EthCC Review: Is the Renaissance of Consumer Applications Coming?

Original author: @xingpt

Original translation: Peisen, BlockBeats

Editors 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 the infrastructure construction narrative. The topics they discussed covered Modular, ZK, MEV, and more.

A year later, the entire industry realized that we were building a utopian ghost town with no one living in it. People began to reflect that their previous enthusiasm was just an illusion created by the high FDV bubble.

A classic symptom of the “Dark Ages of Overbuilt Infrastructure” is that founders love to use all the jargon and buzzwords to describe their product as “Infra”.

In the past, people said “I’m building a Dex”, but now they say “I’m building an intention-based trading infrastructure for AI agents on top of the 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 are aware of the problem of block space surplus.

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 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:

Wearable device (not DePin)

Wearables (glasses, rings, watches) are hardware that can interact directly with the end user in real life. If browser plugins (like Metamask) were once the entry point to Web3, and Telegram is the current entry point, wearables could become the new entry point for non-crypto users.

The teams behind wearable devices need to have strong marketing skills to position these devices as luxury brands. I believe that if some NFT issuers choose this direction, they have a chance to succeed.

I don’t think users will prioritize advanced features. Instead, Web3 users will likely buy these devices for their appeal 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 during 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 foresee the launch of new assets being integrated with the existing DeFi stack. These applications could be designed as social finance platforms, prediction markets, or meme launchers. The difficulty will be in how to smoothly integrate DeFi liquidity.

AI+ Web3 Applications

We can regard AI+Web3 in this cycle as Gamefi in the previous cycle. The PMF of these two has been verified in the Web2 field, and their adoption can be accelerated or redistributed through token incentives.

Are there scenarios where users are already paying for AI applications but would prefer to pay with cryptocurrency in the hope of getting a higher return?

The “x to earn” model may no longer be viable as professional studios have taken over airdrop farming, effectively squeezing out real users.

These applications have the potential to enhance the demand for current Web3+AI infrastructure, rebalancing the situation caused by an overabundance of mining GPUs and a lack of real users willing to pay for these services.

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