Written by: @magicdhz

Translation: Blockchain in Vernacular

The Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC) is an important annual event of the Ethereum community, bringing together developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and blockchain enthusiasts from all over the world to discuss and exchange the latest technological advances, application scenarios and industry trends. ETHCCEthCC 2024 was held in Brussels in 2024. The conference showcased many practical applications, held more than 500 side events, and demonstrated the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence.

Here are some loose thoughts from @magicdhz on AMMs, pre-confirmations/commitments, and the basics of ETHcc:

1. Optimistic about AMM

I have solidified my extremely bullish stance on AMMs. They are the only DeFi applications that build entirely new games and incentives on top of existing traditional financial market structures. For all you LOB (limit order book) enthusiasts, traditional finance is your ceiling, and AMMs take finance to a whole new level and benefit from all the extra properties of blockchain.

2. Infrastructure centered on cross-chain intentions is developing

The cross-chain intent-centric (or whatever you like) infrastructure is surging in the background, and the solver network is becoming more and more complex. The transaction supply chain is moving off-chain and/or paying for Ethereum's security. In my opinion, the cross-chain intent-centric infrastructure + solver network + rollup-centric future will eventually lead to AMMs on their own chains.

3. About Ethereum

There are efforts to disaggregate the builder market on Ethereum, and while we don’t know what additional value commitment play might unlock (e.g. block space futures), I still can’t imagine ultimately reverting to a MEV-boost (maximum extractable value) type of “build my most valuable block” scenario, with the opportunity to look at additional value unlocked by things like impermanent loss or commitments.

Why does stake always end up being concentrated in the validators who say "commit to or include the transaction that built my most valuable block"? If you have some thoughts or answers, please comment.

I unfortunately missed a lot of the content about Flashbots new rust builder and didn't participate in the TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) related discussions. I feel there is more to discuss here because they are solving the fundamental problem, which is information flow control (which I think is the theme).

4. About MEV

While there is a lot of talk about more infrastructure and MEV plays, there is little to no coverage of fundamentals. The on-chain spread is wide, which means the possible set of solver paths (and therefore MEV) is smaller than if the spread was tighter, or limited by the lack of coin fundamentals. Ultimately, it comes down to who is providing liquidity and why.

I think there is a huge opportunity to build fundamentals. To me, that means protocols and their DAOs are aligned on a business model that drives revenue and value and/or liquidity back into their governance tokens. (This is what I will be focusing on. In particular, I am interested in working with DAOs to identify their revenue drivers and provide relevant economic analysis — with the goal of providing valuable information for governance).

5. Look at pre-confirmation

I am bullish on preconfirmations, and the market is bearish on preconfirmations. Adding more complexity and trust to the base layer is a roundabout way to reduce block times or adopt new consensus mechanisms. That said, I am bullish on rollup sequencers and other off-protocol infrastructure (like primev or espresso) because they can provide users with preconfirmations (always good for UX) without adding complexity to the base layer.

In general, there is a clear trend towards execution moving off-chain. I wonder how this will play out. Any thoughts on some updates to base layer consensus? And Ethereum’s propensity to be the most secure DAO?

6. Summary

To summarize, even though Ethereum feels very decentralized (because I spend all my time on side activities because the content there is more valuable), there are still too many very smart people building on Ethereum to ignore that.

That said, if I were a trader, I feel like the explosive growth is over. There are some very interesting projects that just raised money, and Solana continues to be a very attractive place to apply what we've learned on Ethereum. Both offer new places for applications to be built, and appear to be better growth opportunities. This doesn't mean ETH won't still benefit from ETF inflows, but I don't know how much value their long-term signals have compared to the core issues that need to be addressed.

Additionally, I think rollups will become very attractive as sequencers unlock the MEV (maximum extractable value) beast. Time acceleration is bullish and performance will depend on the ability of DAOs to scale the ecosystem and return value to the protocol.