Ethereum's innovation remains at the forefront, while other chains seem to be 'replicating' its path in a similar manner, even in meme phenomena.
Written by: 0XNATALIE
Recently, the sentiment in the Ethereum community has been low. Since the launch of the ETF this year, the price of ETH has failed to meet market expectations. There are many reasons for this, such as the rapid development of Layer 2 technology improving transaction efficiency but inadvertently weakening the economic capture ability of Ethereum's main chain, leading to a gradual decline in ETH demand; once-supportive narratives for 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 rise in Solana's price has become a direct comparison, under which the FUD sentiment in the Ethereum community has spread. Especially, the Ethereum Foundation's practice of selling ETH has triggered widespread dissatisfaction. Many community members believe that in the context of low ETH prices, the Foundation's actions ignore market sentiment, questioning the leadership capabilities of Ethereum and claiming they are 'self-destructing'.
This negative sentiment erupted on Twitter, and criticizing Ethereum seems to have become a traffic code for certain KOLs. Since the end of October, debates surrounding Ethereum have been ongoing. Amid this spreading sentiment, the Devcon event came 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 setup was vibrant and diverse, with a friendly and open overall atmosphere. The conference agenda was tightly packed with a lot of information, but this also made it difficult to keep up with the pace in some sessions. According to official statistics, 60% of attendees were first-time participants at Devcon. When communicating with attendees, the most mentioned evaluations of this conference were 'chill', 'colorful', and 'friendly'.
Interesting new concept: POD
During the conference, I encountered 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 GPC, POD data is taken as input, and the circuit checks whether this data meets certain preset conditions to derive a verification result. For example, the ticketing system for this conference, Zupass, 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 ticket's unique identifier, basic information, purchase time, and other data. After processing the POD data through the GPC circuit, venue staff do not see the specific information of the ticket, only the result verified by the zero-knowledge proof.
Core viewpoints in communication
During breaks between speeches, at the booth area, and in other communication spaces, I discussed multiple topics with technical and market personnel from different projects, among which ZK, Based Rollup, and Appchain left a deep impression.
Adam Domurad, a software engineer at Aztec, mentioned in the discussion that ZK technology, due to its constant proof size and efficient verification advantages, is very suitable for blockchain scalability. Compared to OP Rollup, ZK Rollup ensures the correctness of each transaction with zero-knowledge proofs, avoiding the risk of node malfeasance while reducing the workload of repeated verification. Currently, OP Rollup occupies a mainstream position mainly because users focus more on low fees and high speed rather than the superiority of underlying technology. The long-term value of ZK Rollup lies in its excellent security and scalability, and many blockchains (including Ethereum) have begun redesigning their architectures to fully leverage the potential of ZK technology. Additionally, ZK technology also shows great application potential in privacy protection. For example, the Anon Aadhaar project showcased at Devcon, developed by a PSE team supported by the Ethereum Foundation, verifies Indian citizenship through zero-knowledge proofs without disclosing specific identities. However, ZK Rollup needs further optimization in speed and cost to gain broader market recognition. He confidently stated that as ZK technology continues to mature, ZK Rollup is expected to replace OP Rollup and become the mainstream scalability solution.
Ethereum researcher mteam is a 17-year-old student who focuses on the research of Based Rollup. He shared with me the design advantages of Based Rollup as an independent execution environment. By sharing sorters, multiple Based Rollups can share liquidity without direct bridging, and liquidity can circulate between different Based Rollups leveraging the Ethereum mainnet. This design improves the efficiency of cross-chain operations while reducing reliance on a single bridging solution. The operating costs of decentralized sorters for Based Rollup are higher than centralized sorters, but multiple Based Rollups can share costs through block aggregation, significantly reducing individual operational 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 Ethereum's block time (12 seconds). Economically, Based Rollup returns most of the MEV earnings to Ethereum, so its main source of income comes from the gas fees paid by users. Additionally, Based Rollup achieves economic sustainability through frontend service fees and smart contract execution fees, avoiding reliance on MEV earnings. Due to its deep integration with the Ethereum mainnet, Based Rollup inherits Ethereum's censorship resistance and high reliability characteristics, which means that future Ethereum upgrades (such as stronger censorship resistance) will directly benefit Based Rollup.
Mark Richardson, head of the Carbon project, mentioned that the current DeFi faces two major challenges: liquidity fragmentation and complex user experience. He noted that protocols like Uniswap capture more value by developing Appchains, but this approach may further exacerbate the problem of liquidity dispersion. In contrast, cross-chain deployment and sharing liquidity mechanisms are a more efficient solution. Regarding Appchains, he believes that while it is a trend, it can indeed help protocols capture more value, as controlling the entire chain allows for better optimization of cost structure and user experience while achieving more efficient value extraction. However, from the perspective of the entire DeFi ecosystem, the Appchain path is not necessarily the best choice. Mark predicts that with the continuous development of cross-chain technology, multi-chain collaboration will become simpler, at which point the specific properties of the chain where users transact will become less significant. Therefore, he prefers to focus on addressing liquidity fragmentation through cross-chain solutions rather than isolating protocols from the ecosystem through Appchains. Additionally, he mentioned that intention-driven trading models are becoming a major trend. This design allows users to clearly express trading needs while obtaining a trading experience with zero slippage and MEV protection. Regarding market trends, he believes it is unlikely that 'DeFi Summer' will reoccur in the near future, but 'Memecoin Summer' may be on the horizon. In this environment, DeFi applications need to seize opportunities while combining flexibility with robustness to meet user needs. He particularly emphasized that the future success of projects depends not only on technological leadership but also on how to optimize user experience through data analysis and achieve collaborative development in a multi-chain ecosystem.
Ideas
Communicating with these builders made me realize that Ethereum's current dilemma lies in being overly focused on infrastructure construction while lacking sufficiently usable and attractive applications. However, from a macro perspective, Ethereum remains at the forefront of underlying technology innovation, which is important. After all, other chains seem to be 'replicating' Ethereum's path in a similar manner, including meme phenomena.
Ethereum's loss of meme opportunities is partly due to its transaction fees not being fast enough, forcing some small to medium-sized users to seek chains that better meet their needs, such as Solana. However, Solana's success does not solely rely on lower transaction fees; more importantly, it has successfully attracted a large number of excellent developers and focused more on the end-user experience. These factors have allowed Solana to stand out in the competition, attracting a large number of users seeking efficient, low-cost transactions. However, as Solana'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 mostly trade through complex tools, a situation reminiscent of Ethereum's early meme phenomena.
Therefore, I believe that other chains may have their moments of popularity at certain stages, but overall, Ethereum's ecological status and potential remain solid. Ethereum's unique advantages in technology and ecological depth are difficult for other chains to replace in the short term.
