Reflections One Month After EDCON2023 in Montenegro: A Prospect of Infrastructure and Application Trends

In 2013, Vitalik Buterin wrote the Ethereum white paper, and 10 years later, the 2023 Ethereum Developers Conference EDCON (Community Ethereum Development Conference) was held in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. There was no fanfare and celebration, no formalistic hustle and bustle. What the author feels is that in order to solve the "impossible triangle" of the blockchain, developers around the world improve decentralization, privacy protection and scalability in their respective areas of expertise, and seek point collisions, resource exchanges, and cooperation and sharing in exchanges. win.

Although there were no new "wealth codes" or innovative ideas proposed at the conference, which made people feel that it was a cliché of the Ethereum roadmap, but the author deeply felt that the impact of the current AI revolution on the blockchain has gradually spread. The significance of holding EDCON once a year is to allow ecological developers to clarify the direction of the Ethereum roadmap again, regularly review the progress of the implementation of the plan, sort out the current problems that need to be solved, and conduct discussions on breaking through the "boundary" of technologies in their respective fields, such as How to achieve better privacy protection, capacity expansion, provide higher security and stability, how to create a better user experience (UX, User Experience) and user security (US, User Security) for future application explosions. Participants exchanged innovations in their vision, and saw the significance of various technological and cultural changes for the future of Ethereum from a global perspective.

During my stay in Montenegro, the author participated in the EDCON2023 conference and a series of Side Events, including EDCON's Community Day theme sharing, Super Demo display, World Supercomputer Summit 2023, DAO Montenegro Conference, Antalpha Labs about Account Abstraction HackerHouse and other activities. During the limited time in Montenegro, there are ZK Community Breakfast, Zuzalu activities, etc. that I wanted to participate in but failed to attend. In order to make up for these regrets, the author interviewed friends who participated in these activities to understand their gains and feelings, and summarized the gains of myself and my peers into an article to share with everyone.

Harvest Summary

• The topic of EDCON2023 revolves around how infrastructure can break through the impossible triangle of privacy, scalability, and decentralization (The Scalability Trilemma). The current stage coincides with the technological maturity of ZK, account abstraction, and L2. The progress of infrastructure is Applied innovation provides a breeding ground.

• Zero-knowledge proof technology has been widely discussed, including zkEVM, ZKML (Zero Knowledge Machine Learning) and the composability opportunities of ZK technology in various scenarios (Programmable Cryptography).

• There are many discussions about On-chain Gaming, account abstraction, and LSD, but the application level is still waiting for innovation.

• ZKML is on the eve of the outbreak, and AI may inject new vitality into the blockchain under the empowerment of ZK technology. The ZKML open source community is worth looking forward to.

• The account abstraction (Account Abstraction) track is "flat, hot and crowded", and the value capture of the track is a difficult problem.

EDCON2023 Important Topics

The main topic of EDCON2023 mainly revolves around solving the impossible triangle of blockchain - privacy protection, scalability and decentralization (Privacy, Scalability, Decentralization). The Scalability Trilemma proposed by Vitalik Buterin a few years ago actually clarified the general direction for the technical development of Ethereum. In the past ten years of Ethereum’s experience, the technology at the infrastructure level has continued to be updated and improved, and innovations at the application level have also emerged. However, we are still far from a good vision. Every field in the “Impossible Triangle” has More breakthroughs are needed.

The author sorts out his own gains in the industry track and trends, which are divided into infrastructure level and application level. In the field of infrastructure, the progress of Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) and Layer 2 (Layer 2, L2) has attracted the most attention from speakers and participants, and is also one of the most discussed topics; The main topics in the field are around On-Chain Gaming, Account Abstraction (AA) and LSD (Liquidity Staking Derivatives) tracks.

It is worth mentioning that in the field of ZKP, the author feels that there are many "ZK+" composable trends in the discussion direction of EDCON2023 and surrounding conferences. Zero-knowledge proof, as a means of privacy protection and scalability, is being tried Applied to multiple fields on-chain and off-chain, cryptography is usually customized, and the demand for "Programmable Cryptography" (programmable cryptography) that pays more attention to general-purpose has been demonstrated many times. In the application field, developers pay more attention to user experience (UX) and user security (US). Account abstraction to improve UX and accelerate blockchain "Mass Adoption" seems to have become the premise of application innovation discussions, and it is also a link that infrastructure developers and application developers are working hard to achieve together.

