Author Rui, blockchain gal, web3 founder.
Twitter: @popolandRuii
- 🌍 Best globalization is localization
- 🥷🏻 Emerging gangster under PoS hood
- 🤺 Intense battle between AA and EOA wallet
- 🧪 WTF is Decentralized Science?
- 📍 A fresh list of cool crypto projects
- 👁 ️Sense the pendulum of crypto industry
🌍 Best globalization is localization
As I stood on the ETH Denver stage on closing day, the plots of with unexpected encounters came up on my mind. From sharing a burrito bowl with French marketing consultants at a food truck, to spotting a wallet developer rocking my fancy coat, to meditating with an Austin friend amidst mesmerizing digital crypto art, to wandering through a museum with Chilean friends. You see people from different backgrounds, genders, and countries coming together to talk about the same thing. There is no other industry like crypto that is as diverse and inclusive.
My first friend made in Denver, Francis, is leading the charge for the Spanish-speaking community. It reminded me of a strategy learned from my previous experience working at TikTok: the best way to globalize is to localize.
Instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all approach, the better way to embrace mass adoption is focusing on making the context understandable to each individual culture. Make builders better understand the underlying tech, freely communicate about the opportunities and create products that fits their own ecosystem. Nowadays big blockchain like NEAR is willing to give tech and financial supports to their Chinese, Spanish and France speaking communities, by taking time to do so, it will lead the industry to a more robust and diverse global market, where ideas and innovations can flourish.
🥷🏻 Emerging gangster under PoS hood
The upcoming “Shanghai” updates is obviously one of the most common topics for the attendees. This release brings a major upgrade by replacing Proof-of-Work with Proof-of-Stake. Lots of staking services are popping up, taking care of security, money issue for blcokchain participants. Most common use is pooled staking, allowing those with smaller amounts of ETH to participate collaboratively.
At the time, the largest staking pool, Lido, held over 30% of the total staking tokens in the network. This concentration of staking tokens left me feeling uneasy, I can’t help but wondered, how we could prevent group compromise or failure? Was there a way to enjoy the convenience of staking services without the risk of centralization?
While at the venue, Eran from the SSV network caught a glimpse of me searching for possible solutions on Google by accident. He introduced me to Secret Shared Validator(SSV) and also called Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) .
Instead of relying on a single operator to run the validator, SSV uses Secret Shared Validators to split the validator private key into four different keyshares, allowing four operators to run a validator in a trustless and safe way. This approach prevents single-operator failure and keeps the validator online 24/7 as much as possible, thus improving the safety and stability of the Ethereum network.
I love SSV’s decentralized approach to preventing potential centralized risks, and as an underlying technology, it has the potential to power more dApps to run more securely and smoothly.
Check my detail research if you’re interest in SSV: https://medium.com/@poporuii/understanding-ssv-the-key-secret-to-securing-the-future-of-ethereum-973365073baa
🤺 Intense battle between AA and EOA wallet
If you’ve ever strolled by a wallet booth at ETH Denver, you couldn’t have missed the buzz about ‘Account Abstraction(AA)’. It refers to a new type of wallet, called an AA wallet, which is designed to be more user-friendly and flexible than traditional wallets.
The traditional wallets we all familiar with, known as EOA(Externally-owned account) wallets, can be difficult for us to manage, because we may forget or lose our seed phrase, which could result in losing access to our wallet. However, the invention of EIP-4337 and the AA wallet has revolutionized the crypto world, as it represents a step towards native smart contract wallets without needing changes to the Ethereum protocol.
Thank God, the AA wallet has finally freed product managers’ hands and allowed them to design the wallet from a user-centric perspective. The wallet enables users to log in and sign transactions using social media and even facial scanning; It also allows dApps or advertisers to sponsor users’ gas by watching ads or registering; In case of compromised or lost accounts, social recovery is also an option.
As the new technology of the AA wallet needs to be tested and verified, it’s worth noting that MetaMask, the largest EOA wallet, has also made significant progress with its introduction of MetaMask Snaps in response.
MetaMask Snaps is an exciting development that extends MetaMask’s functionality by allowing people to introduce additional features and APIs. As the co-founder of the MetaShield, the anti-phishing plugin, I find this particularly thrilling as I can now directly implement it into the MetaMask wallet. It also interests my friend from PUSH protocol, as it enables direct deployment of communication protocols, making end-to-end chats possible.
Talking back at the AA-EOA battle, Snaps enables MetaMask to interact with AA accounts, and some related projects are currently under development. This development brings vitality to MetaMask in terms of safety, identity, L2s, multichains, and more. The ability to extend functionality and integrate with other protocols will make MetaMask more valuable to users and developers alike.
