Recapping zkLink’s L3 Summit Trilogy At TOKEN2049 Dubai
Our third L3 Summit held at the One&Only Royal Mirage Resort was a resounding success. Amidst the stormy chaos at Token2049 in Dubai, zkLink turned “Mission Impossible” into “Mission Accomplished.” A beautiful venue, the Royal Ballroom at The Palace Building, served as the perfect host to blend classiness and luxury with the excitement of blockchain technology. At our event, over 25 speakers participated in 4 Panels and 2 Keynotes, filling the evening with energy and providing our 800+ attendees with the latest alpha about ZK technology, blockchain UX, interoperability, aggregating fragmented liquidity, DeFi (LSTs & LRTs), and most importantly, Layer 3s (L3s).
Our next L3 Summit will be at EthCC in Brussels — for more information on how to register to attend, sign up to be a speaker, or become a sponsor, please go to our dedicated Luma page. See you in beautiful summer Europe!
To learn more about our previous L3 Summits, check out our complete gallery collection and event agendas that were featured on our L3 gallery website!
The complete panel videos and one-on-one interviews will be uploaded to our official YouTube soon.
L3 Summit Dubai In Action: Pics From The Event
Now that you’ve seen the positive atmosphere at zkLink’s event, read on below for a full recap of our L3 Summit trilogy in Dubai!
Highlights From Our Panels & Keynotes
Panel 1: ZK Season In 2024 — Hype vs Reality
- Moderator: Francesco Andreoli — DevRel — Consensys
- Shubham Bhandari — Ecosystem Head — Manta
- Joaquin Mendes Izard — Partnership Lead — Taiko
- Jan Gorzny — Technical Lead & Co-founder — Zircuit
In our first panel, we brought together a stunning lineup of Taiko, Manta, Zircuit, and Consensys to discuss the concept of zero-knowledge technology and what’s in store for the segment in 2024 — whether it’s just hype or an actual reality.
To begin the panel, the participants discussed scaling Ethereum with zero-knowledge technology and some of the technical challenges involved with implementing ZK solutions. Then, the panelists began comparing and contrasting ZK with optimistic rollup solutions and although generating fraud proofs is cheaper, ZK proofs are more secure and better because users will not have to wait seven days for the infamous challenge period, thus speaking to the finality advantages of ZK.
In summary, when ZK sees more technological improvements such as making proofs faster and cheaper, then the landscape of Ethereum scaling solutions will shift towards the ZK side of the spectrum. However, at the moment ZK is still in its nascent stages of development and working towards actually being able to facilitate scale. Nonetheless, at the end of the discussion, the panelists highlighted some of the bright use cases for ZK which include payments, international payments, gaming, and tokenization. ZK is a great Ethereum scaling technology that will continue developing into 2024, making strides as more projects improve their protocols and enlarge their ecosystems.
Panel 2: From Frictions To Functions — Improving User Experiences To Onboard The Next Billion Users and Developers
- Moderator: Yemu Xu — Co-founder — ARPA Network
- Mirko Garozzo — DevRel — Metamask
- Ethan Francis — Developer Relations — Particle Network
- Derek Chang — COO — Kroma Network
To begin this panel, moderator Yemu Xu started with the question of what the current status of actual mass adoption in blockchain and crypto is in 2024 and transitioned into how that relates to the problems faced by developers and projects to bring the next wave of users to the blockchain.
The panelists provided varying answers about how they believe gaming is one area where mass adoption can occur, along with memes in their role of bringing together a worldwide community of speculators who can gamble and have fun investing and trading with memecoins, and the role of centralized exchanges, where most of the onboarding happens.
On the question of the friction to onboarding users, the first pain point brought up was with user onramps and the challenge of bridging, paying gas fees, converting tokens, swapping, etc. In addition, the complexity of using and developing on multiple chains, using multiple applications across chains, managing multiple addresses, different native tokens, switching networks, and UX.
