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Bankless: 12 Cryptocurrency Builders to Watch in 2024

Bankless

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These 12 builders will drive the development of the cryptocurrency industry.

Original Title: "12 Crypto Builders I'm Watching in 2024"

Original Author: David Hoffman, Bankless

Original Translation: Huoxing Finance, MK

Dear Bankless Nation, we are entering a new era of cryptographic innovation.

The significant milestones of the Ethereum roadmap have become history. Emerging Layer 1 chains (L1s) are driving unprecedented innovation in the cryptocurrency field. The cost of all computing resources is rapidly approaching zero.

The new leaders in the encryption industry are rapidly exploring or building new frontiers. Our leaders are also constantly evolving. I am optimistic that as we grow as an industry, we are also more cautious in selecting leaders and learning from past experiences. Excellent leadership is crucial for the mature development of encryption.

As we step into 2024, some leaders in the encryption industry are also experts in the current encryption metaverse. I have specifically selected 12 builders (including several partners), and as we enter the next stage of the encryption industry, I will pay special attention to them.

Sreeram Kannan // EigenLayer

EigenLayer's founder, the father of modern reinvestment, and a highly respected philosopher of large-scale coordination.

The future envisioned by Sreeram Kannan is also the future I desire. His vision for how EigenLayer can enable large-scale coordination among humans brings a breath of fresh air to an industry that often loses its way.

He connects technical details with abstract principles about expanding trust and coordination, making him and EigenLayer the focus of Ethereum's scalability next phase - before EigenLayer proposed the concept of reinvestment, we didn't even know this phase existed!

With the most important part of Ethereum's roadmap now in the past, reinvestment is set to become the dominant narrative for Ethereum in 2024.

With the approaching release of EigenLayer on the mainnet, the launch of the new AVS architecture, and the development of reinvestment in the market, you will feel the excitement from the Ethereum community and the broader cryptocurrency industry. The biggest question is whether "trust as a service" can penetrate non-cryptocurrency use cases and non-cryptocurrency technology companies.

Nick White // Celestia Founder

Celestia's founder, data provider, chain weaver, modular geek, minimalist solo geek, with a fluffy hair that seems to have just returned from surfing.

Nick White is driving the modular forefront of the encryption industry. How modular can encryption become? Essentially, modularity has properties highly resonant with encryption: anti-fragility, redundancy, replicability, expressiveness, etc. The Celestia project has become the focus of investment in the concept of modularity itself.

Supporters of modularity believe that Celestia represents an explosive growth in the innovation space of modular ecosystems. Is the cheap availability of data (DA) really the key missing element in the modular argument? What will this new asset, TIA, look like? Celestia's DA enables Ethereum to support more Rollups, which is crucial for Ethereum's long-term development... but is it also a Trojan horse mechanism for Celestia itself based on the Rollup ecosystem? Will TIA become a currency?

I am following Nick's updates and trying to answer these questions. That's why I am particularly looking forward to attending the Modular Summit this year, no matter where or when it takes place!

Neel Somani // Eclipse Founder

Eclipse's founder, creator of the Platypus project, connector of ecosystems, explorer of parallel worlds.

Neel Somani is pushing forward in a new field he discovered, starting from basic principles. After creating a company that serves Rollup, he turned to Eclipse, and his story about how to form an argument for Eclipse provides rich inspiration.

Being at the extreme is often not the best position. Neel has found a balance point between multiple leading projects - Ethereum, L2s, Solana, and Celestia.

With the growth of the SVM ecosystem, the success of Eclipse becomes more feasible. Is the argument for SVM on Ethereum valid? As the views of Solana geeks and modular geeks become increasingly divergent, can Eclipse find common ground between the two?

As Eclipse approaches the mainnet, we will witness a single L2 built on top of highly secure Ethereum L1 bringing value to the world.

Regardless, Neel will provide us with many valuable lessons throughout this process.

Keone Hon // Monad Founder

Founder of Monad, father of Molandak, parallelizer of EVM, parallelizer of databases, parallelizer of I/O, and promoter of parallelism.

Keone has become the spokesperson for the Monad project, which is committed to introducing parallelism into the EVM ecosystem. "Having the speed and low cost of Solana, as well as the network effect of Ethereum," has become a popular narrative.

Some thought leaders have pointed out that simply parallelizing virtual machines is not enough to make a breakthrough, and what really needs to be parallelized is database access. In fact, the Keone and Monad teams have already achieved this, which is why MonadDB has become a key component of Monad's innovation field.

The release of Monad in 2024 is highly anticipated - just take a look at the Nads (Monad enthusiasts) trying to get roles in the farm in the #TheRoom channel on the Monad Discord. People have started paying attention to this project, trying to find a balance between Ethereum and Solana.

Andrew Huang // Conduit Founder

Founder of Conduit, gardener of the chain, driver of traffic growth, reducer of costs, copier and paster of frameworks, and top performer at the bottom of the basin.

Andrew Huang is committed to reducing the cost of deploying new Rollup chains. All costs are being reduced. Thanks to the efforts of Andrew and Conduit, costs, technical complexity, and other barriers are disappearing. If you think Rollups on Ethereum will be as ubiquitous as blogs on the internet, then you will be optimistic about Andrew's work.

The mainstream encryption products will be cultural products - we see this in friend.tech! Cheap data availability, modular blockchain, and parallel VM are all great attractions, but these investment themes are prepared for the internal community. We need to explore new cultural metaverse and export encryption products to another 500 million Internet users.

Li Jin is focused on the forefront of consumer crypto products, which is why I am interested in the content that Li Jin is interested in.

Podcast

I love podcasts! I've been listening all the time. Taking the prompt "people I follow" more literally, in 2024 I will be particularly following these podcasts:

Mike Ippolito // Blockworks Co-founder

Every time I talk to Mike, I always learn something new and gain a new perspective. Luckily, he has a podcast that is highly technical, deeply researched, and rich in content, making it well worth a listen. Mike seems to have an immune gene that allows him to remain neutral towards the chain, while still retaining the instinctive rejection of XRP that we all should have.

Beyond Mike personally, his company Blockworks has become my favorite source of cryptocurrency news. Reporting on news in the cryptocurrency industry is a challenging task, and Blockworks strikes a balance between journalistic integrity and consistency in the world of crypto.

Anthony Sassano // The Daily Gwei Founder

Infinite creators, the bald and bearded from Australia, Gwei accumulators, amateur node operators, humble ETH bulls, and statue connoisseurs.

Anthony Sassano is different from the aforementioned individuals. When I mention "people to watch in 2024," I am literally referring to Anthony Sassano and his podcast, "The Daily Gwei." If you listen to "The Daily Gwei" every day, then you have graduated from Crypto University and entered maintenance mode.

Anthony's well-planned "The Daily Gwei" Discord channel is a fortress of information-rich and technically strong Ethereum investors and enthusiasts. Highly recommend listening to "The Daily Gwei".

Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins // Too Online Podcast Co-Hosts

Co-hosts of the Boys Club podcast, a dynamic duo, world builders, emotional sharers, and atmosphere conveyors, forever grounded dreamers.

One of my favorite new podcasts recently is "Too Online," hosted by Boys Club co-founders Natasha Hoskins and Deana Burke.

After listening to over ten hours of intensive encryption podcasts every week, their light and cheerful 30-minute internet gossip show is like a breath of fresh air, reminding me that 99% of the world doesn't care about native encryption topics (at least not yet?).