The development of things follows the law of "the spiral of infrastructure and application fields". EDCON2023 reviewed the current development status of the Ethereum ecosystem and trends in various fields. While promoting infrastructure upgrades, developers are also waiting for the moment of application explosion.

1. Infrastructure

At the infrastructure level, the application of ZK technology on the blockchain and outside the chain, including zkEVM (Layer 2 expansion solution), ZKML (Zero Knowledge Machine Learning), Programmable Cryptography is undoubtedly the highlight of this Montenegro and a series of surrounding activities. frequency topic. In Vitalik Buterin's sharing, it is mentioned that "ZK-SNARKs are going to be as important as blockchains in the next 10 years" ("zk-SNARKs will be as important as blockchains in the next 10 years") has also become an important concern.

1.1 zkEVM has many new players joining the competition, and the track will maintain a high level of enthusiasm

In the first half of 2023, we have seen many zkEVM projects go live on the mainnet, including Polygon zkEVM, zkSync Era, and Starknet. From the second half of the year to 2024, the industry may also witness the launch of many zkEVM projects on the mainnet, including Scroll, Linea, Taiko, etc. These three projects are currently in the testnet stage to collect developer feedback. Without exception, the above-mentioned zkEVM projects have a high degree of exposure and participation at this EDCON2023 conference, and have appeared in the speeches of Vitalik Buterin and other guests many times, including many emerging projects. The developers of zkEVM are full of enthusiasm for their careers. They shared the recent progress and future goals of the project with the participants, and expressed their expectations for technological progress and product updates. The healthy competition in the industry is obvious to all. In the next 1-2 years, we will see that the layer-2 network of zkEVM will continue to stand at the center of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Technical Lead Jordi Baylina of Polygon zkEVM shared the latest progress of the Polygon zkEVM project at the conference, including the improvement of the PIL2 (Polynomial Identity Language 2) language, and the data compression scheme being implemented to solve data availability, emphasizing again that Polygon zkEVM passes ERC -4337 supports account abstraction, and also shared his thoughts on the blockchain Layer 2 track pattern. The author noticed that Jordi talked about various data compression (Data Compression) schemes adopted by Polygon zkEVM and the official approval of EIP-4844, which will further reduce costs. The combination of the two will greatly improve the availability of data on Polygon. In Jordi's view, we will see more Layer 2 networks in the future, and the composability between L2s in the Polygon ecosystem will be realized through Proof Aggregation (aggregation proof), and Proof Aggregation will help all Polygon ecological L2 chains Generate a single certificate to increase the composability between the L2 chains of the Polygon system.

Kakarot, the zkEVM project, also attracted a lot of attention during and after the meeting. Kakarot is a zkEVM project built on Starknet using the Cairo language, and has recently officially announced financing news. The reason for attracting everyone's attention is that Vitalik Buterin is one of the investors, and Starknet Joint Innovation and Starkware officials also participated in the investment. Kakarot co-founder Elias Tazartes gave a public speech at the EDCON2023 conference to show the world Kakarot's career and vision, and Vitalik Buterin also mentioned the Kakarot project in his speech. The highlight of the project is that it provides an EVM environment for Starknet based on Cairo language, so that developers of Solidity language can directly deploy applications to Starknet through Kakarot, no longer need to program again in Cairo language, that is, Kakarot created the EVM on Starknet Compatible platforms, in this way, many excellent EVM projects can be quickly deployed on Starknet and reduce the effort and time of developers to maintain the Cairo language and Solidity language code libraries. Kakarot sounds like it can become a Layer 3 on Starknet alone, but the team will first sprint the Rollup-as-a-Service service in Q4 of 2023 in a short time. In an interview with Kakarot by Blockbeats, Elias said that the competition on the Layer 2 track will be more intense in the future. As a zkEVM platform, Kakarot will actively cooperate with Starknet, Polygon, and Linea, etc. We also welcome Chinese developers of Solidity language and Cairo language to join in this field and work together.