But despite these issues, panelists mentioned that the developer experience has indeed improved in recent years where it’s easier for projects to spin up applications with advanced functionality with SDKs.
Regarding the future of user adoption, panelists largely agreed that it will be a difficult and gradual process from many angles such as coming from traditional finance, teaching people how to use decentralized wallets, and attracting users to explore more applications as the industry improves its infrastructure and simplifies the UX and current technical pain points hindering new adoption.
Keynote: Aggregating Fragmented Liquidity in Ethereum for a Unified and Interoperable Rollup Ecosystem
- Vince Yang — Co-founder — zkLink
For the L3 Summit’s main keynote, zkLink invited Co-founder Vince Yang to speak about how zkLink is unifying the fragmented liquidity within Ethereum. Vince’s keynote introduced zkLink Nova, the solution founded by zkLink to aggregate fragmented liquidity across the thousands of Layer 1 blockchains and Layer 2 Rollups.
Vince highlighted a problem in that because there are so many Layer 2s, users are faced with the challenge of moving their assets from Ethereum Layer 1 to one of the many Layer 2s, and then having to go to another Layer 2 for other opportunities, purposes, and applications. Vince noted that if there are too many layers, then the user experience will be degraded. So the challenge is how to find solutions to reconnect and simplify the user experience with so many Ethereum Layer 2s — to which zkLink has been working on a solution called zkLink Nova, which is the novel approach of a Layer 3 aggregated rollup solution.
zkLink Nova solves the pain point of users having to bridge across Layer 2s as well as the problem of developers having to deploy across Layer 2s. zkLink Nova’s Layer 3 aggregates liquidity from the different Ethereum networks and provides developers with an EVM-compatible developer environment powered by the ZK Stack to allow them to easily deploy DApps on zkLink.
Panel 3: DeFi’s Next Chapter: LST, LRT & The Power Of Layer 3
- Moderator: Eva Weng — Caladan
- Amitej Gajjala — Founding contributor — KelpDAO
- Yohaan Neroth — DeFi Growth — X Layer
- Renat Khasanshyn — Founding Member — Protofire DAO
- Tom Ngo — Co-Founder — Metis
- Akshit Bordia — Co-Founder — LogX
For the third panel of the day, moderator Eva Weng started by asking panels their thoughts on the future of DeFi for the next 12 to 24 months. Panelists highlighted innovations happening around money market infrastructure protocols like Morpho, liquid staking and re-staking, native re-staking, Bitcoin DeFi, and advancements in DEXs. DeFi remains the primary use case for crypto, and the future is likely to remain so.
Panel 4: Exploring The Approaches, Designs, & Technologies That Address Liquidity Fragmentation in DeFi
- Moderator: Momir Amidzic — Senior Director- IOSG
- Ivan K — CMO — StakeStone
- Luis Schliesske — Co-Founder — Gelato
- Josh Tobkin — CEO — Supra
- Aishwary Gupta — Global Head of Payment & Fintech — Polygon Labs
For the final panel of the day, the speakers discussed the high level of fragmentation within the blockchain space. StakStone mentioned how they are a kind of “omni-chain liquidity infrastructure provider” that’s trying to solve the liquidity fragmentation problem from the technological side. Gelato talked about Aster as well as mentioning their research into shared sequencing as a technological solution to synchronous composability. In addition, other panelists highlighted the problems of bridging, bad UX, and the costs involved with transferring assets across chains. Polygon talked about the aggregation layer to connect different chains and store the state changes and allows users to move assets from one place to another while aggregating liquidity from all the connected chains.
Josh from StakeStone was questioned about the idea of chain abstraction and gave a response that talked about L3s and using a wallet to handle multi-chain transactions, in which he mentioned the interesting concept of “intents.” Supra, on the other hand, is creating an “intra layer” between Layer 1s and Layer 2s, which serves as a coordination layer, an automation layer, an oracle layer, and a cross-communication layer.
