Interview with ETH HK Entrepreneurs: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?

Interview | Melody、Frank，PANews

During the Ethereum conference in Hong Kong at the end of October, the price of bitcoin rose sharply, and it has basically stabilized at $35,000. In recent times, many institutions and researchers believe that 2024 could be an important year for Bitcoin based on the market narrative of spot bitcoin ETFs, bitcoin halving, and the fact that the benchmark interest rate may have peaked or will peak in the short term.

Looking up at the stars requires a down-to-earth approach to mass adoption of the Web3 industry, which cannot be achieved by narrative and potential macro benefits alone. Norman Chan, President of the Hong Kong Web3.0 Association, previously submitted a proposal to the Hong Kong government on behalf of the association on behalf of the association, "The core infrastructure of Web3.0 is blockchain, but there are still deficiencies in the technical and mechanism level of the public chain infrastructure, including performance bottlenecks, security risks, privacy leaks, and technical risks. During ETHHK, PANews interviewed some of the different types of projects participating in the conference, and talked about the current situation of the industry, future expectations, and the development potential and direction of the infrastructure layer from the perspective of developers and entrepreneurs.

User growth is a key indicator for the next bull market

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-10cea021be-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

On topics such as market expectations and mass adoption in 2024, Adrian Lai, founder of Newman Group, shared his views. Over the past 6 to 8 months, Newman Capital’s investments have been skewed towards retail projects. For example, memeland, which has attracted a lot of attention in the industry, launched a Web3 project for the online entertainment community 9Gag, and Newman became the first investor in the project because of its decentralized social attributes. Adrian believes that whether it is the ETF application or the Bitcoin halving event, these special factors in the industry right now make people optimistic about the bull market, so Newman will be bullish on the market’s reaction next year, when the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) will be the growth of users rather than revenue data.

Adrian is optimistic about Web3 applications with millions of users in the next year, but he believes that it will be relatively difficult for decentralized social to move towards large-scale adoption, and he is more optimistic about applications that are close to the Web2 model in terms of usage habits. He cites the example of Lolli, a bitcoin rebate platform that Newman has just invested in, which has a similar user experience to mainstream online shopping apps, and users can get rebates in the form of bitcoin after spending. The return of bitcoin through cash payment makes it easier to attract new users to Web2 users in terms of use scenarios, and the return reward of bitcoin will also allow traditional users to slowly accept and trade cryptocurrencies.

2024 will be a big year for the Web3 industry

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-db18f88cd2-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

Chris Li Shubei, founder and partner of TKX Capital, said that in the interview, he also expressed optimism about Web3 moving towards mass adoption. Its current focus includes CEX platforms, content, NFT, music, video, GameFi and other entertainment consumer categories, and is optimistic about the development of the Layer2 ecosystem and TON ecosystem. He pointed out that the “Fear & Greed Index” and the “Bitcoin DominanceIndex” are important indicators for bulls and bears. At the macro level, he believes that there is a 90% probability that the United States will enter a recession next year, and the whole market is relatively pessimistic. If the Fed cuts interest rates, borrowing costs and investment costs will be lower, thereby enhancing market liquidity.

Developer community needs to be scaled up

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-6ce4aae075-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

Scaling is a common topic in the industry, and Dorothy of AltLayer, a Rollup-as-a-Service agreement, said that there are various scaling solutions on the market, whether it is AltLayer’s Wasm Stack or Arbitrumd’s Stylus, etc., which can reach a relatively good number in terms of TPS. However, the biggest problem of infrastructure is that the project is not sufficient, from the macro environment, it is due to the lack of liquidity in the bear market, and the overall market environment is not good; From the perspective of talent pool, the size of the entire developer community is too small, it is still in a relatively early stage, there are still a few people in the industry who can write Solidity, and there are not many developers who can write Rust or Move. In terms of the most important user experience, in addition to scaling to improve gas fees and operating speeds, it is also necessary to move in the direction of allowing users to get a similar experience to Web2 natively in terms of interaction.

Let users enjoy a simpler user experience

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-4e61d559b8-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

Ervin Zhuang, co-founder of StarProtocol, a full-chain domain name service provider, said that if the user experience and cost of use can be improved, a large number of applications will be better migrated to Web3. Citing the Friend.tech that has become popular in recent months, he said that the concept of Friend.tech is not new, and they have noticed similar social blockchain DeSo and other SocialFi projects before, but these applications did not Friend.tech such a good user experience at the time. Therefore, the infrastructure that allows Web2 users to get a simpler user experience in Web3, including social login, MPC wallet, and the integration of AA wallets based on ERC-4337, are all very good future directions. In addition, traditional users generally lack the concept and understanding of gas fee payment, which everyone is more concerned about, and Layer 2 needs to be further improved and developed to minimize user costs.

Ethereum Ecosystem Co-construction Cross-Chain Bridge Standard

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-de39183560-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

In the Web3 ecosystem, cross-chain bridges are a very important part, and its cross-chain technology can be understood as an extension of scaling, when one chain is not enough to carry all transaction requests, then let multiple chains carry them, and use cross-chain bridges to connect them. However, different blockchains cannot interact directly with each other, which brings many limitations and challenges to the application of blockchain technology, and how to achieve interoperability between different blockchains has become an important issue.

Leo from OwltoFinance, a decentralized cross-rollup bridge project, said that different Layer2s are like islands in the ocean, and cross-chain bridges are the infrastructure that connects them together, and it is currently very difficult to cross-chain between different Layers 2 on Ethereum or public chains such as Cosmos and Solana outside Ethereum. Just as EOA accounts can be upgraded to AA (Account Abstraction), he expressed the hope that Ethereum can undergo an infrastructure upgrade to make cross-chain an embedded ERC standard that exists on Ethereum. However, this needs to be built by the Ethereum Foundation and other Layer 2 projects.

Blockchain should be optimized in collaboration with software and hardware

! [ETH HK Entrepreneur Interview: How to develop infrastructure and welcome back in 2024?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-8308bb82de-dd1a6f-cd5cc0.webp)

With the continuous development of blockchain technology, blockchain chips, as an emerging technology direction, have received more and more attention. Husen Wang of Accseal, a hardware-accelerated privacy-preserving computing company, said that in the past, the focus was on optimization based on both algorithms and software. However, just like the iterative process of smartphones such as iPhones, it requires the collaborative optimization of software and hardware, and the blockchain industry currently lacks such optimization measures for software and hardware collaboration. Therefore, the next step in terms of infrastructure is to integrate software and hardware, and integrate the software systems and hardware chips that we have implemented now to bring users a better experience. In addition, Husen believes that the industry is now ready for large-scale adoption, and the next step may be for the government to promote the compliance of cryptocurrencies and solve the problem of deposits and withdrawals, so that large-scale adoption will slowly take place.

Opportunities and Risks of NFTs

The World Economic Forum’s “The Evolution of NFTs” report, released in October, provides an analysis of the complexity of the NFT landscape and highlights the opportunities and risks of NFTs. Joyin of NFT platform N2FT believes that on the one hand, there are too many bubbles and speculative properties in the market, and on the other hand, the market is saturated and lacks quality control. She said that the main problem of the industry is that the basic value of the work itself cannot be accurately defined by the market alone, and cannot only rely on celebrities and brand effects, and how to give the value of the work itself and long-term anchoring has become very important. However, in a downward market, opportunities and challenges coexist, and the more in this environment, the more practitioners can be encouraged to explore new models. For example, the financial attributes and financial potential of NFTs can be further explored, the infrastructure related to NFTFi and related financial models need to be developed and explored, and whether the industry can redefine the underlying value, and there is an inseparable relationship between these factors.