1.2 The need for Programmable Cryptography has been demonstrated again

In addition to zkEVM, ZK technology is used in more and more scenarios, and the demand for Programmable Cryptography is imminent. Programmable Cryptography is officially proposed by 0xPARC. With the emergence and update of zk-SNARK and other cryptography tools, more general cryptography helps more developers to quickly implement application encryption (such as in digital identity, reputation, etc.), without having to learn and develop cryptography-related privacy protection technology. With more Programmable cryptography development tools, privacy encryption will likely be applied to blockchain applications and off-chain calculations and models on a larger scale. In Jason Morton's "What Is Unlocked by Practical Zero-Knowledge Proofs?" speech, he also mentioned "ZKP is becoming more programmable" (ZKP technology is becoming more and more programmable). In the guest roundtable forum (ZK Panel) on zero-knowledge proof, Programmable Cryptography was also mentioned many times by Vitalik Buterin and other guests, and they are looking forward to this more general-purpose (General-Purpose) application of cryptography.

1.3 ZKML is in the early stages of development but has great potential

ZKML is the combination of Zero Knowledge and Machine Learning. We all know that machine learning models have trust issues in many aspects: the confidentiality or disclosure of input and output information data, algorithms, and model parameters. When trust issues exist, ML models are hindered from gaining wider adoption. For example, when using user personal information as raw data for training, there will be encryption requirements for personal information; model parameters are usually the core competitive advantage of the developer team, and encryption is required to maintain competitive barriers. Zero-knowledge proof technology can provide proof for many things other than smart contracts, especially when machine learning applications are becoming more and more common. ZKP can provide proof for an AI model with millions of parameters, thereby improving security and privacy protection , to help address various trust challenges with machine learning models. In addition, machine learning models require a lot of calculations. When ML models are integrated into on-chain applications, ZK-SNARK can be used to generate proofs, alleviating ML’s computing power requirements and introducing AI into on-chain applications more efficiently. As artificial intelligence and machine learning further subvert our lives this year, ZKML is also known and recognized by more and more people.

At EDCON2023 and many other blockchain conferences this year, we can feel that many blockchain developers have joined the field of ZKML (readers who still need to learn this concept can check WorldCoin's article on ZKML. As early as In the second half of 2022, WorldCoin and some teams in the ZKML field created the ZKML community, and introduced the concept, advantages and future prospects of ZKML to people at ETH Denver and other public events in 2023). At the first World Supercomputer Summit 2023 in Montenegro, most of the speakers were doing ZKML-related ventures. Cathie So (@drCathieSo_eth), a core member of PSE, introduced AIGC NFT EIP-7007, described to the audience the possible innovative sparks of the combination of ZK and ML, and further imagined the future World Super Computer Architecture (World Super Computer Architecture) will be How to enable the implementation of ZKML. The PSE team is committed to better combining ZKP technology and Ethereum ecology, and actively participates in the research and projects of building ZKML. In addition, Hyper Oracle (zkOracle project on Ethereum), Poseidon ZKP (ZK aggregation proof infrastructure), Modulus Labs (on-chain AI project development team), and WorldCoin's DCBuilder were also speakers at the first WSC conference. Among them, Modulus Labs, as a pioneer in the field of ZKML, has conducted many experiments in the application of ZKML, including DeFi's Rockerfeller Bot (the first full-chain AI trading robot), GameFi's Leela vs the World (the first full-chain AI games) and NFT items, etc. On EDCON2023, as a developer in the field of ZKML, Jason Morton shared that he has seen the FLOPS (Floating-point Operations Per Second) of ZKP in the past few years [Note] rapid improvement, but Proof per Chain Transaction (the number of proofs in each chain transaction) is still at the tens of thousands level, and he expects to achieve a breakthrough in the next 3 years. He imagined that when Proof per Chain Transaction is further increased to a speed of 100 million or even 1 billion, there may be application scenarios combining ZK and blockchain in the fields of on-chain games, supply chains, and payment transactions.