To end the discussion, the moderator went back to the idea of chain abstraction as a key approach and solution to the issue of the fragmented user experience. In the end, chain abstraction and liquidity aggregation methods are two core concepts that are likely to lead the next phase of, as the title of this panel suggests, “The Approaches, Designs, & Technologies That Address Liquidity Fragmentation in DeFi.”
Keynote: A Smart ZK Coprocessor
- Yoli — Project Lead — Brevis
In the final keynote at the L3 Summit, Yoli from Brevis introduced the concept of Brevis as a smart ZK (Zero-Knowledge) coprocessor designed to handle data-rich and computationally intensive tasks within blockchain ecosystems. She highlighted the limitations of current blockchain networks, which struggle with the demands of distributed consensus when managing large volumes of data and complex calculations. Yoli used the example of a hypothetical trader loyalty program to illustrate the inefficiency of current systems, where on-chain computations for rewarding high-volume traders could take hours and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Brevis aims to address these inefficiencies by allowing blockchain networks to offload heavy computations to a coprocessor, thus enhancing performance and reducing costs without compromising the trust-free nature of blockchains.
Furthermore, Yoli explained how Brevis uses zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that computations done off-chain can be trusted on-chain, maintaining the decentralized ethos of blockchain technology. She also introduced the Brevis SDK, which simplifies the development of data-driven DApps by abstracting complex circuit framework details, allowing developers to focus on high-level logic. Brevis supports cross-chain capabilities and is optimized for efficiency, with Yuli mentioning its ability to handle transaction volumes much higher than those of current major protocols like Uniswap at a fraction of the cost. She concluded by discussing several potential applications of Brevis technology, including dynamic DeFi protocols, zero-knowledge user experience enhancements, and cross-chain interoperability, emphasizing Brevis’s capability to revolutionize how data-intensive applications function on blockchain networks.
1v1 Interview Highlights: What Projects Think Of Layer 3s
We also took the time to have in-depth interviews with many of the participating projects at our L3 Summit to gauge their perspectives and analytical opinions on the concept. Those who we interviewed include Taiko, Zircuit, Manta, Consensys, Gelato, Metis, Kelp DAO, LogX, Stakestone, ARPA Network, Kroma, and IOSG. So we received multiple diverse thoughts from many leading projects working in ZK, Ethereum scaling, blockchain infrastructure, and the Layer 3 concept.
- Taiko: In our conversation with Joaquin, who’s head of partnerships at Taiko, he mentioned that when looking at the question of what it will take for L3s to become more accepted, he mentioned that regardless of whether it’s a Layer 2 or a Layer 3, that a general perspective needs to be taken, in particular, emphasizing the need for applications that people actually want to use, instead of applications that are used for speculation. In addition, Joaquin mentioned that one of the particular application segments that he sees as a good Web3 gateway and entry point for Web2 users is gaming, which Joaquin also said blends very well with the Layer 3 narrative. Besides gaming, Joaquin recommended looking at institutional adoption and real-world assets (RWAs), which may also be a good fit for Layer 3s.
- Zircuit: In our interview with Zircuit, we spoke to Jan, technical lead and Co-founder at Zircuit, which is a Layer 2 rollup using AI to enhance security. Regarding Layer 3s, Jan’s perspective is that “there are a couple of really good use cases,” but all of which depend on a solid Layer 2 foundation. Jan believes this is a current weakness at the moment — that Layer 2s need to become more battle-tested. However, Jan noted that “we are getting there very quickly.” For Layer 3s, he brought up an interesting point, saying, “I think you need to attract people by building different types of applications that you don’t currently have blockchains for’’ — and highlighted two sectors, gaming and DeFi as paramount. Jan emphasized that Layer 3s are particularly suitable for applications that want their own chain but also desire the freedom to interact with the rest of the ecosystem through Layer 2.
- Consensys: When speaking with Francesco Andreoli from Consensys, he noted that developer tooling for Layer 3s is essential.
