Author: 0xNatalie Source: ChainFeeds

Recently, the mood in the Ethereum community has been gloomy. The price of ETH has failed to live up to market expectations since the ETF was launched this year. There are many reasons for this. For example, the rapid development of Layer 2 technology has improved transaction efficiency, but it has also invisibly weakened the economic capture capability of the Ethereum main chain, leading to a gradual decline in the demand for ETH; narratives that once supported the value of Ethereum, such as DeFi, It has also gradually lost its appeal, and there are currently not enough fresh and attractive narratives on the market.

Additionally, Solana’s price increase served as a direct comparison, and in this context, FUD sentiment spread in the Ethereum community. In particular, the Ethereum Foundation’s sale of ETH caused widespread dissatisfaction. Many community members believe that the foundation's behavior ignores market sentiment when ETH prices are low, questioning the leadership capabilities of Ethereum and believing that they are "self-destroying their future."

This negative sentiment erupted on Twitter, and bashing Ethereum seemed to have become a traffic password for some KOLs. Controversy surrounding Ethereum has continued since late October. While this sentiment was spreading, the Devcon event arrived as scheduled, bringing some confidence and positive energy to Ethereum.

In mid-November, I attended the Ethereum Developer Conference (Devcon 7) held in Bangkok. As one of the most influential events in the blockchain field, the main venue layout is full of vitality and diversity, and the overall atmosphere is friendly and open. The conference agenda was compact and informative, but it was difficult to keep up with the pace in some sessions. According to official statistics, 60% of attendees attended Devcon for the first time. When communicating with participants, the most common comments about this conference were “chill”, “colorful”, and “friendly”.

During the conference, I came into contact with an interesting concept - Provable Object Data (POD), which is a data structure used to store and manage data that needs to be verified through zero-knowledge proofs. data. GPC is the circuit used to verify these POD objects. In GPC, POD data will be used as input, and the circuit will check whether the data meets certain preset conditions to obtain a verification result. For example, Zupass, the ticket system for this conference, uses POD technology to ensureEach ticket is unique. When a user purchases a ticket, the Zupass system will generate a POD for the ticket, which contains the ticket's unique identifier, basic information, purchase time and other data. Once the POD data is processed through the GPC circuit, ticket specific information is not directly visible to venue staff. Only the results verified by the zero-knowledge proof will be seen.

In between speeches , booth area, Hub and other communication spaces, I discussed multiple topics with technical/marketing personnel from different projects, among which the topics of ZK, Based Rollup and Appchain were very impressive.

Aztec software engineer Adam Domurad mentioned in the exchange that ZK technology is very suitable for blockchain expansion due to its significant advantages of constant proof size and efficient verification. Compared with OP Rollup, ZK Rollup uses zero-knowledge proof to ensure the correctness of each transaction, which not only avoids the risk of nodes doing evil, but also reduces the workload of repeated verification. OP Rollup currently occupies a mainstream position, mainly because users pay more attention to low fees and high speeds rather than the superiority of the underlying technology. The long-term value of ZK Rollup lies in its excellent security and scalability, and many blockchains (including Ethereum) have begun to redesign their architecture to fully utilize the potential of ZK technology. In addition, ZK technology also shows great application potential in the field of privacy protection. For example, the Anon Aadhaar project presented at Devcon, developed by the PSE team supported by the Ethereum Foundation, uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify the identity of Indian citizens without revealing their specific identity. However, ZK Rollup needs to further optimize speed and cost to win wider market recognition. He confidently stated that as ZK technology continues to mature in the future, ZK Rollup is expected to replace OP Rollup and become the mainstream expansion solution.

Ethereum researcher mteam is a 17-year-old school student who focuses on Based Rollup research. He shared with me the design advantages of Based Rollup as an independent execution environment. By sharing the sequencer, multiple Based Rollups can share liquidity without direct bridging, and liquidity can be transferred between different Based Rollups with the help of the Ethereum mainnet. This design improves the efficiency of cross-chain operations while reducing reliance on a single bridge solution. The running cost of Based Rollup's decentralized sorter is higher than that of centralized sorters, but multiple Based Rollups can be divided into blocks by aggregating blocks.Amortized costs, thereby significantly reducing individual operating expenses. In terms of performance, Based Rollup can achieve the same speed as other Rollups through the pre-confirmation mechanism, providing a fast user experience within the Ethereum block time (12 seconds). In terms of economic model, Based Rollup returns most of the MEV revenue to Ethereum, so its main income comes from the gas fees paid by users. In addition, Based Rollup achieves economic sustainability through front-end service fees and smart contract execution fees, avoiding dependence on MEV revenue. Due to its deep integration with the Ethereum main network, Based Rollup inherits the censorship resistance and high reliability characteristics of Ethereum, which means that future upgrades of Ethereum (such as stronger censorship resistance) will directly bring additional advantages to Based Rollup.

Carbon project leader Mark Richardson mentioned that DeFi currently faces two major challenges: liquidity fragmentation and user experience complexity. He mentioned that although protocols such as Uniswap can capture more value by developing Appchain, this approach may further exacerbate the problem of liquidity dispersion. In contrast, deploying and sharing liquidity mechanisms across chains is a more efficient solution. For Appchain, he believes that although as a trend, it can indeed help the protocol capture more value, because the protocol controlling the entire chain can better optimize the cost structure and user experience, while achieving more efficient value extraction. However, from the perspective of the entire DeFi ecosystem, the Appchain path is not necessarily the best choice. Mark predicts that as cross-chain technology continues to develop, multi-chain collaboration will become easier, and by then, the specific attributes of the chain in which users are transacting will become irrelevant. Therefore, he prefers to focus on solving the problem of liquidity fragmentation through cross-chain solutions, rather than letting the protocol isolate itself from the ecosystem through Appchain. In addition, he mentioned that intent-driven trading models are becoming a major trend. This design allows users to clearly express their trading needs while obtaining a trading experience with zero slippage and MEV protection. Regarding market trends, he believes that a "DeFi Summer" is unlikely to reappear in the near future, but a "Memecoin Summer" may usher in. In this environment, DeFi applications need to seize opportunities while combining flexibility and robustness to meet user needs. He particularly emphasized that the success of future projects will not only depend on technological leadership, but also on how to optimize user experience through data analysis and achieve collaborative development in a multi-chain ecosystem.

Interact with these BulidersAfter reading this, I realized that the current dilemma of Ethereum is that it is too focused on infrastructure construction but lacks enough usable and attractive applications. However, from a macro perspective, Ethereum is still at the forefront of underlying technological innovation, which is important. After all, other chains seem to be "replicating" Ethereum's path in much the same way, including the meme phenomenon.

Ethereum lost meme opportunities in part because its transaction fees were not high enough fast enough, causing some small and medium-sized users to be forced to look for chains that better suited their needs, such as Solana. However, Solana’s success does not solely rely on lower transaction fees. More importantly, it has successfully attracted a large number of excellent developers and is more focused on the end-user experience. These factors set Solana apart from the competition, attracting a large number of users looking for efficient, low-cost transactions. However, as Solana’s transaction fees and MEV continue to climb, the use of trading bots and high-end tools becomes widespread, which may equally lead to the loss of ordinary users. Most of the remaining players trade through complex tools, a situation similar to the meme phenomenon in the early days of Ethereum.

Therefore, I think other chains may be popular at certain stages, but overall, Ethereum's ecological status and potential remain solid. Ethereum’s unique advantages in technology and ecological depth are difficult to replace by other chains in the short term.