EthCC Week in Review: Exciting Announcements from Top Projects

This week, thought leaders, enthusiasts, and experts in the Ethereum ecosystem converged in the world capital of Paris, France for the EthCC conference. As expected, the week was filled with massive announcements and revelations from some of the most well-known projects building on Ethereum, including Chainlink, Uniswap, Lens Protocol and more.

EthCC is an annual event known as one of the biggest blockchain events in Europe. It is the go-to summer conference that promises prominent speakers, high-quality networking opportunities, and numerous product announcements and releases every year. This one was no different. 

Lens Protocol, the decentralized social graph project from the team behind Aave, announced the long-anticipated Lens Protocol V2. The platform, which has faced recent competition with the release of Meta’s Threads app, originally emphasized modularity and customizability - it intentionally released without a frontend and left the job to the community to find which user interface they preferred. Lens V2 is no different and doubles down on decentralization and composability. For example, Open Actions allow any smart contract functions to be integrated within a Lens publication, making actions like natively buying NFTs, monetizing content, and joining DAOs possible. Additionally, the entire profile system was overhauled, and now profiles live inside of an NFT, with followers and post collections included. This account abstraction-esque feature will make the process of using Lens extremely simple and creates a native solution for profile marketplaces, as well as making profiles for NFTs, like Bored Apes or CryptoKitties, a possibility. For the first time, Lens is opening a waitlist to join the platform, meaning they are getting ready for a full-scale launch to take on their big centralized competitors, and there hasn’t been a better time to join.

Uniswap, the decentralized exchange pioneer, unexpectedly launched UniswapX, a Dutch auction-based exchange aggregation tool. Unlike previous Uniswap products, where the order is fulfilled through a pool of liquidity in an automated market maker model, UniswapX outsources the fulfillment of trades to third parties, who do so using their own routine engine or private liquidity. This guarantees the best price for trade execution and allows for gas-free and MEV-protected transactions, greatly enhancing user experience and efficiency. They also hinted at plans to bring this product cross-chain by the end of the year, meaning users could initiate a transaction on one chain and have it completed on another. This new addition to the Uniswap family of products is enticing and could contribute to their continued dominance in the DEX space. 

Chainlink, the leader in bringing real-world data on-chain through decentralized oracles, released their Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol to the acclaim of LINK holders. Over the past few years, the blockchain world has become increasingly multi-chain, and there are now dozens of smart contract platforms, including blockchains, Layer 2s, sidechains, and subnets. Cross-chain bridges, the vehicle for value transfer between these different ledgers, are incredibly difficult to create and have accounted for billions of dollars in hacks. Chainlink’s CCIP is a messaging protocol enabling secure token transfers and transaction execution in a cross-chain environment. It’s similar to LayerZero’s cross-chain messaging system but with different features, including the ability to program actions upon token transfer and create cross-chain smart contracts. All of this is secured by Chainlink’s network of decentralized oracles and monitoring features. CCIP transaction fees can be paid in LINK or a chain’s native token for an extra fee, providing LINK with a true value capture mechanism. The solution already sees adoption from Synthetix and Aave and will certainly grow to incude more over time.

Last but not least, the Celo blockchain proposed switching from a Layer 1 chain to an Ethereum Layer 2, utilizing the most up-to-date features and tools. Celo, a chain emphasizing its use for real-world, high-impact projects, hopes to align itself closer to the Ethereum chain through easier liquidity bridging and shared security. To keep fees low, Celo will use EigenLayer and EiganDA, a much-hyped restaking protocol that lets users re-stake their liquid-staked Ether for other use cases in exchange for higher returns, as its data availability layer. Additionally, Celo will build using the OP Stack, the set of tools and protocol platforms created by Optimism for the seamless creation of L2s. The trend of L1s transitioning to Ethereum will likely heat up over the coming months and years, and it will be interesting to see how each leverages a unique tech stack and data availability layer to compete on speed, security, decentralization, and interoperability.

EthCC was full of surprises and exciting launches that provide much to consider and utilize for the rest of 2023. Watching the cryptocurrency space blossom and develop around international conferences is interesting. This trend, which is likely largely due to crypto’s explosion during COVID and the decentralized nature of the industry, is unlike any other industry in existence and helps to keep the community focused, connected, and fun-loving.

By Lincoln Murr

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