In the sharing of many guests, it was mentioned that ZKML is still in the early stage of development. As one of the pioneers in the field of ZKML, WorldCoin organized a ZKML community that has not long been established, but has already attracted many developers and peers who are building in the field. When more and more products are led by AI, and more innovations come from AI and ML updates, ZK can be used as a means of privacy protection and accelerated computing to further empower the AI-driven society. Although this demand is not very obvious at present, if we have foreseen the ubiquitous world of AI, then the model and information encryption, and the improvement of computing speed will be just needed in the future. There are more and more programming tools in the market that can help developers create ZK proofs of AI models without having to learn all the cryptography skills and knowledge about ZKP, which will open up a huge market for more ZKP DApps. The significance of the blockchain to AI or ML will also be multi-level. The blockchain itself can provide untamperable and decentralized on-chain records, and the cryptocurrency itself can also become a key asset in the future world where AI and humans coexist. A currency system without borders.

2. Application DApp

At the EDCON2023 conference, we heard more exchanges and discussions about the underlying technology, and fewer discussions about DApp applications, among which on-chain games, account abstraction, and LSD track content accounted for the majority.

2.1 On-Chain Gaming presents AI trend

For applications, everyone has high expectations for On-Chain Gaming. At the conference, when zkEVM public chain projects were asked what on-chain applications they thought had potential, most of the answers were on-chain games. When Danilo Kim shared his life experience in Zuzalu at the conference, he mentioned the on-chain AI game project Zuland and Zuzuland that were born during Zuzalu. During Zuzalu and EDCON2023, what attracted everyone's attention was the AI-based full-chain game Network State released by Small Brain Games, which is a tabletop role-playing TRPG game based on Slobbovia. On-Chain Gaming is showing the trend of AI.

The reason why On-chain Gaming has become the main topic of application discussion is not because on-chain games already have traffic, but because the market lacks new narratives. After the DeFi summer, the horizontal competition between DEXs and the vertical business expansion made the head effect more and more obvious, but the head DeFi protocol did not create new hotspots for the public chain. If you want to lead the explosion of traffic, you must not go back to the old way; NFT boom happened On Ethereum, during the bear market, even NFTs on Ethereum lacked innovation momentum. NFTs that simply tell IP stories require a lot of energy and time for operations, while NFTs with more GameFi elements and metaverse narratives need to develop products. Time, utility type, and membership type NFTs require a large number of traditional companies to enter, and large-scale outbreaks also require early user education and long-term conception and operation of traditional brands' own operation technology teams; the chain game track has more AI this year. The addition of /ML elements increases the flexibility and richness of games on the chain. For example, ZKML brings Autonomous NPC (autonomous NPC) or AI God characters, which brings some new inspirations to games on the chain, and ZK is a hot spot topic, the On-Chain Gaming track naturally gained more expectations. But no matter what kind of application track it is, if you want to lead the narrative and bring a lot of traffic in a bear market, you will face more challenges. Therefore, when discussing applications, the answer is expectation, but there is no very clear direction.

2.2 Account Abstraction (Account Abstraction) is highly competitive, and track value capture is a difficult problem

The concept of Account Abstraction (AA) has appeared shortly after the birth of Ethereum. In recent years, the progress at the protocol standard level, especially the official deployment of ERC-4337 in March 2023, has made this concept popular again. The attention of the industry, the "enthusiasm" of entrepreneurship and investment is high. However, the status quo is that the account abstraction track is already quite "crowded" and the competition is fierce, and track participants face challenges in value capture and business models.

During EDCON2023, Antalpha Labs held a HackerHouse event around the theme of account abstraction, and invited many developers, investors, and researchers in the field of account abstraction to share their views and interact on the spot, including Compass DAO, Candide Wallet, Account Labs (Unipass Merged with Keystone) and L2 Mantle Network, Compass DAO, Mirana Ventures research team, etc. that support account abstraction. During the week-long HackerHouse event, the author participated in the scene many times to listen to the sharing of the guests, and gained a lot of rewards. I have a deeper understanding of the current development status of the track. Thanks also to Antalpha Labs for hosting the HackerHouse event and opening it to the public, allowing participants to learn from each other in a relaxed networking environment.

