Key Takeaways from Paris Blockchain Week 2024
Our team has just returned to Japan after participating in Paris Blockchain Week 2024, which was hosted in the beautiful city of Paris.
Held beneath the iconic Louvre Museum, this year’s Paris Blockchain Week featured several events, including the Hackathon and Sui Basecamp, the first large-scale event focused on the Sui ecosystem.
Throughout the events, we had the chance to delve into topics that could impact our future in many aspects. The following are the key things we would like to share.
Negative Side of Bitcoin Halving
Bitcoin miners face a revenue cut in half due to the upcoming halving, where block rewards are reduced.
- This halving is expected to cause a price increase, as fewer new Bitcoins enter circulation.
- Bitcoin remains committed to proof-of-work, seen as more secure but criticized for energy consumption.
- Miners are increasingly adopting sustainable energy sources. Some are even taking advantage of surplus geothermal energy in Iceland.
This shift makes Bitcoin mining significantly cleaner but with their rewards cut in half, miners need to find ways to save money on their operations.
There’s a concern that miners might need to sell some of their Bitcoins to cover their expenses, which could put downward pressure on the price.
At the time of writing, 5 days prior to the Bitcoin Halving, we don’t believe it’s going to impact the price significantly. External factors like ongoing conflicts in the Middle East may have a greater influence.
Sui Unveils Mysticeti
Sui unveiled the new consensus protocol — Mysticeti that they are going to use in the next version at the Sui Basecamp conference, which will make the network even faster than its current performance of 6,000 TPS.
For those unfamiliar with Sui blockchain, it is an L1 blockchain originating from a former Facebook team. When Facebook disbanded their blockchain division, one ex-team founded Aptos, while another founded Sui.
It’s like several proof-of-stake blockchains that aim to achieve much faster speeds by incorporating Directed Acyclic Graph or DAG into their blockchain. Technically, they are something between a blockchain and a pure DAG network, like Hashgraph.
At Sui Basecamp, they revealed Mysticeti, their new DAG protocol to replace Bullshark. While we won’t delve into details here, you can read the paper on this link.
The new protocol aims to help Sui achieve 100,000 TPS. Testnet upgrades come first, with plans for a Q4 2024 Mainnet upgrade if all goes well.
France’s Plan for Web3
Similar to Japan, where we’re based, France also has solid plans to support the emerging industry of Web3. Their vision aligns with Japan’s, viewing Web3 as pivotal for advancing next-gen financial services and fostering startup growth within the country.
Here are several key points:
- The government invests in talent, allocating a huge budget to universities and schools. One of our team members also participated in the hackathon hosted at a French engineering school, where 100+ young students took part and learned about Solana, XRPL and Casper.
- To support the new energy demands of emerging technologies, they are constructing the world’s largest tokamak nuclear fusion reactor that much clean and entirely different from traditional nuclear fission.
- They’re inviting Web3 entrepreneurs from all around the world to relocate to France with the new Tech Visa scheme, promising to approve applications within 2 days.
Paris Blockchain Week is also the largest blockchain/Web3 conference in Europe. It started in 2018 as a small crypto meetup group and has since evolved into a yearly large-scale conference, with 2024 marking the sixth consecutive year.
That’s all for now, but we’ll be participating in many more events in 2024 and sharing what we learn along the way. Feel free to check out the article about all major crypto events in Asia that we’ve written at this link.
