The Main Stage of The Hong Kong Web3 Festival, Co-hosted by SNZ, focusing On the Ethereum Ecosystem, was Successfully Held

On April 15th, the "Ethereum Ecosystem" forum of the Hong Kong Web3 Festival hosted by SNZ was successfully held. As one of the earliest venture capital firms to invest in and support Ethereum in Asia, SNZ has been committed to investing in and building communities in the Ethereum ecosystem since 2014. In this conference, SNZ also invited many of its portfolio companies and industry OGs to deliver exciting keynote speeches and participate in panel discussions. Guests included Arbitrum co-founder and chief scientist, ConsenSys Director of Global Strategic Initiatives, Ethereum ecosystem OGs, top venture capitalists from China and abroad, UniPass co-founder, Clique co-founder, EIP standard contributors, and more.

Arbitrum, currently the largest layer 2 network in terms of TVL in the Ethereum ecosystem, was invited by SNZ, as an early investor, to give a keynote speech on April 15th. Ed Felten, co-founder and chief scientist of Arbitrum, delivered a fascinating opening speech entitled "Inside Arbitrum Nitro". Felten introduced the basic principles of Rollup, the design details of Arbitrum Nitro, Geth, and the execution and verification of Arbitrum. He stated that "Arbitrum Nitro is an OP Rollup that separates execution through serially deterministic operations and Ethereum compatibility confirmation. As a result, the layer 2 capacity is increased and costs are reduced. Arbitrum uses more Ethereum Geth, reducing Ethereum computing power by 300%. Arbitrum Nitro has achieved a tenfold increase in performance over the past year, and we believe there will be another tenfold increase next year."

As a blockchain infrastructure company, ConsenSys owns a number of well-known products such as MetaMask and Infura. SNZ, as an early investor in ConsenSys, supports the development of these projects. Shuyao Kong, ConsenSys Director of Global Strategic Initiatives, gave a speech on the state of the Ethereum ecosystem, including the ecosystem of Ethereum's layer 2 networks, the development of account abstraction, and the development of MEV. In addition, Shuyao also introduced ConsenSys' zero-knowledge proof layer 2 network Linea and its vision for layer 2 networks: "ConsenSys believes that instead of competing with each other, various layer 2 networks should work together to form a Multi-Prover. A Multi-Prover is a combination of three ZKEVMs: Scroll, Linea, and Polygon, working together to verify transactions more securely. This is our vision because we don't want a monopoly in the market, and having one dominant player in the market would be detrimental to the Ethereum ecosystem. This is our long-term vision for layer 2 protocols: Multi-Prover."

SNZ and Chainlink have a long-standing and close collaboration, and for this Ethereum session, Chainlink Labs' Director of Solution Architecture, Roger Brogan, was invited to give a keynote speech on "Chainlink Functions: Linking Global Data to Web3". Chainlink Functions is a serverless platform that connects APIs from around the world to Web3. According to Roger, "Firstly, it's a serverless platform, so there's no requirement for infrastructure like before. Additionally, any type of data, device, or system that has a Web2 API can be accessed with just a few lines of code. This model allows for scalability, data access anywhere, and the ability to customize computations, which is something that many people are excited about. Users can write and execute their own code while still operating within a trust-minimized security model."

ERC-4337, as one of the highly anticipated standards in the Ethereum ecosystem, has derived new tracks and projects that SNZ is also focusing on. UniPass, a leading project in account abstraction wallet, received SNZ's support in the early stages. Founder Frank Lou delivered a speech entitled "The Gateway to the Next Billion Users," in which he explained, "In short, account abstraction is modernizing Ethereum accounts. The Ethereum accounts used now are external EOA accounts, which are very simple account statuses." He also shared the new opportunities that account abstraction can bring from the perspectives of WaaS, Bundler, and Payment. Frank also highlighted UniPass's current status, "The experiences we can provide now include Seedless, Gasless, non-custodial, and customizable. If you have different scenarios, our contracts can support them. The current status is that there are more than 70,000 contract deployments, conservatively speaking, it should be the top 5 in AA deployments. ERC-4337 may only have more than 100, and it is still in its early stages. We are the first and only team to receive the MetaMask AA Grant and have submitted an ERC-4337 Grant for review, and two EIPs are under review."

In the following panel discussion titled "OG Talk: Ethereum: Insightful Stories and Future Development," SNZ invited some of the earliest OGs in the Chinese Ethereum community to share their stories about the early days of Ethereum. The panel was moderated by SNZ Managing Partner Ross Zhang, and participants included Jerry Liu, Co-founder of Waterdrip Capital, Du Yu, Head of Wanxiang Blockchain Labs, Ben He, Founder and CEO of imToken, and Roland Sun, General Counsel of Fenbushi Capital. Each guest shared their own experiences and perspectives on the future development of blockchain technology.

The following panel discussion was titled "Opportunities after Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade" and was hosted by SNZ Managing Partner Gavin Wang. The panelists included top venture capitalists from China and abroad, including Xiao Xiao, Partner at HashKey Capital, Alex Zhu, Research Director at Fenbushi Capital, Seth Ginns, Managing Partner at CoinFund, and Alex Golding, Investor at Delphi Ventures. The panelists discussed the impact and changes brought about by the recent upgrade of Ethereum in Shanghai, their investment strategies and outlook on different investment tracks, as well as their suggestions for the development of Web3 in Hong Kong.

Victor Zhou, one of the most active Chinese figures in the Ethereum community and an editor and reviewer for EIP standards, delivered a keynote speech on the theme of "Think Open". Victor pointed out that "In the mechanisms of Web3, there are always readers and writers, starting from Web1, which allows companies to request APIs, and different writers call different services, just like calling Google API platform, WeChat, SDK, and so on. Web2.0 allows for more new readers and writers. Web3 has new mechanisms that allow services to be replaced. In the mechanism of Web3, an open-minded approach is required."

Kevin Yu, founder of the personal identity oracle project Clique, gave a keynote speech titled "Introduction to Personal Identity Oracles". Clique aims to bridge the gap between Web2's value creation activities and Web3's incentive distribution layer by linking Web2 user behavior and identity data to the blockchain. Its goal is to enhance powerful on-chain identity and reputation systems and unleash more sustainable use cases for Web3. Kevin emphasized the TEE oracle, pointing out its core advantage of high project execution efficiency and lower communication costs, and said, "Web2 helps users achieve sovereignty over their own data, while Web3 users have been talking about transferring data sovereignty to users. The blockchain itself cannot immediately help you achieve this, but products and technologies like the ones we are developing can help customers truly regain sovereignty over their own data."

The last panel discussion of the event focused on "Community Education and Public Goods," moderated by Peet, founder of Trusta Labs. The panelists included Gitcoin China Ambassador Bob, SeeDAO founder Tang Han, PlanckerDAO contributor Pablo, and Green Pill OP TU WEN. The panelists discussed collaboration cases in the field of community education and public goods, as well as the challenges and issues currently faced by community education.

As a series of NFTs that witness the development of Ethereum, EtherPOAP NFTs hold unique significance in the Ethereum ecosystem. Renee, as a contributor to the EtherPOAP community, shared the story of EtherPOAP NFTs and the early days of Ethereum, paying tribute to the early NFT culture.

More information about the event: https://www.web3festival.org/hongkong2023/agenda?lang=zh-CN

Video replays of the event: https://www.web3festival.org/hongkong2023/playbackDetail?lang=zh-CN