Author: Stanford Blockchain Club Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

In accordance with SBR’s annual tradition, I A virtual conversation with Electric Capital’s Avichal Garg and Maria Shen to explore what’s in store for the crypto space in 2024 and look ahead to possible changes ahead. This article is a detailed record of our discussions, combining their experience in the crypto space and research on developer activity to predict the development trends of the crypto industry this year.

The article mainly focuses on the following three topics: the current status of global developer activities, the development trend of NFT, and the latest investment of Electric Capital.

Changes in global developer activity

Every year, Electric Capital releases an "Annual Developer Report", which is read by hundreds of thousands of readers. Provides key insights into developer activity in different crypto ecosystems. To write this year's report, Electric Capital fingerprinted more than 902 million code commits across 1.7 million code repositories.

The first version of this report was published in 2018. Since then, Electric Capital has updated its report every year because they believe—and I agree—that the only truly important metric for the future of cryptocurrency is developer engagement. We need developers to build applications that provide value to users, attract customers, and in turn attract more developers to this field.

During the interview, I asked Avichal and Maria the following questions and summarized their insights:

1. Please briefly introduce yourselves , and share how you first got involved with cryptocurrencies?

Maria: Maria initially became involved with cryptocurrencies for their cross-border payment solutions, but did not delve deeper into it until the launch of Ethereum. She became interested in “programmable money” because she thought it could solve the problems she faced when starting a business in the supply chain space. In particular, she hopes to leverage Ethereum to create lightweight and cheap hosting systems. However, in 2016, she found that the infrastructure at that time was not enough to support the application of real scenarios, but this exploration allowedShe went down the “crypto rabbit hole,” realizing that while the technology was immature, its potential was huge.

Avichal: Avichal first became involved with cryptocurrencies in 2010-2011, when he was developing his second startup Spool, a cryptocurrency-focused Mobile content caching service for offline reading. During this period, he and co-founder Curtis came into contact with some Bitcoin miners and considered mining. After selling Spool to Facebook in 2012, he continued to focus on crypto as a hobby.

During the Bitcoin bull market of 2017, his interest deepened, delving into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and ICOs, and conducting educational sessions for venture capitalists. By 2018, some VC firms invited Avichal to help manage their crypto investments because traditional VCs didn’t know enough about crypto assets.

Avichal’s background in distributed systems and security makes it natural for him to explore privacy protection technologies in the blockchain field. His interest in cryptographic privacy stems from the unique challenges of blockchain technology, particularly in the areas of custody and security.

2. The report mentioned that although the number of new developers has reached an all-time high, experienced developers still contribute 70% of the code. What does this say about the maturity of the crypto space?

Maria: The crypto space is now more accessible than ever, with many options to explore, whereas in the early days we only had Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the cost of experimentation was very high . Today, developers can easily build on new chains, which are supported by detailed documentation and a friendly community of mentors. However, attrition rates are still high among newbies. While getting started is easier than ever, the real promise requires developers to shift their thinking from traditional development models. Once developers overcome this initial hurdle, their retention rates improve significantly. This dynamic explains why experienced developers still drive the majority of contributions.

3. Asia has surpassed North America and become the main gathering place for encryption developers. How does this affect your investment logic?

Maria: In 2024, the region with the most new developers in the encryption field will be India. At the same time, we are also seeing an increase in developer activity in Nigeria, Southeast Asia and other regions. I've talked to some developers in these regions who, after using cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, started to decide to build better applications for these products because theyKnow best how to improve the product based on your own needs.

Avichal: Avichal mentioned that building core infrastructure requires a larger development team and More financial support. But Asia and Africa often lack access to technical expertise and capital, further exacerbating the fragmentation of global development resources.

4. One out of every three developers now works on multiple chains, with the EVM chain leading this trend. With the rise of ecosystems like Base and Solana, how do you see this multi-chain idea evolving?

Avichal: Each chain has found its niche in its own field. Ethereum is primarily used for high-value, high-security operations, while Solana and Base focus on speed and cost use cases, such as NFT minting and gaming. They are faster and cheaper than Ethereum, so as long as the community and economics remain, most activity will migrate with them.

In 2024, Solana becomes the leading ecosystem for attracting new developers. Its high-performance architecture and growing ecosystem attract a large number of developers. And another key player is Base. Base has EVM compatibility and is supported by Coinbase, making it easy for Ethereum developers to migrate applications to the chain. Base became the most popular chain among EVM multi-chain deployment developers in 2024 and now accounts for 25% of the original code logic on all EVM chains.

Adoption of NFT 5. You mentioned that the application of NFT has gone beyond the scope of works of art. Can you share some cases that you are paying attention to?

Maria: NFT and blockchain ledgers can accurately assign ownership. One example is BasePaint. BasePaint is a Base-based cryptographic collaborative art project where artists work together to create digital art on a shared pixel grid. At the end of each 24-hour creative cycle, the work is minted into an open version of the NFT, with 90% of the proceeds distributed according to the number of pixels contributed by the artist. Intellectual property management on the chain is very straightforward, with digital contribution records and smart contract management profits ensuring that every artist can receive returns in proportion to their contribution.

