Overview of 8 Major Releases at EthCC 2023

EthCC 2023 Overview of 8 Major Releases

Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless; Translation: Song Xue, LianGuai

Today, we will delve into the 8 announcements at EthCC 2023 that interest us the most.

Hello, friends! Just in Paris, with the grand opening of EthCC 2023, the vitality of the Ethereum community is overflowing.

The 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, and this year is no exception.

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In today’s article, we will take you through the major developments at EthCC 2023 (in no particular order)!

1. Lens V2

At EthCC, Lens Protocol also just introduced the details of its V2 upgrade, which looks like a big step towards realizing the vision of Lens, an open and decentralized social layer on the network.

Zooming in, the core of Lens V2 is the concept of open operations, which allows users and developers to “bring their own smart contracts” to enable any external smart contract operations on any Lens publication, even cross-chain activities.

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 the content you collect on Lens directly in your Lens profile. Cryptographic social networks are growing!

2. UniswapX

Uniswap has launched the new UniswapX system at EthCC, an open-source protocol aimed at bringing cryptocurrency trading into the next generation.

In short, UniswapX relies on a new Dutch auction-based mechanism called “Dutch Orders,” where the price of a trading order starts higher than the current market price and gradually decreases over time, incentivizing “fillers” to execute the order immediately after it becomes profitable.

In other words, the UniswapX system outsources its complex on-chain and off-chain routing requirements to these third-party fillers (i.e., market makers), and this dynamic design aims to help traders find the best possible price. Additionally, UniswapX aims to improve the trading experience in other significant ways, such as through gasless transactions, cost-free failed transactions, and protection against maximum extractable value (MEV).

3. Chainlink CCIP

Another highlight of EthCC this week is Chainlink, the leading decentralized oracle network in the crypto economy, announcing the launch of Cross Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on the mainnet.

This protocol aims to facilitate seamless communication between different blockchain networks, initially supporting Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, and Avalanche, and has already been adopted by other DeFi giants such as Aave and Synthetix.

Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, and other members of the Chainlink team liken CCIP to the “TCP/IP of finance.” CCIP aims to create a more powerful and flexible DeFi ecosystem. One example of this system is the new Synthetix Teleporter system, which uses the protocol to burn and mint sUSD on both Ethereum and Optimism networks.

4. Starknet Appchains

We have seen a wave of L2 teams rushing to take advantage of the benefits of permissionless development on their aggregation stacks.

Optimism has Superchain, Arbitrum has Orbit, and zkSync has Hyperchains. While each strategy may have varying degrees of open-source code or different underlying architectures, they all embody similar principles. Although the Starknet team typically chooses to “show first, tell later,” it breaks the ecosystem’s mantra by adding Starknet to this list. “Appchains” was just announced at EthCC, and the first Starknet Appchain is coming to 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 achieve functionalities not supported by public chains, such as unique fee market logic.

5. Gnosis LianGuaiy + Gnosis Card

Ready to spend some magical internet money without a bank? To facilitate this, Gnosis has just launched Gnosis LianGuaiy 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 a self-custodied wallet on-chain.

Specifically, the idea of Gnosis Card is to allow users to enjoy the best of both worlds: the ability to securely hold their cryptocurrencies while still being able to easily spend from the cryptocurrencies they hold (without having to first send funds to their CEX account, sell for USD, withdraw to their bank, and then transfer to their LianGuaiyLianGuail application, etc).

As for Gnosis LianGuaiy, the system will specifically use a combination of Gnosis Chain as the L1 for “user savings accounts” and a new custom L2 based on Polygon Supernet for “user spending accounts”.

6. Mantle Mainnet Alpha

This week, L2 project Mantle Network announced 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 a full network launch later on.

Regardless of what the future holds, Mantle is worth paying attention to in the L2 space due to its modularity: it relies on its own transaction execution, settlement on Ethereum L1, and EigenLayer for data availability (DA). This modular approach is undoubtedly an attempt at what is about to happen in the Ethereum scalability scene, and Mantle is breaking ground here.

7. Linea Mainnet Alpha

Speaking of L2 mainnet alpha versions, on July 18th at EthCC, the ConsenSys team also officially joined the scalability circle and opened up Linea zkEVM alpha version to the public.

This “zkEVM” style is the next frontier of the L2 ecosystem, combining zero-knowledge (zk) proofs with full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalence to achieve high accessibility and scalability.

In addition, Linea has a major distribution advantage as it now occupies an important L2 position in popular ConsenSys projects such as MetaMask and Infura. Therefore, as this fledgling network finally comes to its showcase moment, it will be interesting to see the level of activity.

8. EVM Extends Reach

The Ethereum conference is not just for the Ethereum community! Teams from ecosystems around the world have the opportunity to showcase their development achievements, especially those related to Ethereum.

Tezos and Solana are both working to make it easier for Ethereum developers to migrate to their chains, and they announced their improvements during EthCC. Tezos introduced Etherlink at EthCC, which is an EVM-compatible solution, while Solana released Solang, a compiler that allows developers to write smart contracts in Solidity on Solana.

Solidity is the native language of Ethereum, and Tezos and Solana are taking measures to allow developers to write contracts in that language. These chains intend to continue competing with Ethereum for users! Recognizing the moat created by the EVM and providing flexibility for developers to code in Solidity is a necessary step to attract native Ethereum dApps to deploy smart contracts.

Big Picture

The progress announced at this year’s EthCC conference is driving comprehensive development in the Ethereum ecosystem. As we continue to track these developments and their impact on the broader cryptocurrency field, it is clearer than ever that the future of Ethereum will evolve in various directions, from DeFi to web3 social!

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