# Post devcon5 thoughts

## Leads

### MakerDAO
Talked with Nadia (business developer) about the differences between sidechains and layer-2 chains, and why they should run DAI on the Leap network. Ideally, they can sponsor work on our network. I can reach her by email. Tim and I also know Maria (from Ethcc) that now works at MakerDAO.

They have [Development Grants](https://community-development.makerdao.com/grants) that might be interesting for us.

I think this can be a nice opportunity to have some extra funding for improving our network setup. And eventually for them to drop xDAI :sweat_smile:

Actionable Items™:
- Estimate the amount of work to have the network running 4 nodes.
- Estimate the amount of value that the Leap Network can handle:
- QoS and liveliness of the network.
- How ready are exit market makers.
- ?
- Writing a proposal to get a grant.
- Follow up with Nadia (I guess all proposals follow the same process anyway, but still having a reference person is good).

### Kickback
I've talked with Makoto from kickback.events about onboarding new users to kickback. I've been talking on how everything is cheaper and faster with plasma, but he said that the transaction fee and speed are not a big hurdle for them. Their problem is onboarding people that don't hold cryptocurrency.

I had a chat with Johann to discuss some ideas.
- Integrate kickback events with pop-up economies (apparently kickback folks have talked to Austin about that, nothing finalized until now). This would require fast confirmation time.
- New non-crypto users can RSVP to an event with some pre-allocated tokens, and redeem them once at the event.

I think we can try to work with them, does anyone know if they have funds to invest in this kind of things? In general, they seem to have a problem with onboarding, and I'm wondering if not having fees on the leap network can help in any way.

### Status
We talked to them extensively, I have also some extra key-cards. I still have some doubts that have not been eradicated.

### Ethereum Galaxy (game)
I've [complained](https://twitter.com/vrde/status/1182112912493596672) about the Ethereum Galaxy game. TBH this game triggered me **a lot**. It was just a web app running on a custom backend, and instead of contract calls it was talking to a custom API. I agree it's a pain to do something fully decentralized, but that's the challenge. I'm at devcon5 to see a paradigm shift. I briefly talked with Joseph from the Ethereum Foundation on how to participate and get selected to make a game for devcon6, he told me he wants to have an open program where others can submit their ideas.

### DunningK from the Ethereum Foundation
Nice chat with Evgeni and DunningK. Ethereum Foundation likes how LeapDAO is focusing on real use-cases and delivers real products. Dunning seems interested also in the integration Johann did with Colony + reputation leaps. Everything good with them.

## General(izing) thoughts
*Where I don't bring facts but feelings.*

I think devcon5 was split between:
- people who care about decentralization
- people who care about promoting their company

Most of the people in the first group, whenever I mentioned "layer-2" or other related keywords, were really cheerful and happy, like "yeah guys you are fighting for the right cause". There were many talks about layer-2, and I feel that we are not the only ones thinking this is the step between Eth1 and Eth2.

The second group of people is generally not aware of the difference between a sidechain and layer-2. I have the impression they are keen to wait for Eth2, because layer-2 is too difficult to understand (tbh Eth2 is not easy). Anyway, once explained the difference between the two, they tend to agree on the value of a layer-2 chain. Still, they don't care much about decentralization or security.

A big selling point about sidechains: people can move from the Ethereum Mainnet to xDAI by just deploying the same contract to another endpoint. It's as easy as modifying one line to your `truffle-config.js`. Sidechains are easy to understand, it's "Ethereum but faster/cheaper", but people often overlook the security of those networks, and that creating one takes a lot of effort (finding node operators, setting up governance and such).

On the other side, working on an UTXO model instead of an accounting one makes things more difficult from the development side, I guess there must be a good reason for a business to adopt spending conditions instead of running on a sidechain.

The problem is that more and more people are OK in having a hybrid architecture, where most of the stuff is done by proprietary API that is eventually talking to the chain. (There was a presentation about this.)

I'd like to see more and more developers using layer-2 networks, but for now what I see is too much responsibility given to the developer of the contract and to the client in terms of data storage.

### LeapDAO can be a key player for onboarding "regular" users
Definitely not a new concept, but I think plasma has the potential to make onboarding easy for regular users. There was a nice talk about [layer2 design patterns and usability](https://devcon.org/agenda?talk=recT1ul7SF3oSoYOR) by Beltran Berrocal (unfortunately I cannot find the video recording). I gave him an introduction on what LeapDAO is working on, and how we are onboarding people with popup economies/games/democracies. In his talk, he talked about the different phases a user goes through: onboarding, using the system, exiting. He stressed the fact that regular user don't understand or just don't care about the technology itself. If you have a token in a layer-2 network, let's say PDAI, it's definitely not trivial to explain that as a user you need to exit those PDAI to DAI so you can use them elsewhere. And waiting 3.5 days on average is too much. Or even confirmation time is something not obvious for a regular user.

IMO most of those issues can be mitigated by good UX, for example paper wallets + burner wallet is a good combo to start. There is still the basic issue that in order to use BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY™ a user have to pay, but with spending conditions the smart contract is paying the fees. Maybe the right place to onboard people is the meatspace, where you meet people and sell them something for fiat, and they get their tokens.

### Challenge vs Zero Knowledge
Some people like the zero knowledge model more than the challenge one. ZK-rollups and stuff like this.

### My philosophy
I think the killer app for blockchain is anything that's local.

I like this tweet by Taylor Monahan:

- https://twitter.com/tayvano_/status/1184668115889573888