As a product manager in the web3 space, I am optimistic about the future of user interfaces and how they shape our interactions with tech. The trend of both AA and EOA wallets is towards greater user-friendliness, flexibility, and extendability. With these advancements, users can expect to no longer have to grapple with the complexities of seed phrases or private keys, and won’t have to shoulder the burden of securing their accounts — which should never be their responsibility in the first place.
🧪 WTF is Decentralized Science?
I won’t surprise watching people confusing face when they came to the Decentralized Science(DeSci) venue, obviously its a sexy and nerdy field that need to be explored. However, I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much information right off the bat.
From my perspective, decentralized tech has the potential to revolutionize the way scientists conduct research, by lowering barriers and costs, increasing accessibility, and improving efficiency. Decentralized science could drive innovation and collaboration across the scientific community. Let’s start with a good example: DBDAO- the web3 database.
In scientific research, researchers struggle with insufficient data and high costs of collecting data, while data contributors lack incentives to contribute or may not know where to contribute. DBDAO is a database structure that turns every row as an NFT, which means every contributor could receive a NFT as proof of data ownership, and allows them receive a share of the profits whenever the database is monetized.
One inspiring use case of DBDAO is HairDAO, a platform that collects hair-related data from people with hair loss issues. HairDAO uses the DBDAO structure to incentivize contributors, enabling them to mint an NFT that represents their data and receive royalties whenever the platform earns revenue. This not only creates a more transparent and fairer way of sharing data, but it also encourages people to take an active role in finding solutions to common problems.
What if contributors provide repetitive or low-quality data just to earn profits? DBDAO has a solution by introducing management control and a slashing mechanism where every database is a DAO and database curators can set up managers to manage the database collaboratively. Contributors are required to stake a small amount of tokens to contribute data, and their stakes will be refunded upon approval but will be slashed if their contributions are declined.
Some may ask if all data is public on-chain, others can simply copy and paste the database, they don’t need to purchase. However, an encryption solution can be adopted. We can only reveals 5% rows of the data and encrypt others, give buyers a sample to taste; Or reveal the other columns data but encrypt critical columns; Or using ZK queries to display the number of results when people search for specific information, when you search data “age over 24”, the database tells you they have 2,000 relative results.
This is just a starting point for introducing decentralized technology to drive scientific research. Apart from data collection and management, many DeSci projects focus on funding, research, infrastructure, services, and communities. It’s a new and fascinating field!
📍 A fresh list of cool crypto projects
As I’m enthusiastic about discussing intriguing crypto projects, the article could go on indefinitely. However, I’ll introduce a selection of my personal favorites, ranging from established names to innovative hackathon ideas.
- Taiko: A fully decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup
- Juno: No backend code smart contract deployment
- Hats Finance: Create bug bounty pool that turn black hat hackers into white hat hackers
- CookBook: The one stop shop for all solidity contracts
- Org3: Manage your communities through ENS sub-domain
- Blocks: Blockchain interface visualization
- EYBlockchain: Zero-knowledge-proof compiler service
- KlimaDAO: Fight climate change and earn rewards with KLIMA, a digital currency backed by real carbon assets
- My Mül: Interoperatable NFT that could be updated in real-time listening to your on-chain transaction behavior
- Denote: Web3 notion that could update onchain
👁️ Sense the pendulum of crypto industry
As someone who’s only been working in the blockchain industry for a year, I’m still figuring out my vision of the whole crypto picture. While as talking to Eraser, the co-founder of SevenX, the word “Pendulum” made me think.
While I’ve criticized web2 for its centralization flaws, I don’t believe that absolute decentralization is always the right approach. Instead, there’s a pendulum that swings back and forth between centralization and decentralization, it represent regulated and unregulated; Etheruem and multi-chain, etc.
When the FTX rug happened, the pendulum swung towards decentralization; But when there’s a major attack on a platform like Solana, the pendulum might swing back towards centralization.
It is great products that drive the pendulum’s movement, like MakerDAO; Smart products seive the period the pendulum pauses, allowing them to make profits; Massive products just follow the pendulum, but may not be able to keep up. Meanwhile, good investors are able to predict the pendulum’s direction and target the right projects at the right time.
I appreciate the experience of ETH Denver and the lessons I learned, as well as the many new friends I made. Although my friends and I often joke about the price of ETH dropping after major crypto conferences, I remain steadfast in my belief in the long-term value of this industry and remain committed to improving it in any way I can.
Shout-out to my friends:
Michael, Francis, Dan O., Matt, Marko, Ziad, Cameron, Guillaume, Kale, Eraser, Eric, Jenks, Lliam, Chaz, Radek, Niki, Richa, Montoya, Shawnzy, Angler, Pablo, Royalaid, Sam, Jackson, Benjamin, Kyle, Jane, Jack, Julie, Chris, Justin, Louis, Manuel, Rick, Davalos, Yannis, Greg!
