EthCC Review: Is the Renaissance of Consumer Applications Coming?
Original author: @xingpt
Original translation: Peisen, BlockBeats
Editor's note:
The 2024 EthCC was held in Brussels, Belgium. Crypto researcher @xingpt expressed his feelings about the conference. He pointed out that industry leaders are now aware of the problem of excess block space and explored innovative outlets for consumer applications. BlockBeats translated the original text as follows:
Last year, EthCC brought together many venture capitalists and project founders who were keen on infrastructure construction narratives. The topics they discussed covered Modular, ZK, MEV, etc.
A year later, the entire industry realized that we were building an uninhabited utopian ghost town. People began to reflect that what they were keen on before was just an illusion created by the high FDV bubble.
A classic symptom of the “dark age of overbuilt infrastructure” is that founders love to describe their products as “Infra” using all the jargon and buzzwords.
In the past, “I’m building a Dex”, now “I’m building an intent-trading infrastructure for AI agents on top of a fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) privacy layer”.
It would be interesting to extend this way of speaking to everyday life. “It’s a cup”. “No, it’s a liquidity aggregation infrastructure with multiple distribution methods”.
Overall, this is a good sign that industry leaders have realized the problem of excess block space.
Where can we find innovative consumer applications?
Innovation is particularly challenging, especially for applications that have achieved PMF (product-market fit). Once a product achieves PMF, it becomes part of the default application stack of the public chain.
In this default application stack, DeFi is mainly composed of products such as Dex, lending, perpetual contracts, and now there is also liquidity staking and Pendle-fork. Large public chains and their major holders can easily guide TVL, essentially copying it to different chains. In the non-DeFi field, meme launchers like pump.fun have become standard for new public chains.
Therefore, I would not classify these DeFi stacks as innovative applications. However, I do see some areas with high potential in the next wave:
Wearables (not DePin)
Wearables (glasses, rings, watches) are hardware that can directly interact with end users in real life. If browser plugins (such as Metamask) were the entry point to Web3 and Telegram is the current entry point, wearables may become the new entry point for non-crypto users.
The teams behind wearables need to have strong marketing skills to position these devices as luxury brands. I believe some NFT issuers have a chance to succeed if they choose this direction.
I don’t think users will prioritize advanced features. Instead, Web3 users may buy these devices for their attractiveness and speculative potential, just like they buy NFTs.
Tradable Assets + DeFi
A lot of money is sitting idle and underutilized in the current DeFi stack. We saw that in the DeFi summer, high APYs drove the mass adoption of DeFi in the crypto space.
The launch of new assets has always been a way to attract users. In this cycle, we have meme coins. However, meme coins do not provide users with the opportunity to farm assets in DeFi.
I expect the launch of new assets to be combined with the existing DeFi stack. These applications can be designed as social finance platforms, prediction markets, or meme launchers. The difficulty lies in how to smoothly integrate DeFi liquidity.
AI+ Web3 Applications
We can think of AI+Web3 in this cycle as Gamefi in the previous cycle, both of which have proven PMF in the Web2 space, and their adoption can be accelerated or redistributed through token incentives.
Is there a scenario where users are already paying for AI applications, but prefer to pay with cryptocurrency in the hope of getting higher returns?
The "xx to earn" model may no longer be viable, as professional studios have taken over airdrop farming, effectively crowding out real users.
These applications have the potential to enhance demand for the current Web3+AI infrastructure, rebalancing the situation caused by excess mining GPUs and a lack of real users willing to pay for these services.
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Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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