- Gelato: During our interview with Gelato, they referenced back to the Ethereum roadmap in embracing a rollup-centric approach to scaling, and emphasized the onboarding process for Web3 users going from the Layer 2 to the Layer 3, and that Gelato believes there will be hundreds of thousands of L3 application developers. Gelato postulates that L3s and L2s can help remove Ethereum from the onboarding funnel and thereby reduce complexity for end users.
- Metis: In our interview with Metis, they provided a critical answer to the question of what it will take for L3s to be more widely accepted i.e., education. L3 stakeholders and projects must “provide the industry with knowledge, and knowledge that is empowering for why we need an L3, how to really integrate L3s, and essentially, reducing the barriers to understanding what Layer 3s are.” Metis says that the “friction of integrating an L3 is important.” Speaking on the benefits of L3s, Metis says that L3s are indeed providing another solution to the problem of liquidity fragmentation, as well as providing additional options for developers to truly build on a different kind of infrastructure.” In conclusion, Metis believes that having a Layer 3 as a solution is great for the industry.
- Kelp DAO: Interviewing Kelp DAO, we spoke to Ahmed, who is one of the core contributors to the project. On the topic of L3s, he mentioned that “L2s and L1s should integrate with L3 protocols to solve the problems around liquidity fragmentation” — and added, “Once you see a few examples of protocols using L3s to solve their liquidity fragmentation issues, then the industry will begin accepting L3s as a much wider use case.”
- LogX: In our interview with LogX, they emphasized the need for trustless bridging architectures, with a heavy emphasis on security and its importance. These two points were LogX’s first thoughts about Layer 3s. In addition to that, LogX mentioned that the overall acceptance of L3s will come when there are more nuanced use cases. In summary, LogX asserted that security, custom use cases, and aggregated liquidity are all important for Layer 3s to succeed.
- StakeStone: In a similar response as Metis, StakeStone emphasized the need for more education for Layer 2s to become more widely accepted and recognized — both for users and developers.
- ARPA: In our interview with ARPA, we had the honor of speaking with Yemu, the Co-founder of ARPA Network. Regarding Layer 3s, he mentioned that people are still struggling with the idea of Layer 2s, let alone Layer 3s. Therefore, he recommended that education should be an important pillar to emphasize — which can be done through events such as the L3 Summit in addition to educational talks, fireside chats, and other panels, “to establish the first wave of consensus.” Following that, he said there would be a natural progression of users coming to the L2 and L3 space. When asked about how ARPA can fit into the L3 space, Yemu expressed an interest and forecast for more gaming-specific Layer 3s, mentioning that the team at ARPA can provide the infrastructure for financial games through the use of advanced cryptography and random number generation.
- Kroma: In our interview with Derek, COO of Kroma, he said that gaming will be critical for L3s and that’s where he sees a lot of adoption happening. In particular, Derek highlighted the issue of gas fees and network latency experienced on blockchains and Layer 2s, and said this is one area where L3s can be a solution. Moreover, Derek expressed interest in the increased usability of L3 solutions that are constructed on top of L2s and having appchains on an L3.
So Where Does The Industry Stand On Layer 3s?
Layer 3s are still in the early stages of development with zkLink Nova at the lead with its general-purpose aggregated Layer 3 network. Many of the panelists at the L3 Summit spoke about the promise of L3s moving forward in terms of enabling more app-specific customizability, more business models, cheaper gas costs, aggregated liquidity, and bringing together the fragmentation of developers, DApps, assets, and users from across the Ethereum ecosystem.
zkLink’s next L3 Summit will be at EthCC in Brussels, and we’ll be changing the game and format of the Summit to provide attendees with more valuable information about the development of L3s. By then, we’re going to push forward the narrative and the benefits of L3s for users and developers.
Keep an eye on our L3 Summit website page for further developments and to register as an attendee, a sponsor, or a speaker! European summertime.
