🦉Gnosis Weekly Recap ~ 19 November 2024

🌶️ DevConflict x Devcon Recap

Last week, Gnosis convened in Bangkok, Thailand for the inaugural DevConflict event ahead of Devcon. We hosted industry leaders from across the Ethereum ecosystem for a series of considered, yet often heated debates aimed at settling critical topics that couldn't be effectively addressed elsewhere, especially not on social media.

Before diving into DevConflict, let's kick things off with two of the most significant talks from Gnosis delivered by Martin Köppelmann about Circles v2 and native rollups in Bangkok. Why they matter and what Martin proposed:

First off, Devcon is a sponsor-free conference that aims at providing an unbiased overview of the state of Ethereum, its values, vision and directions. This year Devcon took place on November 12 to 15 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC), an impressively massive building in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand.

Circles v2: Reimagining Money for Maximum Resilience

In his talk at DevConflict and Devcon, Köppelmann presented Circles as a revolutionary approach to monetary design that prioritizes decentralization and resilience. The core thesis challenges traditional financial systems by proposing a radically different model of money creation and distribution.

Key Innovations:

• Democratic Issuance: Every participant mints 1 CRC per hour, creating a truly decentralized monetary system
• Built-in Economic Balance: 7% annual decrease in value prevents excessive wealth accumulation
• Social Trust Framework: Currencies become interchangeable through trust relationships, mirroring real-world social connections
• Circles Groups: A new protocol improvement enabling communities to create and manage their own currencies
  • Groups can mint collective currencies using personal CRC as collateral
  • Supports local community currencies and organizational economies
  • Implements ERC1155 for personal tokens and ERC20 for group tokens

Köppelmann's vision for Circles represents a fundamental challenge to traditional monetary systems. By combining technical innovation with social dynamics, Circles 2.0 aims to create a more equitable financial system that's both "credibly neutral" and practically useful.

The imminent launch of Circles 2.0, featuring the Metri wallet and Gnosis Pay integration, marks a significant milestone in this experiment in democratic money creation.

The Case for Native Layer 2s on Ethereum

In his second major talk, Köppelmann addressed a critical challenge in Ethereum's scaling ecosystem: the proliferation of Layer 2 solutions with varying trust assumptions. His proposal represents a significant shift in thinking about Ethereum's scaling strategy.

The Vision for Native L2s:

Köppelmann outlined a compelling vision for Ethereum's future, proposing native L2s that would be developed and governed by Ethereum's open-source community. This standardization would enable seamless communication between L1 and L2s while ensuring uniform trust assumptions across the ecosystem. Most importantly, this approach would fulfill Ethereum's original promise of sharding, but through the lens of L2 technology instead. This unified vision represents a significant shift from the current fragmented landscape to a more cohesive, interoperable scaling solution for the Ethereum ecosystem.

Looking Forward

Köppelmann's dual presentations at Devcon outline a comprehensive vision for blockchain's future, addressing both financial inclusion through Circles 2.0 and technical scalability through native L2s. These talks demonstrate Gnosis's commitment to solving both social and technical challenges in the Ethereum ecosystem.

The imminent launch of Circles 2.0, combined with the push for native L2 standardization, represents a significant moment in Ethereum's evolution toward a more scalable, interoperable, and equitable ecosystem with Gnosis as a significant contributor.

Following Devcon, Gnosis hosted a hackathon featuring Hashi, Gnosis Pay and Circles at ETHGlobal Bangkok. The hackathon, offering over $10K in prizes, showed how theoretical discussions at Devcon could quickly transform into practical development opportunities.

The Gnosis AI team along with Gnosis CTO Sebastian Bürgel both gave standout presentations during the week, as well. Gnosis was well represented in Bangkok!

DevConflict Key Highlights

Let's dive into a quick DevConflict recap!

What made DevConflict particularly innovative was its integration of prediction markets with each debate, paying homage to Gnosis's origins as a decentralized prediction market platform. This feature not only added an interactive element but also demonstrated the practical application of blockchain technology in gauging consensus and future outcomes.

The Layer 1 vs Layer 2 Debate

The event's highest-profile discussion featured Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Gnosis's Martin Köppelmann, moderated by L2BEAT's Bartek Kiepuszewski. This debate centered on whether Gnosis Chain should transition from a Layer 1 to a Layer 2 solution. Notably, Vitalik advocated for Gnosis to become a plasma chain, highlighting the potential benefits of Layer 2 scaling solutions.

The Staking Showdown

Perhaps the most controversial session featured Nixo of EthStaker and Dmitry Gusakov of Lido, moderated by Chorus One's Brian Crain, exploring the merits of vanilla versus liquid staking. This debate tackled fundamental questions about balancing network security with token holder flexibility.

Local vs. Cloud: The Infrastructure Dilemma

Day 2 opened with an engaging debate on "Control or Convenience: The Clash Between Local Apps and Cloud Services," featuring Michelle (Mosh) Lee of IPFS & Filecoin and Andreas Tsamados of Fileverse, moderated by Rotki's Lefteris Karapetsas. This session tackled one of the most practical yet philosophical questions facing blockchain adoption: the balance between decentralized principles and user accessibility.

MEV Mitigation: Protocol vs. Application Layer

A highlight of Day 2 was the technical debate on Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) featuring Felix Leupold of CoW Swap and Tomasz K. Stańczak of Nethermind, moderated by ChainSafe's gregthegreek.eth. This session dove deep into one of blockchain's most pressing technical challenges: where and how to implement MEV protections.

Last but not least, the onchain news platform Kiwi News is hosting a writing competition for DevConflict with a total of 1,500 xDai in the prize pool. Submit your review of the event to Kiwi News and potentially earn xDai along the way.

Looking Forward

DevConflict has set a new standard for blockchain industry events, demonstrating how structured debate and prediction markets can be combined to address complex technical and philosophical questions. The diversity of topics - from technical protocol decisions to user experience considerations and MEV protection strategies - showcases the industry's evolution beyond purely technical concerns to addressing practical implementation challenges while maintaining security and fairness in the ecosystem. Massive thank you to all that made DevConflict possible! Be on the lookout for the next DevConflict event (hint: Spring 2025 in Berlin).

The combination of DevConflict's structured debates, Devcon's technical presentations, and immediate hackathon follow-through created a powerful narrative about the maturation of the Ethereum ecosystem and its readiness to tackle both technical and social challenges ahead. Gnosis is a proud contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem and a committed steward of its future. See you all at the next Devcon in 2026!

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