At the current stage, many wallet projects, underlying public chains, and emerging entrepreneurial teams are already working hard to implement businesses related to the abstraction of landing accounts. During my stay in Montenegro, the author participated in the Community Day event of EDCON2023 and the Account Abstraction HackerHouse hosted by Antalpha Labs. After hearing the sharing of the abstract track projects of various accounts, I felt that the abstract track of the account was "flat, hot and crowded". "Fair" is that there is little difference in the technical level and function of the account abstraction SDK and wallet project, and there is no obvious leading team or product on the track; "hot" is that investors and entrepreneurs have been enthusiastic about the account abstraction wallet project in recent years Higher, the atmosphere of various conferences and surrounding activities can feel that account abstraction is the general trend. In the future, more and more smart contracts will naturally use AA SDK for development. The built-in wallet has its own support for account abstraction, and the public chain level will also It is more inclined to directly support account abstraction (such as Starknet, zkSync, etc.); "crowding" is due to the large number of participants on the track, which also makes the competition on the track extremely fierce.

Multiple wallet teams in the track have developed excellent products, and in terms of technology and development progress, there is no one-size-fits-all project on the track that is difficult to catch up, and all competitors are almost in a state of "going hand in hand". In terms of account abstraction SDK, there are already multiple SDK providers, such as Gnosis Safe, Biconomy, Alchemy, Web3Auth, Etherspot and other teams. Almost all wallet projects that have emerged in recent years are developed based on the ERC-4337 protocol, and will pay more attention to the B-side application developer experience and C-side user experience under the B2B2C business model. In terms of functionality, social recovery, anti-censorship, no mnemonic, privacy protection, multi-chain and other functions are almost all necessary options. In addition to the SDK provider, the wallet project has also made a lot of attempts and efforts to explore more applications of account abstraction. The logic behind it is that when the account abstraction is more widely applied and implemented into smart contracts, the smart contracts (B-side) that capture the large traffic on the C-side can enable the wallet itself to achieve value capture. This is also the wallet track in B2B2C business Under the model, the reason for having to expand business vertically. In addition to creating scenarios, some wallet projects are also working hard to build infrastructure, including developing SDKs, etc., in an effort to acquire customers. However, in the value capture link, many SDKs are public goods, and it is difficult to help SDK projects to capture value. Wallet-as-a-Service service fees make it difficult to improve business scalability (Scalability). MEV revenue also faces competition. The head-less wallet project is also exploring more possibilities in the value capture link.

With the official deployment of ERC-4337, account abstraction has gradually been implemented into applications. Protocol implementation is an important link to improve UX and US on the chain, and will be an important tool to bring about Mass Adoption. The current account abstraction track is highly competitive, and both the SDK and the scene application side are exploring how to open more users. The B2B2C business model of the wallet is gradually taking shape, but effective economic value capture methods in the industrial chain are still being explored.

2.3 The long-term investment of the LSD track is certain

If On-chain Gaming is the most discussed application among Ethereum developers in official public occasions, then LSD and LSD-Fi are the topics that I heard people discuss more after the meeting. There are many speakers discussing "decentralized nodes". How to strengthen the degree of decentralization of POS and the stability and security of nodes are technical points that developers continue to explore. In the process of communicating with investors participating in the conference, cryptocurrency funds showed confidence in the LSD track. Perhaps after many bubbles faded during the bear market, the LSD track around the POS mechanism is relatively more certain and stable field of. For research on the LSD track, readers can read Mint Ventures' recent research report on the LSD track:

After the Shapella upgrade: Yields, competition, and the long-term impact of LSD-Fi

pSTAKE Project Quick Facts: Binance-Backed LSD Waist Project

Is the spring breeze coming to the crypto interest rate market? In-depth analysis of LSD interest rate market service provider Pendle

Participation experience

1. ZKML is on the eve of the outbreak, and more machine learning applications will adopt ZK encryption in the future

This year we have seen more and more AI-driven products subvert the way we used to live and work. As an important subset of AI, machine learning (ML) has been applied in many off-chain scenarios. There are challenges such as computing cost and speed, model trust, and privacy protection in the exploration on the Internet. The ZK encryption method can enable the ML model to generate a proof of the model under the chain, empower the smart contract on the chain, and make the smart contract more efficient. Smart and flexible. When ML enters the application on the blockchain, the industry has more imagination.

In recent years, ZK technology has continued to mature in terms of software and hardware, and a series of computing problems, trust problems, and privacy protection problems that existed in previous machine learning (ML) models can be solved with ZK methods. ZKML is also one of the fields that Sam Altman's cryptocurrency project WorldCoin is striving to promote. WorldCoin and many research teams and projects in this field have jointly established the ZKML community to study and advance ZKML technology and applications.

