Author: 0xNatalie Source: ChainFeeds
Recently, the mood in the Ethereum community has been low. Since the launch of the ETF this year, the price of ETH has not been able to reach market expectations. There are many reasons for this, such as the rapid development of Layer 2 technology, which has improved transaction efficiency, but has also subtly weakened the economic capture capability of the Ethereum mainnet, leading to a gradual decline in the demand for ETH; the narratives that once supported the value of Ethereum, such as DeFi, have also gradually lost their appeal, and there are currently no sufficiently fresh and attractive narratives in the market.
In addition, the price increase of Solana has become a direct comparison, and in this context, the FUD sentiment has spread in the Ethereum community. In particular, the practice of the Ethereum Foundation selling ETH has sparked widespread discontent. Many community members believe that the Foundation's behavior, which ignores market sentiment in the face of a depressed ETH price, questions the leadership of Ethereum and believes they are "self-destructing".
This negative sentiment has erupted on Twitter, with criticism of Ethereum seemingly becoming a traffic password for some KOLs. Since the end of October, the debate around Ethereum has been ongoing. Just as this sentiment was spreading, the Devcon event arrived as scheduled, bringing some confidence and positive energy to Ethereum.
In mid-November, I attended the Ethereum Developer Conference (Devcon 7) held in Bangkok. As one of the most influential events in the blockchain field, the main venue was full of vitality and diversity, and the overall atmosphere was friendly and open. The conference agenda was tight, with a lot of information, but this also made it difficult to keep up with the pace in some sessions. According to official data, 60% of the attendees this time were first-time Devcon participants. In conversations with attendees, the most commonly mentioned words in their evaluation of this conference were "chill", "colorful", and "friendly".
An Interesting New Concept: POD
During the conference, I came across an interesting concept - Provable Object Data (POD), which is a data structure used to store and manage data that needs to be verified through zero-knowledge proofs. GPC is the circuit used to verify these POD objects. In the GPC, the POD data is used as input, and the circuit checks whether the data meets certain pre-set conditions to arrive at a verification result. For example, the ticket system Zupass used at this conference used POD technology to ensure the uniqueness of each ticket. When a user purchases a ticket, the Zupass system generates a POD for that ticket, which contains the unique identifier of the ticket, basic information, purchase time, and other data. After processing the POD data through the GPC circuit, the venue staff will not directly see the specific information of the ticket, but only the result of the zero-knowledge proof verification.
Core Perspectives in the Discussions
During the breaks, at the booths, and in the Hub, I discussed multiple topics with technical/marketing personnel from different projects, and the topics of ZK, Based Rollup, and Appchain left a deep impression on me.
Aztec software engineer Adam Domurad mentioned in the discussion that ZK technology is very suitable for blockchain scaling due to its constant proof size and highly efficient verification. Compared to OP Rollup, ZK Rollup uses zero-knowledge proofs to ensure the correctness of each transaction, avoiding the risk of node maliciousness and reducing the workload of repeated verification. Currently, OP Rollup occupies the mainstream position, mainly because users are more concerned about low fees and high speed, rather than the superiority of the underlying technology. The long-term value of ZK Rollup lies in its excellent security and scalability, and many blockchains (including Ethereum) have already started to redesign their architectures to fully utilize the potential of ZK technology. In addition, ZK technology also shows great application potential in the field of privacy protection. For example, the Anon Aadhaar project showcased at Devcon, developed by the PSE team supported by the Ethereum Foundation, uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify the identity of Indian citizens without revealing specific identities. However, ZK Rollup still needs further optimization in terms of speed and cost to gain wider market recognition. He expressed confidence that in the future, as ZK technology continues to mature, ZK Rollup is expected to replace OP Rollup and become the mainstream scaling solution.
Ethereum researcher mteam, a 17-year-old student, is focused on the research of Based Rollup. He shared with me the design advantages of Based Rollup as an independent execution environment. Through a shared sequencer, multiple Based Rollups can share liquidity without direct bridging, and liquidity can circulate between different Based Rollups via the Ethereum mainnet. This design improves the efficiency of cross-chain operations and reduces the dependence on a single bridge solution. The decentralized sequencer of Based Rollup has higher running costs than the centralized sequencer, but multiple Based Rollups can share the costs by aggregating blocks, significantly reducing the individual operating expenses. In terms of performance, Based Rollup can achieve the same speed as other Rollups through a pre-confirmation mechanism, providing a fast user experience within the Ethereum block time (12 seconds). In the economic model, Based Rollup returns most of the MEV revenue to Ethereum, so its main source of income is the gas fees paid by users. In addition, Based Rollup achieves economic sustainability through front-end service fees and smart contract execution fees, avoiding dependence on MEV revenue. Due to its deep integration with the Ethereum mainnet, Based Rollup inherits Ethereum's censorship resistance and high reliability, which means that future upgrades to Ethereum (such as stronger censorship resistance) will directly bring additional advantages to Based Rollup.
Mark Richardson, the project lead of Carbon, mentioned that the two main challenges currently facing DeFi are liquidity fragmentation and user experience complexity. He mentioned that protocols like Uniswap, by developing Appchains, can capture more value, but this approach may further exacerbate the problem of liquidity dispersion. In comparison, cross-chain deployment and shared liquidity mechanisms are a more efficient solution. Regarding Appchains, he believes that although they are a trend, and can help protocols capture more value because they can better optimize the cost structure and user experience while achieving more efficient value extraction, from the perspective of the entire DeFi ecosystem, the Appchain path may not be the best choice. Mark predicts that as cross-chain technology continues to develop, multi-chain collaboration will become simpler, and at that time, the specific attributes of the chain on which users are trading will become irrelevant. Therefore, he is more inclined to focus on addressing the issue of liquidity fragmentation through cross-chain solutions, rather than letting protocols isolate themselves from the ecosystem by using Appchains. In addition, he mentioned that intent-driven transaction models are becoming a major trend. This design allows users to clearly express their transaction needs and obtain a trading experience with zero slippage and MEV protection. Regarding market trends, he believes that it is unlikely that a "DeFi Summer" will reappear in the near future, but there may be a "Memecoin Summer". In this environment, DeFi applications need to seize opportunities, while combining flexibility and robustness to meet user needs. He particularly emphasized that the future success of projects will not only depend on the leading-edge technology, but also on how to optimize the user experience through data analysis and achieve synergistic development in the multi-chain ecosystem.
Thoughts
Communicating with these Builders has made me realize that Ethereum's current predicament is that it is too focused on infrastructure building, but lacks sufficiently user-friendly and attractive applications. However, from a macro perspective, Ethereum is still at the forefront of technological innovation at the underlying level, which is very important. After all, other chains seem to be "copying" Ethereum's path in more or less the same way, including the meme phenomenon.
Ethereum has lost the opportunity to become a meme, partly because its transaction fees are not fast enough, forcing some small and medium-sized users to seek more suitable chains, such as . However, the success of is not solely dependent on lower transaction fees, but more importantly, it has successfully attracted a large number of excellent developers and is more focused on the end-user experience. These factors have enabled to stand out in the competition and attract a large number of users seeking efficient and low-cost transactions. However, as 's transaction fees and MEV continue to rise, the use of trading bots and high-end tools has become widespread, which may also lead to the loss of ordinary users. The remaining players are mostly trading through complex tools, a situation similar to the early meme phenomenon on Ethereum.
Therefore, I believe that other chains may become popular at certain stages, but overall, Ethereum's ecological position and potential remain solid. Ethereum's unique advantages in technology and ecological depth are difficult for other chains to replace in the short term.