Avichal: in the districtOn the blockchain, things are either fungible (Fungible) or non-fungible (Non-Fungible). Most things are non-fungible – unique and irreplaceable, and their digital representation on the blockchain is an NFT.

An early application of NFT is avatar pictures (PFP). If someone can buy an NFT worth $100,000, or show themselves to be an early adopter through a PFP, it’s a way to signal to others. These signals reflect a kind of social fitness. As primates, humans have a deep-seated desire and need to demonstrate their "adaptability" to each other in some way. In the digital realm, where people are online more than 12 hours a day, this exposure occurs primarily online, through digitally scarce items. For example, in a video conference, most people don't care what shoes you're wearing. You may care because you like the shoes or the craftsmanship, but a large portion of the world buys expensive shoes to be seen. However, in this environment, what you wear above your shoulders will be more important.

NFT is a natural mechanism for humans to show each other in the digital world. Knowing that something is cryptographically verified to be scarce creates value, and that value drives social signaling. Rather than buying expensive shoes, watches or bags, people are more likely to buy expensive digital goods.

This reminds me of the early Internet era, when people's time had moved online, but advertising spending was still mainly concentrated on TV and newspapers. Nowadays, social time and working time have moved online, but luxury consumption and social signal-related expenditures have not yet completely moved online.

As a result, we have made multiple investments in the NFT space, such as Magic Eden, which is one of the largest NFT markets across chains. When Electric Capital first came into contact with the Magic Eden team, we found that they were one of the best in crypto and understood the value of NFTs, meme culture, and digital culture.

Magic Eden is a leading multi-chain NFT marketplace that supports transactions on Solana, Ethereum, Polygon and Bitcoin Ordinals with low fees and user-friendly The platform is famous. Electric Capital was an investor in its seed and latest funding rounds,Other investors include Sequoia, Greylock and Paradigm. The company’s most recent funding round valued it at $1.6 billion.

6. Have you heard of Mastercard’s NFT-compatible credit card?

Maria: No!

Tesvara: I first heard about this product over dinner when we Jay, the chairman of the SBC, mentioned it. This is an NFT customizable Mastercard launched by hi, a crypto and fiat finance app. You can use this card to spend globally with fiat currencies, stablecoins, and other cryptocurrencies, while also customizing the card cover with an NFT avatar that you can verifiably own.

I think these real-world integration initiatives will be very helpful in attracting more people into the crypto space, or at least making cryptocurrencies accessible to more people. Moreover, using cryptocurrencies through credit cards also increases the practicality of holding crypto assets. Third, a cool product like this itself can easily attract the interest of online users. Such users are usually interested in community signal products and want more ways to show that they belong to a specific group.

Electric Capital’s investments in 2024 7. The report mentions that you invested in EigenLayer, which launched “re-staking as a service” and added more than $30 billion in total value locked (TVL) to Ethereum. How do you assess its impact on Ethereum and DeFi? What new actions will EigenLayer take next?

EigenLayer provides "Re-Staking as a Service". It is a middleware protocol on Ethereum that allows ETH validators to re-stake their tokens to support the security of other protocols. Electric Capital participated in EigenLayer’s $14.5 million seed round in August 2022 and its $50.8 million Series A round in February 2023.

Maria: EigenLayer launches "Liquid Re-staking Token" Tokens, LRTs), openOpened up a whole new field, adding more than $30 billion in TVL to the Ethereum mainnet. EigenLayer is a great example of the developer "flywheel effect".

EigenLayer was initially driven by a small group of dedicated developers, unlocking a new use case. This use case attracts capital, users and new products. As TVL grows, more developers begin building AVS (Additional Verification Services) for EigenLayer, creating more utility and attracting more capital, users, and developers. This cycle makes EigenLayer an ever-expanding ecosystem.

8. Why invest in Monad?

Monad is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed for high performance without sacrificing decentralization or security. Electric Capital participated in Monad’s $225 million Series A funding round in April 2024, which was led by Paradigm.

Tesvara: Monads achieve high performance while maintaining EVM compatibility. This approach bridges Ethereum’s strong developer ecosystem and consumer application speed. and efficiency requirements.

Avichal: Monad’s founding team Eunice Giarta, Keone Hon and James Hunsaker were former managers of large technology companies and had high-frequency trading system development at Jump Trading professional background. Their experience is ideal for building fast and scalable blockchain infrastructure.

Both Maria and Avichal highlighted the potential of Monads to support new use cases that require Ethereum compatibility and high transaction throughput, such as on-chain order books and Complex DeFi protocols. They see Monads as a potential catalyst for the next wave of blockchain application development.

Conclusion 10. Many club members who are new to the encryption field often ask: "What direction should I pursue?" As a venture capital investor who is deeply involved in this field, what gaps do you think our Stanford developers can fill? ?

"Build weirder apps." - Maria