Here it is:
Here it is, time for a short essay. People in Denver, things in Denver, and me in Denver.
As usual, I want to make a disclaimer. I speak for myself, not for the company. I write what I want to write, that's it.
To be honest, I arrived quite early this time, unlike last time when I didn't come. But I arrived on the 22nd. At that time, it felt like half of the plane was filled with people from the community. The girl sitting next to me mistook me for someone else. And so, my journey at EthDenver began. Overall, I didn't put much effort into attending events or doing business development this time. The atmosphere was very chill, like a large gathering of online friends. I got to meet some devrel friends and a few shilling friends from Twitter. Honestly, it's unlikely that we'll see such a large gathering of online friends again this year, lol. Although we still have to hack, right? How can we not participate in such an interesting event! Okay, enough with the jokes, let's get to the point. Let me talk about a few aspects: the events, the vibe, the direction, and myself. Let's start with myself.
In a sense, this week marks my 2-year anniversary in the community, haha. So I took this opportunity to reflect on the past. In the past two years, I have been troubled by the idea of making money. I don't really care about the direction or the investment return of a project. I simply focus on whether the project is interesting and whether it is doing something good. I am a laid-back person. I don't invest or trade cryptocurrencies. It's too tiring. I prefer writing code and being happy. This mindset is probably a reaction to the pressure I faced in college when I had to work part-time. For me, as long as I have enough to live on, I don't have many desires. I get clothes from projects, I cook my own food, and I have a place to live. I may have entered a kind of freedom earlier than others, so I value spiritual resonance more. So this article doesn't have any advice. For me, I only focus on things that interest me, and I don't have a strong desire to make money. What you see is what you get. It's a good thing to have fewer desires in life. For me, I hope to keep doing what I love until I'm old, hahaha.
This time, I mainly focused on my own activities and attended a few events that I thought would be very helpful. Thanks to Near's Decentralized Summit, I got to meet half of the people I wanted to catch up with. I also met some others along the way. Compared to last year in Turkey, where there were 3-5 events every day, this time it was much more relaxed. The swag was also much more limited. I only got less than 20 items. I just didn't have the energy for it. Meeting old friends was the main focus. Speaking of swag, the bags from Chainbase were really cool, the pink hoodie from Ora Protocol looked great, and SheFi's hat was awesome! Going back to the topic of events, this time I didn't focus much on public chains and restaking. After careful consideration, I think it's better to focus on AI and DevRel. I met a lot of friends from the community this time, lol. It's funny how Americans don't like going out, but it's easier to meet my devrel friends at EthDenver. I'm very happy to meet peers who are deeply involved in the industry and are willing to share selflessly. There's a strange sense of closeness because we all have the same worries! Working as DevRel is definitely hard but exciting. I attended some good events this time, like the DevRel gather by Encoded Club, the classes by Nadar and Yaz, and NPC Day. I'm really happy to see Benny, Jayden, and SheFi doing so well, as well as many other old friends. I have to say, I just checked and it seems like I registered for more than 20 events, but I actually only attended 5-6, lol. It's fate that you get to see me.
This time in Denver, there's another important aspect: the vibe. Honestly, the vibe in the US is quite different from what I imagined. As someone who is at the intersection of Chinese and Western cultures, I often feel confused. How to do things, how to communicate. It's not about which culture is better or worse, I really like the vibe in Denver. Encoded Club, Developer DAO, SheFi, DevRel, EdgeCity, and Zuzalu. It's obvious that everyone is playing in their own little circles. It's hard to explain in concrete terms what exactly this vibe is, but if you play Unlonely, Zora, or Farcaster, then you know what I'm talking about. Continuing with the vibe, let's talk about projects. I'm all about zero paid ads, only vibing. I have high hopes for IYK, Story Protocol, 6551, Base, Farcaster, and Unlonely for sure, but it's still early with AI x Web3. I got 4 IYK shirts this time, fucking lit. Don't tell me it's easy and stupid. The social aspect of Buildthon was played out by them, and it was an effective ice breaker. Story Protocol is really bullish, a new way of releasing IP assets. Their vision and what they want to do align with what I thought two years ago, and there's no reason not to support them. TBA, omnichain TBA, this narrative has just begun, from April last year to now, it's been humble and steady. The ecosystem around 6551 is gradually taking shape, with Story + 6551 + lens, and then lens fully open, I expect to see some cool combinations. Base holds Zora and Farcaster, and now it's a gathering place for degens. I predict a combination of Story + Base + Zora will be interesting. Farcaster doesn't need much explanation, it's a degens' playground (but I don't know if Don has been sweating recently, lens can directly unleash its power).
