Anoma Berlin Blockchain Week Round-up: September 2022
For the Anoma team, the first events of the Autumn season took place in Berlin, and we were excited to gather in the German capital for a week of learning, connecting — and currywursting. From hosting our own Huddle, to speaking at zkSummit8, DappCon, and Re:Generate, it was the perfect opportunity to have challenging discussions with some of the leading builders in Web3.
Here’s what the team got up to:
Anoma Huddle presents: Interchain, privacy, and games!
On September 12th, we got together with our community at Spreewalker in Kreuzberg for an Anoma Huddle. Thematically centered on building interchain and cross-chain, the event was split into two parts, with introductions from a range of projects in the first, and then an exciting panel discussion in the second. There was plenty of time in-between for drinks, food, and BOARD GAMES!
Part I: Introductions — Talks
In the first half of the event, co-founder Awa Sun Yin gave a warm welcome, before handing over to fellow co-founder, Adrian Brink, who gave an introduction to the work we are doing at Anoma.
then took the mic to give his introduction to the work of Celestia Labs, who are building a modular consensus and data network for easy blockchain deployment. Their view is that it should be relatively easy and overhead-free to deploy new blockchains.Next up was Ansgar Dietrichs from the Ethereum Foundation, who gave an overview of the Foundation’s plans for the coming months — only days before the eagerly anticipated Merge on September 15th. Ansgar has pointed views on the future of Ethereum, and his introduction was shaped by his vision for where the core protocol could evolve in the near future.
Susannah Evans, Product Lead at
, then gave an overview of the product roadmap at Interchain, and why cross-chain building is so central to the future of Web3. Finally, Alex Stokes from the Ethereum Foundation wrapped up the first half’s talks with more details on how they hope to enhance the security, sustainability, and scalability of the Ethereum core protocol.Part II: Multi-chain, interchain/cross-chain, modularity — how’s the landscape going to evolve? — Panel Discussion
In the second half of the Huddle, a panel discussion focusing on modularity and interchain protocols, featuring all the speakers from part I, moderated by Anoma co-founder,
. This wide-ranging discussion introduced a range of different perspectives on the aspects surrounding multi-chain and interchain computing, and posited a range of different theories on how this fast moving and ever-changing landscape will continue to evolve in the coming months.DappCon
DappCon assembles dapp developers from around the world, providing the “opportunity for co-creating the future of dapps, while engaging the community in open critical discussions and experiential learning.” The Anoma team were glad to contribute a number of talks to the three-day event, with co-founder Awa Sun Yin speaking on the first day, and co-founder Adrian Brink taking the stage on the second.
“Intent-Centric (Intent-Solver Pattern) Architectures For Fully Decentralized dApps” — Adrian Brink
On the first day of the event, Adrian took to the main stage to deliver his talk on Anoma’s intent-centric architecture for decentralized applications. In this talk, Adrian gave a detailed explanation of the intent-centric approach to architecture design that Anoma follows, exploring the necessity for intent-centricity in general. He then went on to explain how Anoma’s architecture will deliver on its design principles, and what this will mean for the future of the project and the ecosystem.
Although there was no recording from DappCon, you can watch the same talk from Adrian’s here:
“Privacy as a Public Good” — Awa Sun Yin
On day three of DappCon, co-founder Awa Sun Yin, gave her talk “Privacy as a public good.”
She began with the current state of privacy in Web3, before explaining that we need to think of privacy as a public good, rather than a feature or an add-on. She then explored what we need to consider in order to build privacy in this way. She then explained how Anoma’s work with Namada — and the multi-asset shielded pool (MASP) — are an example of in-built privacy, and gave an overview of Anoma’s approach to privacy in its architecture.
(Also from Ethcc) — Watch Awa’s talk here:
zkSummit8
zkSummit8 brought together the best thinkers and builders in the zero knowledge space to learn about the latest research, SNARKs, STARKs, cryptographic primitives, privacy, and mathematics. The one-day, invite-only event consisted of a mixture of topic-oriented talks and interactive workshops.
“ZKPs and Other Cryptography” — Awa Sun Yin
Co-founder, Awa Sun Yin, gave a TL:DR on the cryptography behind Anoma, outlining the range of projects that we are working on to make it a reality. She first introduced Vamp-IR, which is a universal language for arithmetic circuits. The motivation behind Vamp-IR is to solve the pains of writing and rewriting custom circuits.
She also introduced Taiga, Ferveo, the multi-asset shielded pool (MASP), Plonk/Plonkup, and also gave a high-level overview of our work around private bridges. Finally, Awa explained the ‘why’ behind the work we are doing.
Watch Awa’s talk to find out more:
“Namada — Providing privacy to users in an interchain world” — Christopher Goes
Co-founder, Christopher Goes, gave an introduction to Namada, Anoma’s first blockchain which offers private, asset-agnostic, interchain transfers. Starting with a brief explanation of the importance of privacy in the modern day, Christopher then dove into the state of privacy in existing blockchain technology, exploring the existing solutions — and their tradeoffs. Christopher then introduced our proposed alternative — which is Namada.
Watch Christopher’s full talk:
Re:generate
Re:generate, hosted by
on September 15th and co-sponsored by Anoma, Celo, and Return Protocol, was a day of workshops, roundtables, and discussions focused on regenerative finance, decentralized science, and blockchain for impact and public goods.“Non-Linear Public Goods Funding” — Christopher Goes
Co-founder, Christopher Goes, hosted a workshop focused on addressing the issues surrounding existing models of non-linear public goods funding. He explains, “Most public goods in the real world are non-linear: you can’t drive a car over half a bridge, get as much out of reading half a book, or take a half-developed vaccine. Current paradigms of decentralized public-goods funding, however — such as quadratic funding — assume a linear relation between contributions and benefits.”
Christopher also presented a few alternative funding algorithms which can incorporate non-linear returns to funding, and we’ll have a brainstorming session for non-linear public goods and alternative mechanisms.
Danke, Berlin!
Berlin Blockchain Week was 🔥 and the team enjoyed the events, the talks, the conversations, and the human connection. We relish opportunities to connect with our community, and from the Anoma Huddle to DappCon, there was no shortage of this. We’ll be back, but for now — danke, Berlin!
See you in Colombia!
Web3 doesn’t sleep, and we are already preparing our next outing — in Colombia! The team will be attending Cosmoverse in Medellin, and we’re also excited to be hosting our own event, Interchain Travel, along with our friends Nebular Summit on September 27th. Then it’s off to Bogota for Devcon and Schelling Point. Please look out for us if you’re going to be there — we’d love to say hello IRL!
To stay in the loop, as always, be sure to follow Anoma and Namada on Twitter, and join us on Discord, for updates as they happen.