Some existing ZKML applications are still in the early stages of development. As mentioned above, there are on-chain AI trading robots and on-chain AI games. In addition, off-chain ML models are used to make suggestions on DeFi protocol parameters. The project that WorldCoin is building is also in progress. It is similar to zk-DID, uses ZKML to ensure the privacy of biological information, and supports the future upgradeability of Iris Code. In the future, it is expected that we will see more machine learning models enter the blockchain field, and ZK technology will make this "future" come faster.

In addition, the author excerpts a page of PPT by Daniel, the founder of Modulus Labs at the WSC conference as follows, "(The application of ZKML lies in) when AI is an excellent tool, but there is a difficulty in "trusting"." The author thinks this is ZK technology Low-level logic combined with AL/ML. When the concepts of AI and ZKML become more and more popular, we will see various pseudo-ZKML projects, but by grasping the underlying logic and meaning of the combination of the two, we can avoid getting lost in the hype and bubbles.

2. Account Abstraction track "flat, hot and crowded"

As mentioned above, the author felt in the EDCON2023 conference, post-conference interviews and daily work exchanges that the concept of account abstraction has gradually begun to be applied. There are many participants in the track and many wallet projects hope to be able to lay out the entire industry chain. In order to better open up the B2B2C business model, the more profound challenge facing the track is the establishment of a value capture system. As mentioned above, fierce competition will make the account abstraction SDK become a public good. The account abstraction B-side business in the smart contract is difficult to scale and the competition is fierce. The end-user C-side traffic of the wallet is still controlled by the application DApp. The account abstraction wallet project poses a value capture challenge. But for users, Ethereum will continue to promote the larger and deeper application of ERC-4337, bringing better UX and US to users. The author believes that account abstraction in the next cycle is no longer a concept, but a senseless and wonderful experience in a high-traffic application, which is worth looking forward to.

3. The important role of Public Goods in the blockchain industry has been mentioned many times

In the peripheral activities of the EDCON2023 conference, Buidler DAO, SeeDAO and Mask Network jointly held the DAO Montenegro Conference, and the discussion topics included public goods. At the conference, Scott Moore, the founder of Gitcoin, also discussed Public Goods. He emphasized the importance of "coordination" in helping blockchain protocols solve network problems in today's society. (Gitcoin, as an open source project funding platform, its mission is to build and fund digital public goods.) The author happened to discuss the topic of public goods when communicating with Mr. Shumo, the founder of Manta Network and Poseidon ZKP, during the conference. "The end result of blockchain infrastructure is public goods," said Mr. Shumo. The author's understanding is that blockchain infrastructure is similar to "quasi-public goods" such as roads, which have limited non-competitiveness and limited exclusivity, and should be used more widely by the society as a way to improve the financial system, lifestyle, and work efficiency. tool. The infrastructure codes in the industry are usually open source, due to the open source culture and atmosphere of the blockchain, as well as the equality and win-win spirit brought about by the later Web3.0 concept. This makes it difficult for infrastructure projects to maintain involution, because there will always be new open source projects that will bring free positive externalities to the industry.

When communicating with other participants, the author can feel that many Ethereum developers have little utilitarianism in their hearts. The starting point is usually to solve a certain problem or pain point in the Ethereum ecosystem, and the products or projects they develop are usually Open source for all to use and improve. Most of the underlying infrastructure of the blockchain are open source public goods, which is one of the reasons why the cryptocurrency and blockchain industries can iterate quickly.

Summary

Andy Guzman of the PSE Foundation mentioned in his speech Harnessing ZK and Existing Infrastructure for Ethereum’s Mass Adoption that the current stage coincides with the technological maturity of ZK, account abstraction and L2, and the combined power of the three will increase User Experience (UX) and User Security (US) for Ethereum. According to the future he described, we can imagine that on a faster, safer and more stable Layer 2, ZK encryption technology empowers AI/ML to bring more flexible DApp applications, while account abstraction better helps new users enter In the field of cryptocurrency, users will have a safer, more convenient, and lower-cost account experience and interactive experience. EDCON2023 brings together global developers and peers in the industry to review the current development progress and status of Ethereum, communicate with each other about the latest trends in the industry, and collide with each other to generate innovative ideas.

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