Finally, let's talk about my old home, AI x Web3. All I can say is that we're still very early, really early. The mainstream directions are computing power, data, models, and zkML. Computing power, there are almost 50 projects in this field, but do we really need that much computing power? Does Web3 need someone to train Sora for OpenAI? I'm really curious about this. Next is data, mainly data labeling. There are many label-to-earn projects now, and I don't have much to say about this. It's reasonable for everyone to click and earn money, but as independent individuals, we can bring reasonable data labeling. ScaleAI is a black box, and we don't know their labeling rules. As for models, I don't think putting models on the chain is a good idea, but as a core product, there are many things that can be combined. Lastly, let's talk about zkML. It still feels early, we're still looking for applications. (Or maybe I'm just talking nonsense, you guys can judge). But it's clear that the timeliness of AI x Web3 is constantly being refreshed. We're seeing more and more projects entering this space, but there really aren't many people who truly understand AI. The concept of MoE, luckily our tech lead explained it to me, my previous understanding was completely wrong. But I believe in the combination of AI agents and blockchain. Quoting Chris Dixon's words in "read, write, own," "blockchain is a computer." Smart contracts as permanent programs running on it and AI are a perfect match. We will see more and more projects combining AI agents and blockchain. Finally, I want to say that AI is the epitome of centralization. From data collection to computing power to training, AI has made such rapid progress because of centralization. So think carefully about it.
As for directions, I didn't attend any panels, lol. I can't listen to children anymore, I can't take notes like I did last year. It's just impossible. Also, I don't pay much attention to many directions. The reason is simple, I'm not a VC, I don't do investments, and I don't have that much energy. I think panels often don't have the same effect as one-on-one conversations. But this time, after chatting with people, I realized that L3 is a trend. Let me talk about my thesis first. I have always believed that appchains are necessary. We need a separate environment for dapps, where we can increase customization and inherit the features of L2/L1 while ensuring security. I suddenly thought of something else, Nadar joining Eigen. For those who don't know about DevRel, Nadar was previously the Director of DevRel at Arava (Lens and Aave). He is a representative figure in the DevRel world, especially good at applications. Nadar joining Eigen is probably to fill the gap in Eigen AVS. More AVS applications. And Ritual (Decentralized AI) and Fluent (zkWASM) are also collaborating with EigenLayer. From this, it can be seen that a part of the focus will be allocated to AVS in the future. Let's think deeply about why Eigen needs DevRel. In theory, Jessy as the ecosystem lead should be enough, this is just my speculation.
I not only judged one hack but also participated in one. I didn't expect to experience the EthGlobal situation at EthDenver. I went back at 11 pm yesterday, had dinner, and saw in the group chat that someone would be on duty overnight. So I went back to the venue at 12:30 am to debug. I've been working on it ever since. The hype of Build is rolling inside me. I initially thought I would just write a little every day, but in the end, it turned into a 36-hour EthGlobal experience. The main reason is that building is fun, but seeing transactions revert doesn't make me happy! So I stayed up all night on Friday and I'm happy that it finally worked with the help of the Story team. This time, I built a project to help open-source models. Currently, open-source models don't have effective positive incentives and resources. There are also many open-source projects that are disappearing outside of AI models (I'm talking about you, Type/Chain). At the same time, we can consider fine-tuning models as a form of derivative work, which simplifies things a lot. We need a method to prove ownership and trace usage. Story Protocol is a good fit for this. Traditional IP is also an abstract concept, but mapping it to the blockchain allows for better manipulation and visualization, which is one of the most beautiful aspects of digitizing assets. So I tried this. I'm very happy and grateful to my boss and colleagues for their assistance. Hackathons are part of the vibe too, work hard play hard. (If you want to catch up on the concept of Story Protocol, feel free to reach out to me, dog head).
Denver is interesting. I met many interesting Uber drivers. One driver had 7 children and 9 grandchildren, which made me sweat. I marveled at how the US can attract talent from all over the world while maintaining a high birth rate. Some drivers asked me some Web3 questions, and I suspect the biggest alpha is in the hands of Uber drivers, lol. Maybe I should become an Uber driver at EthDenver next year. The US is ultimately the best place for vibe, a vibe that you can't experience anywhere else. It's hard to describe, but once you feel it, you might understand. Hanging out with GOATs is so fun!
Finally, catching up is really enjoyable. I met many, many online friends (but deep down, I'm like, why don't Americans like to travel internationally? It's really annoying). But I'm happy to see that my favorite friends are doing well. I hope to stay true to myself next year. Let's vibe.
I think I didn't forget anything, but if I did, oh well, hahaha.