Author: Biteye Core Contributor Fishery Isla
Editor: Biteye Core Contributor Crush
The annual EDCON (Community Ethereum Development Conference) was held in Montenegro from May 19th to 23rd. EDCON is held in different locations every year (Paris in 2017, Toronto in 2018, Sydney in 2019, online due to the pandemic in 2020-2021, and San Francisco in 2022).
The main purpose of this event is to promote communication and interaction among the global Ethereum community.
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In addition to EDCON, there are other Ethereum community events such as EthCC, ETHDenver, Devcon, and ETHglobal.
Each Ethereum event attracts a lot of attention from institutions, developers, and investors, so participating in these conferences is a good opportunity to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the Ethereum ecosystem and technology, as well as to expand your network.
This article provides an interpretation of EDCON for readers who were unable to attend in person.
01, Montenegro: the European web3 bridgehead
Before introducing the projects worth noting at this conference, let’s take a look at what kind of country Montenegro is.
Montenegro is known as the European web3 bridgehead. It is located in southeastern Europe, adjacent to the Adriatic Sea, and connects the European continent and the Middle East. When it comes to crypto-friendly countries/regions, we often think of Singapore, Malta, etc., and forget about Montenegro, the country where Vitalik Buterin was granted citizenship by the Prime Minister himself.
Another point to note is that Do Kwon, founder of Terra, also chose Montenegro as a place to flee and settle down. So, these two celebrities in the crypto world both favor this “small” Balkan country for a reason:
Legislative environment: Montenegro has a series of laws and policies supporting and regulating cryptocurrencies. The Montenegrin government has provided a good development environment for cryptocurrency companies by implementing flexible legislation and regulatory measures. These regulations protect the rights of investors and encourage innovation and technological development.
Tax incentives: Montenegro has the most affordable tax rates in Europe and is relatively lenient in taxing cryptocurrency transactions and related enterprises. This policy has attracted a large number of investors and companies to set up cryptocurrency companies in Montenegro, promoting the development of the domestic economy.
Positive Action by the Government: Montenegro’s Prime Minister awarded Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin a Montenegrin passport in April 2022, hoping that V God will help this southeastern European country become a center of blockchain innovation. The choice of Montenegro as the location for the EDCON conference is an example of this.
After attending EDCON, participants will have a deeper understanding of Montenegro, and it is believed that Montenegro will have the opportunity to settle in more Web3 industries in the near future.
02, A List of High-Quality Projects in Attendance
EthStorage Ethereum Storage Rollup (@EthStorage)
EthStorage is the first in this year’s EDCON and is a programmable dynamic storage second-layer solution based on Ethereum data availability.
Most existing L2 solutions, such as Optimism/ZK Rollup, focus on expanding Ethereum’s computing power, that is, the ability to package more transactions per second. With the popularity of NFT/DeFi/dApps, the need to store large amounts of data and reuse the security of the Ethereum mainnet has also grown rapidly.
Second-layer storage infrastructure is a major direction of the second-layer sector that most people ignore. The original intention is the same as traditional second-layer logic, which is to use the security of the Ethereum mainnet to achieve expansion.
EthStorage’s storage function mainly serves two business areas, one is Web3 application data storage, and the other is DA expansion. Either of these two main businesses is a highly anticipated track when taken separately, so EthStorage is worth paying attention to.
EthStorage’s Twitter followers have just surpassed 1,000, which is very early for a public chain infrastructure project that has received funding from the Ethereum Foundation, and is worth participating in.
EAS Ethereum Attestation Service (@eas_eth)
EAS (Ethereum Attestation Service) is a public product that allows anyone to prove anything on-chain or off-chain. Users only need to register a pattern about any topic (or use an existing pattern) and use it for proof.
Decentralized services not only include currency and assets, which is why we need a general ledger to make statements on Ethereum. This ledger will help establish more trust in online interactions. Proof will be critical whenever you need to prove or verify something. By allowing anyone to create and verify proof, EAS has the potential to change the way information is shared and verified online and drive the development of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.
Currently, EAS has been launched on Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, and everyone can try to interact with it. In addition, EAS has not yet opened official user communities such as Discord, so it is recommended to pay attention and join early to receive OG status after the community is opened.
Aspis Protocol On-Chain Asset Management Protocol (@AspisProtocol)
ASPSIS is a no-code platform that allows users to create custom asset management vaults through web interactions without programming knowledge, providing a friendly, transparent, and secure passive investment alternative. It provides a set of tools for creating, fundraising, and running decentralized autonomous funds (DAFs), aiming to manage the relationship between vault creators/managers and investors by transferring the logic behind legal terms to smart contracts.
Currently, Aspis Protocol is recruiting beta testers for a decentralized asset management builder.
Test users can create their own on-chain funds to help project parties improve transparency, security, and efficiency in the asset management field.
Nerif Network Automated Smart Contract Platform (@NerifNetwork)
Each transaction of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) needs to be triggered by an external wallet (EOA) and cannot be triggered automatically. Operations such as limit orders and clearing bad loans require external centralized servers to trigger them. Therefore, there is a market demand for decentralized automatic contract platforms.
Nerif is a complete automated smart contract solution that can automate dApps (smart contracts) on multiple chains based on user-defined rules, requirements, and conditions.
The cross-chain automation function can be applied to any condition/event/operation/trigger inside and outside any blockchain, such as event emission, eth_call result, offline trigger, etc. Nerif can also be used to automate any other custom on-chain/off-chain calculations.
Nerif has integrated a wide range of blockchains, sidechains, and layer 2 networks. It allows developers to run expensive On-chain applications on cheap and fast chains and execute final change state logic on expensive chains such as Ethereum at the other end.
