Catching up on Ethereum at EthCC – Ajit Tripathi
Bitcoin, the greatest innovation on the internet since the web browser, has suffered from HODLing and Believing. As innovators and doers, if we can do one thing right in Ethereum, we must do right by not becoming maximalists and religious believers like some of my otherwise good friends in the Bitcoin community have disappointingly become. The greatest power of Ethereum is that it has given rise to hundreds of other protocols that might one day become stronger, better or more widely adopted in different application areas. It makes me very emotional, very very happy to see the Other Blockchains track feature prominently in EthCC with a range of high quality talks about how Ethereum will connect and interoperate with many or all of these other networks.
Indeed, this is higher on my list than DeFi and here’s why. I have a 16 year old who knows a decent amount about Ethereum and a 10 year old who knows it’s some kind of a big deal though not sure why. You don’t fix the internet by getting us bankers and consultants excited. You fix the internet by getting 16 year olds and 10 year olds excited and guess what they get excited about? Yes, it’s not finance. ETHCC’s gaming track has lined up some seriously exciting ideas and talks I don’t plan to miss.
Decentralised Finance and Tokenisation
While I know nothing about gaming and plan to walk into the sessions wide eyed like a cat, I have spent about fifteen years in finance and thanks to all the conventional wisdom I have accumulated DeFi irritates me. It makes my mind halt and catch fire because everything I have learnt all these years is challenged by DeFi. DeFi feels full of contradictions, DeFi feels risky, DeFi feels fringe and DeFi feels confusing- well how on earth was I expecting decentralised, internet based finance to be at the beginning? To be honest if I have to take Marc and Ben’s views on the internet — that’s exactly how it should be right now. So when I am done living my inner Richard Hendrix and shaking my head in an equally confusing Indian yes, I will go to the DeFi sessions and shake my head in a grey haired Indian guy — what do you mean sort of way?
dApps / UX /UI
For all of this internet schminternet revolution schmivolution to matter, in the end my 16yo, my 10yo and their grandma need to be able to use Ethereum. Over the last five years, I have seen Ethereum UX ( metamask, dapps, wallets, tools ) improve exponentially. Yet, we are still not near where we need to be for Grandma to use Ethereum. We need a Mozilla and I wanna know where it’s coming from.
Enterprise
Given my track record in prior roles at PwC and ConsenSys, and having played a meaningful role in some very high profile Enterprise Blockchain projects, you might be wondering why Enterprise doesn’t feature in this list yet? Well, without going into a lengthy debate, while secure enterprise shared ledger architectures built on Kaleido and Pegasys Orchestrate can help create significant value, all of this value creation pales in comparison to what will be possible when that secure shared ledger is integral to the architecture of the internet and always open, always shared. This private-public connectivity and interoperability has been intrinsic to Ethereum from the beginning so yes, it’d be good to see what’s cooking in the Enterprise oven too.
Other Tracks — Security, Privacy, Scalability and Crypto Economics
Going back 20 years, the internet looks like this neat wholesome thing that people call the internet. Don’t get me started on what I have seen between 98 and 2003 when I worked on some pretty complicated pieces of , the pieces of this insanely complicated jigsaw called the internet. If the past is any indication of the future, there will need to be 10s if not hundreds of continuous innovations that eventually become powerful things we use without knowing these exist in the fabric of the internet.
I don’t plan to retire for another 20 years so hopefully I will get to at least go to a few of these conferences watch some of these and feel surprised, intrigued, confused and absolutely … even… irritated at times :-).
Well then, see you at ETHCC! Let our brains halt and catch fire…
Published at Sat, 15 Feb 2020 22:23:57 +0000
