Author: @magicdhz; Translator: Vernacular Blockchain
The Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC) is an important annual event for the Ethereum community, bringing together developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, investors and blockchain enthusiasts from all over the world to discuss and exchange the latest technological advances, application scenarios and industry trends. ETHCCEthCC 2024 was held in Brussels in 2024. The conference showcased many practical applications, held more than 500 side events, and demonstrated the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence.
The following are some of @magicdhz's unsophisticated views on AMM (Automated Market Maker), pre-confirmation/commitment and the foundation of ETHcc (Ethereum Community Conference):
1. Optimistic about AMM
I am extremely optimistic about AMM. They are the only DeFi applications that build new games and incentives on the existing traditional financial market structure. For all LOB (limit order book) enthusiasts, traditional finance is your upper limit, and AMM takes finance to a whole new level and benefits from all the additional properties of the blockchain.
2. Cross-chain intention-centered infrastructure is developing
Cross-chain intention-centered (or call it whatever you like) infrastructure is surging in the background, and the solver network is becoming more and more complex. The transaction supply chain is moving off-chain and/or paying for Ethereum's security. In my opinion, cross-chain intention-centered infrastructure + solver network + rollup-centered future will eventually lead to AMM self-built chain.
3. About Ethereum
There are efforts to break up the builder market on Ethereum, and while we don’t know what additional value commitment play might unlock (e.g. block space in the future), I still can’t imagine a return to a MEV-boost (maximum extractable value) type of situation where “build my most valuable block”, there’s a chance to look at additional value unlocks like impermanent loss or commitments.
Why does stake always end up being concentrated in validators who say “commit to or include transactions that build my most valuable block”? If you have some thoughts or answers, please comment.
I unfortunately missed a lot of the content about Flashbots’ new rust builder, and didn’t participate in the TEE (trusted execution environment) related discussions. I feel like there’s more to explore here because they are solving the root problem, which is information flow control (which I think is the topic).
4. About MEV
While there has been a ton of talk about more infrastructure and MEV games, there has been little to no talk about fundamentals. The on-chain spread is large, which means the possible set of solver paths (and therefore MEV) is smaller than if the spread were tighter, or limited by a lack of coin fundamentals. Ultimately, it comes down to who is providing liquidity and why.
I think there is a huge opportunity to build fundamentals. To me, that means the protocols and their DAOs are aligned on a business model that drives revenue and value and/or liquidity back to their governance tokens. (This is what I will focus on. In particular, I am interested in working with DAOs to identify their revenue drivers and provide relevant economic analysis - with the goal of providing valuable information for governance).
5. Bullish on pre-confirmation
I am bullish on pre-confirmation, and the market is bearish on pre-confirmation-based views. Adding more complexity and trust to the base layer is a roundabout way to reduce block times or adopt new consensus mechanisms. That said, I am bullish on rollup sequencers and other off-protocol infrastructure (like primev or espresso) because they can provide pre-confirmations to users (always good for the user experience) without adding complexity to the base layer.
In general, the trend of execution moving off-chain is clear. I don't know how this will develop. Any thoughts on some updated discussions on base layer consensus? And Ethereum's tendency to be the most secure decentralized autonomous organization?
6. Summary
To summarize, even though Ethereum feels very decentralized (because I spend all my time in side activities because the content there is more valuable), there are still too many very smart people building on Ethereum to ignore this.
That is, if I were a trader, I would feel that the explosive growth is over. There are some very interesting projects that just raised funds, and Solana continues to be a very attractive place to apply what we've learned on Ethereum. Both offer new places for applications to be built and appear to be better growth opportunities. This doesn't mean ETH won't still benefit from ETF inflows, but I don't know how much value their long-term signals will have compared to the core issues that need to be solved.
Also, I think rollups will become very attractive as sorters unlock the MEV (maximum extractable value) beast. Time acceleration is bullish and performance will depend on the ability of the DAO to expand the ecosystem and return value to the protocol.