I have written about my experiences at EthCC 2024. In this post, I will introduce the overall atmosphere of the event, and in the next post, Seungmin Jeon will cover the technical discussions that took place at the event.
Table of Contents
- Comparison with last year’s EthCC
- UX (AA / Mobile)
- Superchain
- Layer 2
- Onchain Games
Comparison with last year’s EthCC
EthCC 2024 was held in Belgium, while EthCC 2023 was held in Paris. Many expected fewer people to attend compared to the previous year. However, despite not reaching last year’s numbers, this year’s EthCC also saw a significant turnout. There were over 300 side events, comparable to the previous year.
Many people consider this year’s EthCC a failure due to the picture of an empty room during the Aptos presentation. However, it is not uncommon for specific sessions to be empty at such large events. Given that it is the Ethereum Community Call, interest in other L1s may be less than at other blockchain events.
UX (AA / Mobile)
With the introduction of Blob to Ethereum in the first half of this year, gas fees in the Ethereum ecosystem have become sufficiently affordable. I believe there are two remaining UX hurdles for mass adoption.
The first is creating a wallet and charging it with gas fees. To use a specific chain’s dApp, one needs to buy gas tokens from a centralized exchange and transfer them on-chain.
Second is that most dApps are not supported on mobile. To use dApps, one must use a PC or add them to the home screen on mobile.
I met with Openfort, whom I already knew well. Openfort provides game-specific AA wallets. The existing AA SDK is JavaScript-based, limiting its use to web apps. However, Openfort offers a Unity SDK, increasing the adoption of AA in games. Seeing the founder excitedly explaining the problems they are trying to solve was impressive.
At “The Future of Web3 is Mobile” event, I met Valora. Valora provides a mobile stack for Web3. With projects like Valora and the emergence of decentralized app stores free from censorship by centralized companies like Apple and Google, the infrastructure for dApps to flourish will be fully in place.
At the “All about Frames” event, I met XMTP. XMTP provides a protocol for Web3 messaging, allowing easy creation of Web3 social apps and chatbot apps that assist users. It was interesting to see that Farcaster’s Frame feature could also be integrated.
Superchain
Superchain is a gathering of Optimism partner L2s, including Base, Mode, Zora, and Worldcoin. I participated in various Superchain-related events to meet people from the Superchain ecosystem and contribute to it in various ways.
Superchain Space is an event organized by Superchain Eco. In addition to offline events, Superchain Eco contributes to the ecosystem by creating a page that overviews the entire Superchain dApps and OP Collective citizens. The event’s merchandise was the most stylish among all the events I attended, featuring cool t-shirts from Superchain Eco and stickers from Mint Blockchain. I also had the opportunity for an interview, which was a pleasant experience.
Optimistic Gathering was an event organized by Node Guardians. Node Guardians is a project that gamifies smart contract education, allowing the learning of various languages such as Solidity, Cairo, Noir, and Huff. Based on their experience successfully running StarkNet CC, they hosted the Optimism event this time. It was held at a beautiful venue, and I met Superchain frens Mint and Cyber and many interesting projects, including OnlyDust and Growthepie.
L’Apero: A Superchain Social was an event organized by Boys Club and Optimism. Boys Club is a crypto news platform with a very hip vibe. I met many Delegates contributing to Optimism governance at this event and enjoyed delicious Belgian waffles.
Other Superchain events included Superchain Social, Optimism X Worldcoin, and more.
Layer 2
Besides Superchain events, I attended various L2 events.
At the Modular Security event hosted by Cartesi, I listened to a panel talk on the Fault Proof System, which was the most exciting and informative panel talk I have ever heard. The discussion involved Ed Felten from Arbitrum criticizing the Optimism Fault Proof System. The highlight was when Ed told Mark Tyneway from Optimism that Optimism couldn’t prevent an Exhaustion Attack (an attacker having more funds than the defender), and Mark responded with, “Then do it!” Through this panel talk and separate conversations with Ed and Mark, I learned about the differences in perspectives between Arbitrum and Optimism, which Seungmin Jeon will share.
Layer 2
At the zkSync Popup Store, simple ZK circuit examples were provided to help participants easily understand how ZK works. They also created a ZK introductory storybook in English/French to lower the psychological entry barrier to ZK. One wall featured a timeline of Cypherpunk history.
Last year, I participated in the L2BEAT Governance Brunch to discuss governance directions with various L2s. This year’s L2BEAT Brunch was a more casual dining event. I met the CTO of Zircuit and shared various technical information. I met a team called Payy for the first time, which is building a payment network using stablecoins. Now that L2s are cheap and fast enough, building payment networks directly on Ethereum L2s seems feasible.
While attending various events, I had the valuable experience of meeting and conversing with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Arbitrum co-founder Ed Felten, Optimism co-founder Mark Tyneway, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, and L2Beat researcher Donnoh.
Other L2-related events included Alt Layer Rollup Day, L2Con, Le Cafe Stark, Mantle Mixer, ZKsync Ecosystem Cocktail, Meet the OGs, and more.
Onchain Games
I met many fully on-chain game builders at the Onchain Games Meetup and Kamorebi’s hacker house.
Most of them built games on Starknet, thanks to Starknet’s game engine, Dojo. Dojo team members are primarily based in Europe, and possibly because EthCC was held in Europe, most Starknet game teams were also European.
There were teams building on Redstone using the MUD engine, but they faced difficulties due to unstable RPC communication and poor contact with the Redstone team, making the building process challenging.
Besides these two chains’ games, Tarochi Game stood out, running a game on XAI using its own engine.
Attending various events, I sometimes felt disillusioned hearing only about bootstrapping strategies and grants. However, it was impressive to see people excitedly and passionately discussing why blockchain games are necessary and the current stage of on-chain games.
Kamorebi’s Hacker House will also be held at the upcoming EDCON in Tokyo, and it’s worth visiting.
This concludes my recap of EthCC. In the next post, Seungmin Jeon will cover more technical discussions, so stay tuned.