For example, a complete cross-chain bridge application may consist of two smart contracts deployed on two or more different blockchains. One side values expensively but has simple business logic; the other end has cheap valuation but provides complex dApp computing logic. In this case, Nerif can economically balance the costs of both ends and save costs.
Today, multi-chain deployment has become a common practice for many successful DeFi projects to expand verticals and use cases. SushiSwap DEX spans 15 chains, Beefy Finance yield aggregator spans 12 chains, and Aave money market spans three chains. This demonstrates the solid demand for multi-chain narratives in the crypto space.
There are many similar automated contract products in this field, but Nerif’s advantages are:
1. Can simultaneously enable automation on multiple EVM and non-EVM chains
2. Completely decentralized, it can work normally even if one-third of the network is down
3. Flexible solutions that allow any function to be executed through multiple triggers and conditions
4. Easy-to-use general interface for building cross-chain Web3 applications
At the same time, the various professional trading order services provided by Nerif are indeed a rigid demand for some professional traders, but it is also necessary to guard against platform vulnerabilities. Previously, a similar professional trading order product, Dexible, had vulnerabilities that resulted in users’ authorized tokens being transferred away. Therefore, it is best not to use the main wallet for interaction, and to revoke authorization in a timely manner after interaction.
Cell Protocol Scalable Layer 3 Social Protocol
Cell Protocol won the Special Award for Future of Social Network at the conference and was the first batch of selected projects for the Wanwu Island Entrepreneurship Camp initiated by Dr. Xiaofeng.
This project provides a customizable and composable Layer 3 solution for Web3 social, with grand descriptions and benchmarks such as Lens Protocol, Momoka, and CryberConnect, and a more complex technical architecture.
It includes both Layer 2 products and self-built Layer 3 infrastructure (public chain), and the architecture also incorporates composable design, which can be compatible with popular infrastructure and public chains at any time, such as data availability layer and storage projects.
From the perspective of product positioning, Cell Protocol not only focuses on attracting existing Web3 stock market traffic, but also plans many functions to attract Web2 social app traffic, which is currently the shortcoming of Web3 social products.
It is reported that Cell Protocol will be deeply bound to mainstream Web2 social media such as Twitter, and will also go further by adding Web3 exclusive solutions to the mature business models of Web2, which rely mainly on advertising revenues, by financializing the precious user data in Web2, thus preserving the bottom line that Web3 data belongs to users themselves and solving revenue problems.
Both the technology and business model of Topia are innovative and worth paying attention to.
Topia L2 Shared Data Availability Layer Protocol
Recently, there are two hot Topias, which can easily cause confusion. One is the NFT project, Topia, formerly known as NFT WWorld. The Topia we will introduce in the following, which participated in this year’s EDCON, is an L2 shared data availability layer protocol and also the first selected project of Wanwu Island’s entrepreneurship camp.
Compared with traditional DA projects, such as Celestia and Polygon Avail and other L1 DA projects, Topia is creating a shared DA layer for all future Ethereum L2s.
Therefore, Topia will seamlessly integrate Ethereum’s mature L2 and developer ecosystem.
Topia will create a dedicated L2 for the DA layer network. On this L2, Topia’s storage can be seamlessly integrated and specifically optimized, such as supporting concurrent transactions and allowing contracts to directly access Topia’s storage, which is an important step in realizing “L2 interconnection”.
All applications built on Topia’s storage and L2, regardless of their diversity and quantity, will share the same Topia storage.
As you can see, what Topia and EthStorage do is very similar. Topia is the first EVM-compatible storage layer based on optimistic rollup, and there is strong interoperability between its storage and smart contracts.
To ensure security and efficiency, storage nodes need to submit storage proofs on the chain, and storage nodes can get Topia token economic incentives. According to Topia’s official introduction, it is superior to its competitors in terms of cost and storage limits.
This meeting conveys a signal that Ethereum’s second-layer data storage + DA will be the core narrative for a long time in the future.
Both of these projects are worth paying close attention to, as competition brings technological innovation.
DataverseOS
The term “Dataverse” comes from a database developed by Microsoft. Originally, Dataverse was a web app that allowed users to share and analyze data. Microsoft used Dataverse as a data storage center for various services in the Power Platform.
The DataverseOS team has incorporated the concept of decentralization into the original Dataverse and has turned DataverseOS into a web-native personal computer for everyone.
In the information age, everything is a document. DataverseOS adds a social file layer on top of the fragmented web. Every interaction of the user with DataverseOS dApps will automatically link the online data to the local file system.
Currently, DataverseOS is positioned in the Web3 social/storage track, belonging to the category of infrastructure projects. If we think of it as a Web3 personal computer according to its name, the narrative is very grand and worth paying attention to.
03. Summary
From the projects exhibited at this conference, it can be seen that the current hotspots have shifted from developing L1 public chains to infrastructure projects around L1 services, such as automation, storage, Web3 social, and other themes. These types of projects still have a lot of imaginative space and more practical uses. If they can really develop, they still have the same wealth effect as L1.
As actual meaningful projects gradually emerge, perhaps this means the prelude to the long-awaited mass adoption has just begun.
References
[1] Nerif Whitepaper
https://whiteBlockingper.nerif.network/
[2] What is ASPIS
https://info.aspis.finance/introduction/what-is-aspis
[3] Montenegro makes Vitalik a citizen, part of plans to promote it as a blockchain hub
https://cointelegraph.com/news/montenegro-makes-vitalik-a-citizen-Blockingrt-of-plans-to-promote-it-as-a-blockchain-hub
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