Original Title: "8 Big Launches from EthCC 2023"
Original Author: William M. Peaster
Original Translation: Kate, Marsbit
Hello friends! Just recently in Paris, the Ethereum community was filled with vitality as EthCC 2023 kicked off.
This event is known for its in-depth exploration of the technical aspects of Ethereum and its ecosystem, and has become a popular platform for major announcements, this year being no exception.
In today's article, we will take you through the biggest developments at EthCC 2023 (in no particular order)!
1. Lens V2🌱
At EthCC, Lens Protocol also just introduced the details of their V2 upgrade, with a host of new features that seem to be a big step towards realizing the vision of Lens, an open and decentralized network social layer.
A closer look reveals that the core of Lens V2 is the concept of open operations, which allows users and developers to "carry their own smart contracts" to perform any external smart contract operations on any Lens published content, even across different chains.
In addition, Lens V2 introduces a new Profile Manager system that supports the ERC-6551 token standard, known as "token-bound accounts," allowing users to store NFTs within other NFTs. So now you can store all your collected content directly in your Lens profile. Encrypted social is growing!
2. UniswapX🦄
Uniswap unveiled a new system called UniswapX at EthCC, which is an open-source protocol aimed at bringing crypto trading into the next generation.
In essence, UniswapX relies on a new Dutch auction mechanism known as DutchX, where the price of the trading order starts higher than the current market price and gradually decreases over time, incentivizing "fillers" to execute the order immediately after making a profit.
That is to say, the UniswapX system outsources its complex on-chain and off-chain routing requirements to these third-party fillers, known as market makers. This is a dynamic design aimed at helping traders find the best possible prices. Additionally, UniswapX aims to improve the trading experience in other important ways, such as through gasless transactions, costless failed transactions, and preventing maximum extractable value (MEV).
Learn more: Read the new UniswapX whitepaper.
(Editor's note: Uniswap is indeed a sponsor of Bankless, but the inclusion of UniswapX in this list is unrelated to sponsorship and is solely determined by the author of this article.)
3. Chainlink CCIP
Another highlight of EthCC this week is the decentralized oracle network Chainlink, which announced the launch of the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on the mainnet.
This protocol aims to facilitate seamless communication between different blockchain networks, initially with support for Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, and Avalanche, and has already been adopted by other DeFi giants such as Aave and Synthetix.
Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and other members of the Chainlink team liken CCIP to the "TCP/IP of finance," as CCIP aims to create a more powerful and flexible DeFi ecosystem. One example of this system comes from the new Synthetix Teleporter system, which uses the protocol to burn and mint sUSD on the Ethereum and Optimism networks.
Learn more: Chainlink Cross-Chain
4. Starknet Application Chain
We have seen many L2 teams eager to take advantage of the benefits of permissionless development on their Rollup stacks.
Optimism has Superchain, Arbitrum has Orbit, and zkSync has Hyperchains. Although each strategy may have open source code to different degrees or have different underlying architectures, they all embody similar principles. Despite the Starknet team usually choosing "show first, talk later," they have chosen to break this ecosystem spell by adding Starknet to this list. "Application chains" were just announced at EthCC, and the first Starknet application chain is about to go live on the mainnet.
These application-specific blockchains will allow teams to create custom chains while retaining the advantages of the public Starknet, such as its native account abstraction and extremely high TPS, while avoiding its congestion and being able to implement functions that public chains do not support, such as unique fee market logic.
5. Gnosis Pay + Gnosis Card 💸
Ready to spend some magical internet funds without a bank? For this purpose, Gnosis has just launched Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card at EthCC. The former is a decentralized payment network that connects web3 to mainstream payment systems, while the latter is a Visa debit card that can be directly linked to self-custody wallets on the blockchain.
Especially with Gnosis Card, the idea is to allow users to enjoy the best of both worlds: the ability to self-custody cryptocurrencies at all times while still being able to easily spend from your holdings (without having to first send funds to your CEX account to sell for USD, withdraw to your bank, and then transfer to your PayPal app, etc.).
As for Gnosis Pay, the system will use a combination of Gnosis Chain as the Layer 1 "user savings account" and a new Polygon Supernet-based custom Layer 2 for "user spending account."
Learn more: Register gnosispay.com
6. Mantle Mainnet Alpha
This week, L2 project Mantle Network released its mainnet alpha version at EthCC. The early stage of this system aims to provide developers with a platform to build and test their applications before the full network launch later on.
No matter what happens in the future, due to its modularity, Mantle is currently worth paying attention to in the L2 space: it relies on its own transaction execution, Ethereum L1 for settlement, and EigenLayer for maintaining data availability (DA). This modular approach is undoubtedly an attempt that will soon appear in the Ethereum scalability scene, and Mantle is breaking ground here.
7. Linea Mainnet Alpha✔️
Speaking of L2 mainnet alpha, at EthCC on July 18, the ConsenSys team officially joined the scaling circle and opened Linea zkEVM alpha version to the public.
This "zkEVM" style is the next frontier of the L2 ecosystem, combining zero-knowledge (zk) proofs with a full Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) equivalence, achieving high accessibility and scalability.
In addition, Linea has a major distribution advantage, thanks to its prominent L2 position in popular ConsenSys projects like MetaMask and Infura. Therefore, as this emerging network finally has an opportunity to showcase itself, it will be very interesting to see its level of activity.
8. Expanding the Impact of EVM🔷
The Ethereum conference is not just for the Ethereum community! Teams from ecosystems around the world take this opportunity to showcase their development achievements, especially those related to Ethereum.
Tezos and Solana are working hard to make it easier for Ethereum developers to migrate to their chains and announced their improvements during the EthCC period. Tezos introduced Etherlink at EthCC, which is an EVM-compatible solution. At the same time, Solana announced Solang, a compiler that allows developers to write smart contracts in Solidity on Solana.
Solidity is the mother tongue of Ethereum, and Tezos and Solana are taking measures to allow developers to write contracts in this language. These chains intend to compete with Ethereum for users! Recognizing the moat created by the EVM and providing flexibility for developers to write code in Solidity is a necessary step to attract Ethereum-native dApps to deploy smart contracts.
Summary
The progress announced at this year's EthCC conference is driving the forefront development of the Ethereum ecosystem comprehensively. As we continue to track these developments and their impact on the broader crypto space, we are more clear than ever that the future of Ethereum will evolve in all directions, from DeFi to web3 social!
