EthDenver 2023

What bear market?

EthDenver is notable as being the event that kicks off conference season each year. It consists of a hackathon followed by a conference and web3 #BUIDLers and companies flock en mass to connect with other technologists, companies and investors at the event.

This year there were thought to be around 25,000 people attending the conference, which is huge. Every time I got in an Uber the driver would ask me if I was there for this crypto conference and tell me they’d just dropped someone off for it! 

Once upon a time (5+ years ago) one could feel the pulse of web3 simply by checking in on Reddit. Now there’s just way too much going on to keep up with everything — even in just the Ethereum ecosystem. However, there were some very clear themes at the conference.

There were mini summits during the week covering many areas of web3, but those that really stood out were:

There were others, but being a developer conference, these are the big themes right now that provide a snapshot of where we are with respect to the evolution of this ecosystem.Interoperability and wallets have been discussed for years within web3, however, the progress being made here is significant. 

Interoperability is an interesting area, as all the various alt-layer one blockchains want to find seamless ways to transfer assets between one another, especially Ethereum. 

There are various types of interoperability between networks. The common theme we are seeing is that almost every blockchain network wants to support Ethereum with the ability to execute EVM bytecode.

These networks then achieve greater performance by creating layer 2 networks on them that are secured by a base chain. Assets can be transferred between layer 2 networks using the base chain as an intermediary — they all benefit from the underlying security of the base chain. 

The most significant challenge lies in transferring assets between non-native networks — i.e. from one layer one network such as Ethereum to another such as Polkadot. This typically involves an intermediary that bares much of the risk associated with assets going between chains and is a significant honeypot for attackers. As attractive as this type of transfer is, it’s still questionable if an efficient solution can exist that can remove the requirement for a trusted intermediary to manage the infrastructure facilitating the cross-chain transfer of assets. The ideal would be to do this at the protocol layer, but solutions do not exist to bridge across different layer one protocols currently.

Whilst at EthDenver there was a real buzz about all the activity taking place here, how long the “layer 2 wars” go on is likely to be dictated by the adoption of ZK-EVMs that we see over the coming months.

The teams working on this technology all have significant runway, but I don’t envisage a future where we have many different layer 2 technologies being used. For instance, at the current time, the lion’s share of total value locked in layer 2 networks is across Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism. 

Zero-knowledge technologies may be underpinning the next generation of ZK-EVMs that are about to be launched, but they’re also considered a crucial privacy-enabling technology for web3. 

Although zero-knowledge technology is used in ZK-EVM, it isn’t used for privacy reasons. Transactions that are taking place on layer 2 networks are not private between participants. Although one could in theory create a private layer 2 network that could hide some of the on-chain activity.

This type of privacy will be a game changer for users of blockchain networks, however, it’s not as far along as the layer two technologies, and many continue to drive true privacy forward for blockchain networks.

Hence the theme of zero-knowledge technology is likely to continue to gather more momentum in the years to come. 

The most incredible takeaway from EthDenver was how vibrant the Ethereum ecosystem is in 2023, especially considering we’re in a so-called bear market. I’ve always loved being at Ethereum events such as DevCon, EdCon, EthCC and others, but had previously looked at EthDenver with a level of FOMO having not attended.

Plenty of events are organised around EthDenver — a group of us went climbing!

Having had the chance to attend, I believe the FOMO was justified and for anyone on the fence about attending, you should. I promise you won’t regret it. Just make sure you come armed with ChapStick and hand cream — the climate there is incredibly dry!