<style> .reveal { font-size: 28px; } section { text-align: left; } </style> # Investment Opportunities in Ethereum Roadmap HashKey Capital Dec 2024 --- ## About Us - Global in influence and crypto-native, HashKey Capital is a digital asset and blockchain leader helping institutions, founders and talents advance the blockchain industries. - HashKey Capital, one of the largest crypto funds and the earliest institutional investor in blockchains, has managed over US$1 billion in client assets since its inception, with over 500 investments in infrastructure, tools, and applications since 2015. - With our deep knowledge across the blockchain ecosystem, HashKey Capital has built a robust network connecting founders, investors, developers, and regulators. --- ## Topics - What we have seen in the Ethereum Roadmap - What opportunities in the Roadmap --- ## Roadmap - The Merge  Staking & Consensus: - [x] PoS - [ ] Single-Slot Finality: - Finality time: ~12.8 min(2 epochs) -> 12s(1 slot) - Quicker confirmation for based rollups - Multiple SSF solutions are being discussed, still needs time --- ## Roadmap - The Merge - [ ] Distributed Validators - Lower the barrier of 32 ETH - Being discussed together with SSF - [ ] Secret Leader Election - Impossible for outsiders to know who is the next validator that propose block to prevent DDoS - Already have design, but not in implementation yet --- ## Roadmap - The Surge  For the rollups: - [x] EIP-4844 - [ ] PeerDAS - Lowering the storage requirements for nodes - Design & implementations are still being discussed. --- - [ ] Cross-rollup interactions - Solve the liquidity fragmentation of rollups; Improve UX for cross-rollup interactions - Several designs are being discussed, including: Unifying addresses, Smart contract wallet for cross-rollup txs, (RIP-7755), Shared Sequencer, Based Rollup --- ## Roadmap - The Scourge  Solve MEV & staking problems - [ ] Inclusion list - Builder decentralization: - Rn, most blocks are built by beaverbuild.org, Titan - Solutions are being discussed. Inclusion list, Builder Net --- ## Roadmap - The Scourge - [ ] Decentralize liquid staking - Centralization in LST will harm security of Ethereum - MEV is also mainly collected by the big LST operators - Still in early dicussion. Solutions include decentralized LST, set cap for LST, MEV burn in ePBS --- ## Roadmap - The Verge  - [ ] Verkle tree - Less storage than Merkle tree -> more decentralized for nodes - Development already finished. Pushing to mainnet in 2025, but got some oppositions from rollup communities --- ## Roadmap - The Purge  - [ ] Solving state explosion problem - EIP-4444: remove historical data (older than 1 year); the data could be archived in storage network like IPFS - State expiry: set temporary addresses, and the data could be removed after the addresses are used - Being discussed now --- ## Roadmap - The Purge - [ ] Techinical Debt - Solve many techinical debt which involved since early days - Include: remove self-destruct, optimize gas, EVM precompile, etc. - Ongoing --- ## Roadmap - The Splurge  - [ ] Improve UX - EOF: more friendly for devs - AA: EIP-7702 (See more in our previous [report](https://medium.com/hashkey-capital-insights/account-abstraction-the-key-to-enhancing-the-blockchain-interaction-experience-58f00d99a215)) - EOF & AA related EIP will be included in the upcoming hardfork; while others (like VDF) is still being discussed --- ## Bonus: Updates from DevCon 7 Beam Chain - long-term improvement proposal for the Ethereum consensus layer - solve existing limitations, clean up technical debt by ZK and other innovative techs  --- Beam Chain: - Block Production - Censorship Resistance - Isolated Validators - Faster Slots - Increase Gas Limit - Staking - Smarter Issuance - Smaller Validators - Faster Finality - Cryptography - Chain Snarkification - Quantum Security - Strong Randomness ---  But still need ~5 years to deliver (see ya in next cycle). --- ## Cryptography - ZK: - ZK is still a very hot topic in both Chiang Mai & Bangkok - ZKVM is the major topic. Lots of dev works around some implementations like like SP1 - ZK applications are also being dicussed, e.g. zkTLS, ZKEmail, etc. - iO: - Indistinguishability Obfuscation, a.k.a. "Crown Jewel of Cryptography" - Probably we can see some very early iO projects --- # Investment Opportunities --- Many trade-offs between decentralization and scalability. Opportunities are within in the trade-offs. --- ## Opportunities - Cross-Rollups: - Shared Sequencer, Based Rollup - Intents related-projects ERC-7683 - Also can be combined with EIP-7702 to have a sophisticated cross-rollup action --- ## Opportunities - Wallet & other infras - Wallet UX will have many updates in the next a few months (EIP-7702, Preconf) - Projects on the tx supplychain may have new opportunities & challenges (wallet, builders) --- ## Opportunities - Privacy - Probably will be a topic, like private DeFi - Used to be tricky sector (regulation, user demands) - Regulation may have many updates in near future ([OFAC exceeded authority on Tornado Cash](https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-smart-contracts-cant-sanctioned-appeals-court)) - New powerful primitives like iO may bring new applications - Storage - The storage/archive requirements after "The Purge" (EIP-4444) --- # Thanks!