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8 noteworthy projects announced at EthCC 2023.

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8 key projects, ranging from infrastructure to applications, exploring new directions with multiple breakthroughs.

Original Title: "8 Key Projects Released at EthCC 2023: New Directions from Infrastructure to Applications"

Original Authors: William Peaster, Jack Inabinet

Translated by: DeepTechFlow

With the grand opening of EthCC 2023, the Ethereum community in Paris is full of vitality. This event is known for its in-depth exploration of the technical details of Ethereum and its ecosystem, and has become a platform for important developments, which is no exception this year. There are too many releases and first-time features to keep up with, so in today's article, let us take you through the most important developments in EthCC 2023 (in no particular order).

1.Lens V2

At EthCC, Lens Protocol has just introduced the details of their V2 upgrade. Thanks to a series of new features, this has taken Lens one step closer to achieving their vision of an open and decentralized social layer for the network.

Specifically, the core concept of Lens V2 is "open operation", which allows users and developers to "bring their own smart contracts" to perform any external smart contract operation on any Lens publication, even cross-chain activities.

In addition, Lens V2 has introduced a new profile management system that supports the ERC-6551 token standard, which is the "token-bound account", allowing users to store NFTs inside other NFTs. Therefore, you can now directly store all the content collected on Lens in your Lens profile.

2.UniswapX

Uniswap has launched a new system called UniswapX at EthCC. This is an open-source protocol aimed at bringing cryptocurrency trading into the next generation field.

In short, UniswapX relies on a new type of Dutch auction mechanism called "Dutch orders", where the price of a trading order starts higher than the current market price and gradually decreases over time, incentivizing "fillers" to execute the order immediately when it becomes profitable.

However, the UniswapX system outsources its complex on-chain and off-chain routing requirements through these third-party fillers, also known as market makers. This dynamic design aims to help traders find the best prices. In addition, UniswapX also aims to improve the trading experience through free gas transactions, costless failed transactions, and protection of maximum extractable value (MEV).

3.Chainlink CCIP

This week at EthCC, another important highlight was Chainlink, the leading data oracle network in the cryptocurrency industry, announcing the launch of its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) on the mainnet.

This protocol aims to facilitate seamless communication between different blockchain networks, initially supporting Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, and Avalanche, and has been adopted by other DeFi giants such as Aave and Synthetix.

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov likened CCIP to the "TCP/IP" of the financial industry, aiming to create a more powerful and flexible DeFi ecosystem. One of the practical applications of this system is the use of the protocol to burn and mint sUSD through the new Synthetix Teleporter system between the Ethereum and Optimism networks.

4.Starknet Appchains

We have seen a large number of L2 teams rushing to take advantage of the benefits of permissionless development on their Rollup stacks.

Optimism has Superchain, Arbitrum has Orbit, and zkSync has Hyperchains. Although the strategies of each team may differ in terms of open source level or underlying architecture, they all embody similar principles. Despite the fact that the Starknet team usually chooses to "show first, explain later," they have decided to break this ecosystem's motto by adding Starknet's name to this list. "Appchains" was just announced at EthCC, and the first Starknet Appchain will soon be reaching the mainnet.

These applications use specific blockchains to allow teams to create custom chains, retaining the advantages of the public Starknet such as its native account abstraction and extremely high TPS, while avoiding its congestion and being able to implement functions not supported on public chains, such as unique fee market logic.

5.Gnosis Pay + Gnosis Card

Are you ready to spend some internet funds without the need for a bank? Gnosis has just launched Gnosis Pay and Gnosis Card at EthCC. The former is a decentralized payment network that connects Web3 to mainstream payment systems, while the latter is a Visa debit card that can be directly linked to a self-custody wallet on the blockchain.

Especially for Gnosis Card, the idea is to allow users to enjoy the best of both worlds: self-custody of their cryptocurrencies while still being able to easily spend from their holdings (without having to first send funds to a centralized exchange account, sell for USD, withdraw to a bank account, and then transfer to their PayPal app, etc.).

As for Gnosis Pay, the system will specifically use Gnosis Chain as the L1 for "user savings accounts" and L2 based on the new Polygon Supernet as "user spending accounts".

6.Mantle Mainnet Alpha

This week, L2 project Mantle Network launched its mainnet alpha version at EthCC. The early stage of the system aims to provide developers with a platform to build and test their applications before the full network launch later on.

Due to its modular design, Mantle is a noteworthy L2 project: it relies on its own transaction execution, uses Ethereum L1 for settlement, and utilizes EigenLayer to maintain data availability (DA). This modular approach is undoubtedly a trend that will emerge in the Ethereum scaling field, and Mantle is pioneering in this regard.

7.Linea Mainnet Alpha

Speaking of the L2 mainnet alpha version, on July 18th at EthCC, the ConsenSys team officially joined the scalability competition and opened its Linea zkEVM alpha version to the public.

This "zkEVM" style is the next important area of the L2 ecosystem, which combines zero-knowledge (zk) proofs with full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalence to achieve high accessibility and scalability.

In addition, due to Linea now being a popular L2 solution under Consensys, alongside projects such as MetaMask and Infura, it has strong distribution advantages.

8. Attempt to be compatible with EVM

The Ethereum conference is not only designed for the Ethereum community, but also provides an opportunity for teams from various ecosystems to showcase their developments, especially projects related to Ethereum.

Tezos and Solana are both working hard to make it easier for Ethereum developers to migrate to their chains, and announced their improvements during EthCC. Tezos launched Etherlink, a EVM-compatible solution that can settle on the chain, while Solana announced Solang, a compiler that allows developers to write smart contracts in Solidity on Solana.

Solidity is the native language of Ethereum. Tezos and Solana are taking measures to allow developers to write contracts using this language. These chains are committed to continuing to compete with Ethereum, recognizing the moat created by Ethereum's EVM, and providing developers with the flexibility to use Solidity coding, which is a necessary step in attracting smart contract deployment for Ethereum native dApps.

Overall, the progress announced at this year's EthCC conference has propelled various areas of the Ethereum ecosystem forward.

As we continue to track these developments and evaluate their impact on the entire cryptocurrency field, we will come to a conclusion that Ethereum's future will develop in various directions, from DeFi to Web3 social.