The first half of August has been action-packed as far as the blockchain space is concerned. Thus far, there have been several blockchain-related events worldwide, with those happening in Asia this week getting a lot of attention.
The three-part Buidl Asia Week launched at the end of last month by the KryptoSeoul blockchain community has been one of the closely followed experiences. The last of the events under Buidl Asia Week, ETH Seoul 2022, kicked off last Friday just after Buidl Asia 2022 Conference – a two-day affair that brought together builders from different backgrounds and comes to a conclusion on August 13 (Saturday).
All eyes in Asia
The Buidl Asia 2022 conference was focused on decentralized finance and the Ethereum merge. ETH Seoul, on the other hand, has been centered on more specific developments around Ethereum, such as ZK rollups, layer 2 solutions and DAOs.The first two days of ETH Seoul 2022 involved in-person attendance, with the rest being held virtually. The event featured several influential cryptocurrency figures, including Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin who delivered the keynote speech, and Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal.
This week also marked the start of the fifth edition of the Korea Blockchain Week, also happening in Seoul. The main stage sessions took place on Monday and Tuesday, with the attendance exceeding 7,000. Some key persons that made presentations include Animoca Brand’s chair Yat Siu and Binance CEO, CZ. Buterin and Nailwal also presented, while Solana took part as one of the event sponsors.
Here are key takeaways in case you missed the live presentations from either event:
Buterin welcomes a reduced role with an increasingly decentralized network
Speaking during a press appearance with TechCrunch at the KBW 2022 event, Buterin said he foresees his role increasingly fading to a point he phases out to the background. The Ethereum Foundation chief scientist explained that the network is becoming more decentralized by the day which has massively reduced his work. Buterin noted that the work allocation he has to complete has been decreasing every six months.
This is an entirely different situation from the nascent days after the network launch in 2015. The Ethereum cofounder told TechCrunch that he believes his creation has evolved to a point where it can stay afloat without his input. Task delegation over the years has also meant that the research and development work that would have been responsibility now falls to other teams.
Ethereum co-founder: Layer 2s can help achieve “truly acceptable” transaction fees
In 2017, Ethereum cofounder Buterin stated that to make the idea of the “internet of money” conceivable, the average transaction cost should not exceed $0.05. This long-term belief to bring down the transaction fees to five cents has been one of the factors fueling the pursuit of scalability, as he recently confirmed in a May tweet.
“Needs to get under $0.05 to be truly acceptable imo. But we’re definitely making great progress, and even proto-danksharding may be enough to get us there for a while!”
The Ethereum cofounder reiterated this assertion at the Korea Blockchain Week, highlighting the significance of layer two scaling solutions to realizing the objectives outlined in Ethereum’s roadmap. Buterin specifically underlined their abilities to scale massively and shred costs to fractions of what’s charged on the underlying base. He also noted that a lot of work is happening around layer twos and these solutions have thus far slashed fees to the $0.25 – $0.10 range.
According to his projections, this range could drop up to $0.02 in the future–an accomplishment he termed “a complete game changer.”
Buterin insisted that scaling (Lightning Network) is essential even for the leading cryptocurrency to reduce transaction costs to pennies. He explained that though Bitcoin is a predominant store of value, it was designed to be a P2P electronic cash system cheaper than the existing payment methods. While this remained in focus for the first five years, it fell out of ‘priorities’ as adoption increased greatly in the latter years of the 2010s.
The war of ‘scalers’
The Ethereum chief also gave his opinion on scaling wars involving Ethereum layer two solutions at the ETH Seoul event, which kicked off on August 5. He said that, in the long run, he expects to see zero-knowledge rollups outperform the currently more popular optimistic rollups. Buterin pointed out this would be the case as ZK-rollups achieve faster speeds and maintain reservations.
However, he acknowledged that this technology is at infancy and harder to develop compared to the alternative. There’s also the issue of lack of EVM compatibility, but that could soon change with zk-EVM implementations already in the works by the likes of Polygon and zkSync. If these compute environments become a reality, ZK-rollups will gain smart contract functionality.
Buterin calls for more work on ZK-proofs
More from the Ethereum-focused event, Buterin insisted on the essence of user privacy without sacrificing scalability and security. He observed that zk technology is best suited to achieving this, as he listed what he considers the most important things to build on Ethereum.
In particular, Buterin singled out Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK), which has enabled proofs by ascertaining ownership of specific knowledge without necessarily disclosing it. He complimented ZKSNARKs, adding that they could be as important as blockchains.
zk-SNARKs fit the profile to complement blockchains as they effectively realize what blockchain networks are currently trying to achieve privacy and scalability without sacrificing security. He used this as grounds to encourage the attendees to explore the less traveled road of development in privacy rather than scalability.
Soulbound tokens (SBTs) for relationships of trust
The Canadian programmer also advocated for Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), which he’s been pretty outspoken about recently. He explained that since Soulbound tokens are non-transferable, dumps and improper token allocations are avoided altogether, improving governance and making token distributions more equitable.
Representing commitments, credentials, and affiliations Soulbound tokens encode social relationships of trust to achieve provenance and reputation. Even more, they enable exploring of increasingly ambitious projects such as community wallet recovery and sybil-resistant governance. Also, as SBTs are inseparable from their owners, they are ideal for exclusive drops, enabling communities to airdrop specific members.
To learn more about Ethereum visit our Investing in Ethereum guide.
The post Updates From Korea Blockchain Week and Buidl Asia Week 2022 appeared first on Securities.io.
