DEVCON, Ethereum's largest event of the year, has concluded, and the excitement was palpable. With ground-breaking updates and hints about Ethereum's future developments, this year's conference demonstrated that the second-largest cryptocurrency has a bright future. We will therefore discuss the main conclusions drawn from DEVCON today, their possible implications for Ethereum and its ecosystem, and what this might all mean for the price of ETH. This is an article that you should be aware of if you own Ethereum or not.
Disclaimer: Before we get started, I need to make one thing clear. You won't find any financial advice here. It's purely educational content meant to inform you about Ethereum without inducing euphoria or fear.
Table of Contents
What is DevCon?
Now if you've never heard of DEVCON before, or have no idea what it is, don't worry, we've got you covered. DEVCON is short for Developers Conference, and it's the annual flagship event held by the Ethereum Foundation, the non-profit organization that coordinates Ethereum's development.
According to the DEVCON website, quote, DEVCON is a sponsor-free conference that aims at providing an unbiased overview of the state of Ethereum, its values, vision, and directions. Obviously, DEVCON is focused on Ethereum development and innovation. As such, the event is very tech-heavy and is usually geared towards developers, hence the name.
So, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this gathering of software engineers and data scientists would be incredibly boring. But you'd be dead wrong. DEVCON events are filled with buzz and celebration for one of the most innovative technologies on Earth.
In other words, plenty of nerds hanging out and partying. Heck, even Vitalik himself enjoys a good song and dance from time to time. But it's not just Vitalik doing karaoke and cutting shapes that get people excited.
That's because DEVCON provides a space to learn about the latest developments in Ethereum's ecosystem and, of course, on Ethereum itself. Attendees get exposure to the latest project updates, partnerships, and funding information, and even find potential career opportunities. Above all else, though, is the sheer sense of community.
That's because people can meet other like-minded individuals IRL, which for an industry that's almost entirely online is pretty valuable. In fact, the community sense is so strong that in the lead-up to each DEVCON event, there's what's known as the Road to DEVCON, which is arranged by local Ethereum communities to build momentum and engagement. Some of these events will even go on for weeks after the main event.
Anyway, the latest DEVCON was DEVCON 7 and it was hosted in Bangkok, Thailand. It took place over four days between the 12th and 15th of November. Incidentally, this is technically the 8th DEVCON.
The first was DEVCON Zero way back in 2014, shortly after Ethereum was first launched. Now, each DEVCON is hosted at a different location, with each chosen to engage with local Ethereum communities and bring decentralized technology to different regions of the world. As a fun fact, the names for each DEVCON location are eventually used to make up half of the name for an Ethereum upgrade, with the other half of the name coming from a star.
So for instance, Ethereum's next upgrade is Pektra, which is a portmanteau of Prague, which hosted DEVCON 4 back in 2018, and Elektra, a star. Anyhow, the reason why Bangkok was selected for this year's DEVCON was to emphasize the growing crypto adoption in Southeast Asia, especially in places like Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and of course, Thailand.
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Vitalik’s Keynote Speech
So then, now that we understand what DEVCON is all about, let's take a look at some of the key highlights from the event. We'd be remiss if we didn't put Vitalik himself at the top of the list. He is Ethereum's creator and one of its co-founders after all.
As we hinted at earlier, Vitalik kickstarted DEVCON with a dance routine that's simply too good not to share. Anyhow, the real reason why people get excited to see Vitalik at DEVCON is to hear the thoughts running through that gigantic brain of his.
Vitalik started his keynote speech by taking a look back at Ethereum's milestones so far, in particular, the merge. For those unfamiliar, the merge was a historic upgrade that took place back in September 2022 and which saw Ethereum transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake blockchain. Vitalik also pointed out Ethereum's continuous development of sustainable solutions and reinforced Ethereum's commitment to being a decentralized, scalable, and inclusive platform.
He went on to say that, quote, Ethereum is the world computer, an incredibly large and diverse on-chain economy, and an incredibly large and diverse global community. And if you're wondering what he means by world computer, this refers to how Ethereum is basically a decentralized network of nodes that collectively run applications and execute complex pieces of code. Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum's shift to proof-of-stake boosted decentralization, security, and eco-friendliness by eliminating the need for energy-intensive GPU mining.
Validation now relies on on-chain staking validators, which also improves accessibility, provided you can afford the 32 ETH for a validator node. In any case, Vitalik then said that Ethereum can serve as the backbone of a decentralized digital economy, and in some ways it already does. As you know, a huge chunk of the entire crypto market is based in Ethereum's ecosystem, be that as ERC-20 tokens, Layer 2 projects, or even the majority of NFTs and stablecoins.
Even alternative Layer 1s will have based their tech on Ethereum's code in some capacity. Vitalik also said that Ethereum's governance structure and network resilience have helped the network to become more inclusive over time, before stressing the importance of the Ethereum base chain as the primary safe and secure blockchain when it comes to Ethereum's scaling. However, that's not to say that the V-Dog doesn't recognize the importance of Layer 2s.
