Updates from Korea Blockchain Week and Buidl Asia Week 2022
The first half of August has been action-packed in the blockchain space. So far, there have been several blockchain-related events around the world, and the ones happening in Asia this week have received 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 latest of the Buidl Asia Week events, ETH Seoul 2022, kicked off last Friday just after the Buidl Asia 2022 Conference – a two-day affair that brought together builders from diverse backgrounds and will come to a conclusion on August 13 (Saturday).
All eyes on Asia
The Buidl Asia 2022 conference was focused on decentralized finance and the Ethereum merger. 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, while the rest were held virtually. The event featured several influential cryptocurrency figures, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin who delivered the keynote address, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.
This week also marked the start of the fifth edition of Korea Blockchain Week, which is also happening in Seoul. The main stage sessions took place on Monday and Tuesday, with over 7,000 in attendance. Some key people who made presentations included Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu and Binance CEO, CZ. Buterin and Nailwal also presented, while Solana participated as one of the event sponsors.
Here are key takeaways in case you missed the live presentations from both events:
Buterin welcomes a reduced role with an increasingly decentralized network
Speaking during a press appearance with TechCrunch at the KBW 2022 event, Buterin said that he foresees his role increasingly disappearing to the point where he is being phased out into the background. The Ethereum Foundation chief scientist explained that the network is becoming more decentralized every day which has reduced his work massively. Buterin noted that the work assignment he must complete has decreased every six months.
This is a very different situation from the early days after the network launch in 2015. The Ethereum founder 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 the responsibility now falls to other teams.
Ethereum co-founder: Layer 2s can help achieve ‘truly acceptable’ transaction fees
In 2017, Ethereum co-founder 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 in bringing transaction fees down to five cents has been one of the factors fueling the quest for scalability, as he recently confirmed in May. chirping.
“Gotta get below $0.05 to be really acceptable imo. But we’re definitely making great progress and even proto-danksharding might be enough to get us there for a while!”
The Ethereum founder reiterated this claim at Korea Blockchain Week, highlighting the importance of layer two scaling solutions to realize the goals outlined in Ethereum’s roadmap. Buterin specifically emphasized their capabilities to massively scale and shred costs to fractions of what is charged on the underlying base. He also noted that a lot of work is happening around layer two, and these solutions have so far cut fees to $0.25 – $0.10.
According to his projections, this range could drop to $0.02 in the future – an achievement he called “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 although Bitcoin is a dominant store of value, it was designed to be a P2P electronic cash system cheaper than the existing payment methods. While this remained a focus for the first five years, it fell out of “priorities” as adoption increased sharply in the latter years of the 2010s.
the “scalers” war
The Ethereum boss also gave his opinion on scaling wars involving Ethereum layer two solutions at the ETH Seoul event, which started on August 5th. He said that in the long term he expects to see zero-knowledge calls outperform the currently more popular upbeat rollups. Buterin pointed out that this would be the case as ZK rollups achieve faster speeds and maintain reservations.
However, he acknowledged that this technology is in its infancy and more difficult to develop compared to the alternative. There is also the issue of lack of EVM compatibility, but that may change soon with zk-EVM implementations already in the works by the likes of Polygon and zkSync. If these computing environments become a reality, ZK rollups will gain smart contract functionality.
Buterin calls for more work with ZK evidence
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 achieve this, as he listed what he considers the most important things to build on Ethereum.
In particular, Buterin singled out the Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK), which has enabled proof by establishing ownership of specific knowledge without necessarily revealing it. He complimented ZKSNARKs and added 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 in terms of privacy and scalability without sacrificing security. He used this as a basis to encourage participants to explore the less traveled path of development in privacy rather than scalability.
Soulbound tokens (SBTs) for trust relationships
The Canadian programmer also advocated for Soulbound Tokens (SBTs), which he has been quite outspoken about recently. He explained that since Soulbound tokens are non-transferable, dumping and erroneous token allocations are completely avoided, improving governance and making token distribution fairer.
Representing Obligations, Credentials, and Affiliation Soulbound tokens code for social relationships of trust to achieve provenance and reputation. Even more, they enable the exploration of increasingly ambitious projects such as community wallet recovery and sybil-resistant governance. Since SBTs are inseparable from their owners, they are ideal for exclusive drops, allowing communities to airdrop specific members.
To learn more about Ethereum visit our Investing in Ethereum guide.
