conference in Thailand, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed a new consensus layer upgrade proposal called "Beam Chain", which the community has dubbed "Ethereum 3.0". This proposal aims to achieve the following goals: 1. Faster block times. 2. Lower validator staking requirements. 3. "On-chain snarkification". 4. Quantum-safe improvements. The core of Beam Chain is the introduction of technologies like zkVM to significantly improve the scalability of the Ethereum mainnet, without relying on Layer 2 solutions. However, Justin Drake also stated that this proposal is likely to start construction in 2026 and undergo at least two years of thorough testing before being deployed to the mainnet, possibly starting in 2027. There are reports that this is the largest upgrade since the Ethereum Merge, but the market also has some different voices, with Delphi Ventures founding partner José Maria Macedo stating, "I was excited about the vision of ETH 3.0, but I'm disappointed by Justin Drake's actual proposal, which is basically a refactored codebase that can achieve 4-second block times and quantum resistance, which will be realized in 2029-2030. These upgrades alone are not enough to make the Ethereum Layer1 competitive, nor even to convince people that it is competitive. The Ethereum Foundation needs to have bigger dreams."
Additionally, at Devcon 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also attended and gave a keynote speech, describing Ethereum as the "world computer" and outlining the progress and future vision of the Ethereum network, focusing on decentralization, scalability, and inclusiveness.
Arbitrum:
On October 7th, the Arbitrum Foundation announced the "Road to Devcon" program, aimed at increasing its investment in the Asian market. The program includes hosting face-to-face events called ArbiLink in Vietnam and Indonesia to connect with the rapidly growing local developer communities. On November 13th, during the Devcon event, Arbitrum announced support for the ERC-7683 standard to enable cross-chain intent. ERC-7683 was proposed by Uniswap Labs and Across in May 2024, aiming to improve interoperability between different blockchains by standardizing the order structure of cross-chain transactions.
Base:
During Devcon, Coinbase also launched several strategic initiatives in the on-chain payment domain. On November 13th, Coinbase announced the acquisition of the Utopia Labs team, which focuses on stablecoin technology and on-chain payment solutions. Jesse Pollak, the head of Coinbase Wallet and the founder of Base, stated, "We hope to see 50 countries/regions integrated into the Coinbase wallet by the end of 2025." On the 14th, Coinbase Wallet announced that it will soon launch a "tap-to-pay" crypto payment solution, and Base will achieve Layer 2 interoperability within a few months. Currently, Base is the public chain project with the second-highest heat in this bull market after Solana, and Coinbase's initiatives are expected to further strengthen its leading position in the crypto payment domain.
Unichain:
As a recent hot Layer 2 project, Unichain's progress was also a major focus of this Devcon event. On November 10th, Unichain released an access guide for early developers, detailing how to bridge Ethereum (ETH) and perform withdrawals on its network. On November 12th, Circle announced that its US dollar stablecoin USDC will soon support the Layer 2 network Unichain launched by Uniswap Labs. However, facing the community's premature enthusiasm, Unichain officials also stated on the 12th that the mainnet has not yet been launched, the standardized bridge is not yet finalized, and the developer access RPC has been disabled due to lack of readiness.
Filecoin:
During the Devcon conference, two Filecoin ecosystem Layer 2 projects announced their latest developments. Akave announced the completion of a $3.45 million funding round, with investors including Protocol Labs, Blockchange VC, Lightshift, and Blockchain Builders Fund. Another Layer 2 project, Storacha Network, announced the launch of its Alpha version network, focusing on high-performance hot storage for applications like gaming, AI, and DePIN. Additionally, Filecoin plans to undergo the "v24 Tuk Tuk Upgrade" around November 20th, reducing transaction completion time from 7.5 hours to a few seconds.
BNB Chain:
During Devcon, BNB Chain announced a partnership with the TADA mini-program to provide free ride-hailing services for Bangkok users. On November 12th, during the conference, BNB Chain announced a $10 million Google Cloud credit investment to support the "Most Valuable Builder" (MVB) program in its ecosystem. Through this collaboration, over 40 projects in the MVB program will each be eligible for up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits, primarily for AI and cloud computing-related project development, with other projects also having the opportunity to receive up to $200,000 in credits for a two-year period.
AltLayer:
On November 12th, AltLayer announced the upcoming launch of a platform called "Autonome", aimed at providing users with tools to create and deploy autonomous AI agents. The platform will leverage AltLayer's Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) technology to enable users to quickly build and deploy AI agents without requiring a deep technical background. This is not the first attempt to lower the user development threshold, as in March this year, AltLayer announced a collaboration with Sei Labs to develop a new product called "Parallel Stack", allowing users to easily deploy applications on Sei with just a few clicks, improving development efficiency.
NEAR:
At the Devcon conference, NEAR co-founder Alexander Skidanov was one of the speakers, sharing the latest progress of NEAR in blockchain technology and ecosystem development. On November 10th, NEAR AI announced the launch of an Alpha version, including features like customized AI assistants, cross-platform interactions, and an AI research center. In June this year, NEAR founder Illia Polosukhin released the overall plan for NEAR AI, and the progress of this plan is still on track as expected.
Polygon:
Although Polygon also held some events during Devcon, their major progress was mostly announced before the Devcon conference, focusing on cross-chain interoperability and network scalability. On November 7th, Polygon collaborated with blockchain startup Magic Labs to launch a new cross-chain network called "Newton". According to the introduction, Newton aims to make using decentralized applications (dApps) across multiple blockchains as seamless as browsing the internet. Additionally, Polygon announced that its AggLayer v0.2 is planned to be launched in early December, supporting connections to any Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chain.