He highlighted the impressive drop in Layer 2 gas fees, to which he says, quote, Ethereum has gone from being basically unaffordable to being completely affordable. This was made possible after Ethereum's Denkun upgrade back in March of this year, which drastically improved the efficiency of Layer 2 blockchains in order to help scale the Ethereum mainnet.
The point is, though, that not only are Layer 2s now much better for the average user, but they're also much more developer-friendly. This opens the door to even more cool applications and protocols being built within the Ethereum ecosystem, giving it the potential to play critical roles across all sorts of different narratives. And what's more, is that those narratives wouldn't even need to be financial in nature.
Recall that Ethereum's purpose is to be a world computer, and this means being able to do basic functions like writing emails or printing out A4 posters of your favorite crypto YouTube presenters. Anyway, Vitalik concluded by highlighting Ethereum's progress over nearly a decade, while emphasizing the work still ahead. He stressed the importance of collaboration on future upgrades to maintain Ethereum's core values of security, decentralization and accessibility.
And he urged developers to build a robust, inclusive network for an ever-growing and evolving user base.
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The Beam Chain
OK, now the next key highlight from DevCon was probably the biggest of all, so much so that the room was packed to capacity with people spilling out into the hallways outside, which is crazy when you consider that it's not even set in stone yet. The update in question here is Justin Drake's proposal for the so-called Beam Chain.
For those wondering, Justin Drake has been a key researcher at the Ethereum Foundation since 2017, and he contributed significantly to Ethereum's transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Anyway, Justin revealed his proposal for the Beam Chain as part of an unofficial vision, and despite it not being a part of Ethereum's official roadmap, it's safe to say that it's been met with largely positive feedback from the Ethereum community.
The key reason for this is that Justin believes that this would bring Ethereum quote, much closer to the final design, so much so that he believes that Ethereum's entire roadmap could be completed within the next five years.
What is the Beam Chain and why does it matter?
Well, to understand, we first need to know about the Beacon Chain. Put simply, Ethereum has two parts, the consensus layer and the execution layer. The consensus layer called the Beacon Chain, coordinates consensus and validates transactions, while the execution layer, known as the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM, handles smart contract execution and transaction processing.
The Beacon Chain was launched in 2020 as a separate chain and introduced the proof-of-state consensus mechanism that Ethereum would adopt with the merger a few years later. However, Justin believes this technology is now outdated and should be replaced by the Beam Chain. So then, what's the difference? Well, the main difference between the two would be the validator staking requirements.
As we mentioned earlier, running a validator node requires you to have 32 ETH. Obviously, this works out as a lot of money in fiat terms. Justin proposes that this requirement be lowered from 32 ETH to just 1 ETH.
In order to do this, Ethereum's consensus layer would leverage zero-knowledge proofs, or ZK proofs for short. Many layer 2 scaling solutions already adopt ZK technology and Ethereum has incorporated it into its layer 2 centric scaling roadmap. Justin noted that ZK proofs have come a long way to the point that ZK EVMs have even started popping up out of nowhere and he believes it's time to bring ZK cryptography to the base chain.
In a nutshell, ZK proofs allow transaction data to be verified by revealing just a small portion of that data rather than the whole thing. To give you a simple analogy, you can think of it as showing your name and photo on an ID to confirm your identity while keeping other details like your address and date of birth, say, hidden. This ensures security and privacy while providing enough information for verification.
Anyway, the reason why Justin proposes changes to the consensus layer is due to concerns among Ethereum Foundation researchers that the current issuance curve may be flawed. The proposed beam chain aims to address this by enhancing the blockchain's overall health. That's because the beam chain would bring faster slot times and quicker finality by increasing the number of transactions within each block.
This could lead to transactions being finalized almost instantaneously in a single slot and would make them permanent and immutable right off the bat. This has led to some people in the Ethereum community dubbing this update as Ethereum 3.0, even though Justin and other key Ethereum developers insist this isn't appropriate since this would only be an upgrade to the consensus layer and not the execution layer. But if we're being honest, that name has probably stuck already.
We can't tell you how many times we still see post-merge Ethereum being referred to as Ethereum 2.0 to this day in our research.
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DevCon Ethereum Layer 2 Updates
Now, it's not just Ethereum, however, that drew a crowd at DevCon. Several projects within Ethereum's ecosystem also had a presence at the event sharing their latest updates with Ethereum enthusiasts.
The most notable of these projects were some of those Ethereum layer 2s that we mentioned a moment ago. For instance, one project at this year's DevCon was Arbitrum, which announced its Road to DevCon initiative in the lead-up as part of a strategy to draw in Asian investors. This plan included Arblink events in Vietnam and Indonesia, which provided opportunities for developers to engage with Arbitrum's technology and network with other builders in the ecosystem.
During the main DevCon event, Arbitrum announced its support for the ERC-7683 standard, which basically facilitates interoperable cross-chain transactions by standardizing the communication between different blockchains and layer 2 solutions. As a fun fact, ERC-7683 was proposed back in May by both Uniswap Labs and Across as a way to introduce cross-chain transactions.
