Written by: Chunzhen
"The purpose of a finite game is to win, and the purpose of an infinite game is to continue playing." Inspired by American scholar James P. Carse, Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, proposed the vision of Ethereum's "Infinite Garden". Ethereum is not just a technology, but also a diverse garden composed of individuals and organizations. As a gardener in the garden, the Ethereum Foundation takes on the role of cultivating and promoting production but not controlling it. People build and grow in an open and infinite garden, allowing the garden to continue to prosper organically.
During my 4-day trip to Devcon SEA (Devcon 7), I saw the embodiment of Ethereum’s “infinite garden” vision.
When we talk about public goods
During Devcon, I mainly interviewed some representative public goods projects, including Gitcoin, Protocol Guild, Octant, etc. Unfortunately, I did not find the Optimism team. The following is a summary of my views:
Gitcoin co-founder Kevin Owocki talked about how technologies like account abstraction make Web3 closer to Web2 products in terms of user experience, which is what Gitcoin lacks. Gitcoin is essentially a platform built for Web3 developers. It assumes that everyone has a wallet and knows how to trade, but if you want to provide solutions for non-blockchain use cases, user experience is a problem that must be solved.
Previously, Gitcoin launched an experimental Layer2 Public Goods Network, which aims to use the sorting fees to build and fund public goods. PGN ceased operations in June this year. Regarding the reason for the closure of PGN, Owocki said that PGN was a good attempt, but the adoption rate in actual operation was still too low. No one was really using it, so the project was bound to be closed. But he himself strongly supports the idea of PGN and welcomes any team that wants to restart/fork the project.
As a relatively mysterious Protocol Guild, this Devcon also interviewed Cheeky, one of the members of Protocol Guild. Here are some interesting points:
1) Regarding the diversity of Protocol Guild members, there are only single-digit numbers of Asians (about 2) and women (about 6). However, this is not a problem unique to the Ethereum ecosystem. Protocol Guild will continue to pay attention to and help more women enter the ecosystem.
2) Protocol Guild does not have a marketing team. It simply and rudely asks Layer2 for coins directly (but most of the time it is directly rejected by Layer2). In the first quarter of next year, Protocol Guild will strengthen its brand building. The ideal state is that projects can donate directly without communicating with team members;
3) The essence of Protocol Guild is that Layer2 provides funds to keep excellent developers in Layer1. It may sound a bit paradoxical, but Cheeky said that Ethereum still has a long way to go, and Ethereum Layer2 also inherits the security of Ethereum. Only after Ethereum is well built can other Layer2s develop rapidly. This is a relatively easy-to-understand point of view, so I hope that all Layer2s can make contributions in the future;
4) Regarding the issue of legitimacy, is it possible that Protocol Guild will grow into another EF, and project owners can donate tokens to show loyalty (legitimacy) in disguise? It can be heard that Protocol Guild has such ambitions, but they have not yet figured out how to do it. Finally, Protocol Guild accepts everyone, even if Memecoin donates tokens to gain PR, they are happy to see it.
As an emerging public goods fundraising platform, Octant uses the proceeds from the 100,000 ETH staked by the Golem Foundation as a source of public goods funding. Its public relations director Wlodek Gogloza said that Octant is a sustainable funding platform. The Golem Foundation stakes its own ETH as a Solo Staker, and then uses part of the returns to fund public goods (not necessarily public goods in the Web3 industry). At the same time, considering security, Octant will not consider liquidity staking solutions, although this may bring higher returns.
I noticed that in the Epoch 5 funding round that Octant just completed, "big donors" such as Protocol Guild and Revoke still topped the funding list. Therefore, the question arises whether this is a drawback of quadratic financing, because people are more inclined to donate funds to these "popular, top" projects. Wlodek said that a large project like Protocol Guild itself requires much more funds than some independent projects with single-digit developers, while some small projects at the end of the list may only need to hold an offline event. Of course, there is indeed a "popularity contest" here, and it is indeed an issue worth considering and solving.
Wlodek also mentioned an interesting phenomenon. Although many funding programs are now using quadratic financing, in fact, the matching pool of the initial quadratic financing paper is not fixed. It will increase or decrease according to the actual donation situation of the donor. In reality, the matching pool of quadratic financing used is determined in advance, which may lead to the final donation situation not truly reflecting public opinion. Therefore, Octant is considering adopting a more original quadratic financing formula, that is, not determining the size of the matching pool in advance.
Thailand local projects
The presence of local Thai projects is not high. I only met a few local Thai projects at the side event. First, there are some local Thai Meme/GameFi/Metaverse communities on MemeWonder, but they are not large in scale. One unexpected thing is that TokenUnlocks, which I often use to record token unlocking tools, is a purely local Thai team. They have now officially upgraded to Tokenomist and incorporated more on-chain and analytical elements. Other projects include Rubie, a wallet application that focuses on exchanging USDC for electronic Thai baht (DTHB) for scan code payment, and Analog, a cross-chain communication protocol. Thailand's Web3 projects give me the feeling that they are still in the stage of wild growth, but the builders, funds and atmosphere required for development are already in place, and it is an emerging market worthy of attention.
The closing ceremony was held on the day of Thailand’s Loy Krathong Festival, and the venue was decorated with water lanterns.
Finally, my biggest feeling about Devcon is that Ethereum is an open and inclusive ecosystem. Here, people from any background can find topics to participate in and find like-minded people to build something new. The Ethereum Foundation has also truly played the role of a gardener. Their presence is not so strong, but you can always find them when you need them. But at the same time, as such a huge ecosystem, Ethereum also faces objective resistance to change, especially when it involves the interests of multiple parties. Overall, Ethereum may not be an ecosystem that rewards the brave, but truly valuable things will eventually pay off.