And speaking of Uniswap Labs, another project that was present at this year's DevCon was Unichain, which, as the name suggests, is being developed by the Uniswap team.
Despite this blockchain still being in development, the recent surge in interest in the Ethereum ecosystem resulted in Unichain garnering a lot of attention from attendees and making it a highlight of this year's DevCon. And by the way, when we say that Unichain is still in development, we mean it hasn't even made it onto testnet yet. According to the team, a bridge hasn't been built and certain developer access is currently unavailable because it's just not ready yet.
But regardless, this hasn't stopped it from already drawing attention, so much so that Circle has already announced that USDC will be supported on Unichain once its mainnet finally goes live. Definitely one to keep an eye on then. Meanwhile, another project with a presence at DevCon was Base, which, as you'll all know, is the layer 2 solution built by Coinbase, which arguably needs no introduction.
During the event, Coinbase launched several initiatives to support the on-chain payment sector, the most notable of these being the announcement of a tap-to-pay crypto payment solution. Presumably, this means you could do crazy things like using BONK tokens to pay for your Starbucks latte, for example. However, it'll more likely be stablecoins that are used for payments, probably USDC given the partnership that Coinbase has with Circle, which issues USDC.
And this relates to another announcement made by Coinbase, its acquisition of Utopia Labs, which focuses on stablecoins and payments. And as a side note, it looks as though some projects felt the competitive pressure of DevCon. Around the same time, we also got announcements from major crypto projects outside of the Ethereum ecosystem, including Binance's BNB, Near Protocol, Filecoin and more. But of course, these are a little outside the scope of today's article.
Other Notable DevCon Highlights
Now, as we mentioned earlier, DevCon took place over the course of 4 days, so as you can imagine, the list of highlights is too long to cover in full here. But there are a few standouts that deserve honourable mentions.
The first of these was the announcement of The Argo Collective, a new non-profit organization made up of 25 Ethereum Foundation team members. The Argo Collective is tasked with the responsibility of maintaining Ethereum's core infrastructure, most notably its programming language, Solidity, the development of which will now be managed by The Argo Collective. Other highlights include the launch of the Mekong testnet and a keynote speech discussing EIP-7702.
Both of these features are key parts of Ethereum's upcoming Pectra upgrade. If you read our previous post about Pectra, you'll know that EIP-7702 in particular has gained attention because it will improve the functionality of crypto wallets by giving them smart contract qualities. This allows them to do all sorts of things that aren't currently possible.
Another notable event was the announcement of a new platform built by Vlad Zamfir. Now, despite not too many people being aware of who he is, Vlad is in fact a critical part of the Ethereum team.
He actually pioneered Ethereum's proof-of-stake blockchain architecture. He was even a key speaker at DevCon Zero back in 2014 alongside Vitalik and Gavin Wood, another Ethereum co-founder who left in 2016 and would later create Polkadot. But back to Vlad.
His announcement centered around something called smart transactions. These have been dubbed the Ethereum time machine because they allow smart contracts to operate based on possible future events. For instance, the predicted price for ETH on a given date.
But, perhaps most importantly, they'd allow for a user to revert a transaction similar to how you'd unsend an email. This impressive UX update could literally save people from potentially losing their entire crypto portfolios after making a rookie mistake.
What This Means for Ethereum and ETHs price
OK, folks, I know what you're all thinking. I'll bet you're also wondering what all of this means for Ethereum and of course ETH's price.
Well, funnily enough, this depends on who you ask. If you were to ask pretty much anyone who went to DevCon, they'd probably tell you that the atmosphere and the vibe were incredibly bullish. However, when you take a look at the online response, it seems a bit more mixed.
Which is a bit bizarre. People hardly ever complain on the internet. In all seriousness though, some people who've watched DevCon from the outside have found the beamchain upgrade a little underwhelming.
And this is for several reasons. First, this update will take several years to complete. Justin Drake's suggested approach is to take incremental steps towards the upgrade, completing smaller bits first and then organizing larger upgrades into a single package.
Those larger changes would include adjustments to Ethereum's block production tools, as well as changes to how Ethereum handles staking and ZK cryptography. This ties into the second reason, which is that for some people, this upgrade didn't quite meet expectations. For context, there had been speculation that Justin was drafting up a major upgrade for months, particularly because he played such a key role in the merge.
However, some people expected this announcement to be a full upgrade to Ethereum rather than just the consensus layer. From our perspective, this disappointment is likely because people want the whole package ASAP. I mean, let's face it, ETH holders are sick of all the FUD and are desperate for it to start putting in new all-time highs.
Regardless though, we reckon that if this year's DevCon has shown anything, it's Ethereum's focus on longevity and continuous development. Let's not forget that Ethereum has the most developers of any crypto ecosystem and they are at the top of their game. That's why we see this year's DevCon announcements being long-term bullish for ETH's price.
Of course, the Pectra upgrade, which is due over the next few months, could be the thing to finally push ETH into parabolic territory. And that's why many crypto enthusiasts, continue to hodl ETH in their personal portfolios, even if they do have their fingers very tightly crossed.
