7 O'Clock Labs: Direct dialogue with major public chains in the industry, discussing new developments in the new era

On April 13, 2022, a Twitter Space themed "New era of public blockchain" hosted by 7 O'Clock Labs held a heated discussion for two and a half hours, achieving great success. This Twitter Space was moderated by Kevin, a partner at 7 O'Clock Capital, and featured heavyweight guests from various public chains, including Wilson, the head of AVALANCHE Asia; Dafeng Guo, a board member of the EOS Network Foundation; Herbert, the head of DFINITY Asia; Vic, the technical advisor for OASIS in China; and Steve, the head of WAVES China.

Today, besides Ethereum, public chains are flourishing, with more teams eager to develop new public chains. In the era of blockchain development, public chains have always been a hot topic in the industry. As the research and investment arm of 7 O'Clock Capital, 7 O'Clock Labs continues to pay attention to the development of public chains. This discussion also explored the opportunities and challenges of public chain development with the guests, as well as how to integrate with hot areas like the metaverse. It is well known that in the past two years, various sectors of blockchain have developed rapidly, from DeFi, NFT, to the metaverse and Web 3. As the foundation of blockchain, where are the breakthroughs and development opportunities for public chains?

Wilson, the head of AVALANCHE Asia, mentioned: The issues surrounding public chains have always revolved around scalability, speed, security, and convenience. For Avalanche, the unique Avalanche consensus mechanism lays the foundation for some basic characteristics, with DAG replacing linear structures to achieve low latency, high speed, and large-scale capabilities.

Currently, the operation of over 1,400 nodes also represents a guarantee of security. In terms of scalability and interoperability, public chains, including Ethereum, are currently facing this issue, which will remain a focus for a long time to come. Our subnet provides a breakthrough approach, being relatively independent yet collaborative, ensuring security while allowing for maximum customization.

Dafeng Guo, a board member of the EOS Network Foundation, stated: In the construction of Web 3.0, optimizing the performance of public chains is crucial to accommodate hundreds of millions of users and achieve the user experience of the Web 2.0 era. The EOS network has been running for four years, and its high TPS and stability ensure the smooth operation of dApps. Additionally, attracting more Web 2.0 developers is also extremely important, so efforts must be made to lower the development threshold for blockchain. EOS is currently accelerating the realization of EVM compatibility, which is the best way to attract them. As far as I know, EOS EVM is about to go live.

Herbert, the head of DFINITY Asia, mentioned: The rise of Web3 in Q3 2021 shocked the entire industry. To create a true Web3 dApp, a trinity of smart contracts, network front-end, and decentralized storage/computation is required. DFINITY began deploying these matters back in 2016.

Steve, the head of WAVES China, pointed out: Currently, the professionalism in the blockchain industry is gradually increasing, and competition is becoming fierce, with sectors becoming increasingly segmented. In such an environment, what public chains need to do is: on one hand, ensure EVM compatibility to better integrate the Ethereum ecosystem with their own ecosystem; on the other hand, continuously iterate to improve underlying performance, attracting more excellent developers to co-develop within the ecosystem.
All guests discussed the directions public chains should strive to develop. Now that the direction is clear, what challenges will arise during the development process?

Wilson said: If each blockchain is considered a city, then currently the paths between cities are still too few, and some cities only have the most basic ordinary roads. Some cities have reached a bottleneck in capacity, while others are still seeking investment. This is the biggest problem at present; we hope to create a world that is sufficiently interconnected, where free exchange can occur. Whether enhancing resource circulation or expanding outreach to attract more users, these are the issues that public chains need to address.

Dafeng mentioned: Attracting more developers and establishing incentive policies to encourage these developers to build projects for ecological construction is a significant challenge for public chain development. I personally believe that a good solution is to attract more Web 2.0 developers into the construction of Web 3.0.

The EOS Network Foundation is also following this approach, helping developers build teams and start projects through an ecological startup fund; there is also special funding support, and projects that meet standards can receive it. On the other hand, I want to emphasize lowering the developer threshold. EOS is built using WebAssembly, and EOS's EVM compatibility will also operate the entire EVM within WebAssembly, allowing us to support more developer languages, so they don't have to start building products from scratch.

Herbert stated: The current challenges in public chain development are: first, to integrate more with the real economy. ICP is still in the early stages in this regard, but more and more projects are starting to use ICP's stack technology to serve traditional enterprise clients. Second, attracting more traditional web developers to join; ICP has launched many courses for non-crypto developers, making it easy for developers to learn and transition to Web3 through our SDK. Third, gaining more users from the traditional internet; identity verification no longer requires users to use public-private key pairs for authentication but instead uses biometric technology from mobile devices.

This lowers the barrier for traditional web users to adopt Web3. Fourth, further decentralization is needed to reduce reliance on centralized platforms. DFINITY is working closely with the community to continually decentralize the Internet Computer. In the long run, decentralization and large-scale adoption are two sustainable competitive advantages.

Vic discussed: I believe the challenges can be divided into two parts. The first issue is how we attract developers to create more phenomenal products within the public chain ecosystem. The development of public chains relies on applications to attract users: innovation in applications, high APY, and GameFi allow users to earn returns, and the applications within the public chain are key to attracting users. The second issue is the security of projects built on public chains. Major incidents can have devastating impacts on public chain users, funds, and reputation. If a public chain fails to seize opportunities or choose the right sector, negative events that affect the entire public chain ecosystem may occur.

Steve mentioned: Currently, the external understanding of public chains and even blockchain is still lacking. To make blockchain widely and proficiently used like mobile internet, a significant challenge lies in education, driving the next generation of technology to become mainstream. This requires industry veterans, leaders, and ecological contributors to invest considerable time and effort to continuously update and iterate the underlying public chain and projects.
Undoubtedly, the development of public chains still has a long way to go. During this period, the metaverse will also continue to develop. So how are public chains empowering the metaverse? Or can the non-blockchain-native concept of the metaverse potentially change the landscape of public chains?

Wilson stated: In fact, a true metaverse should be a combination of AR, VR, builders, and different networks. Simply saying that a project is a metaverse is very limited. The concept of the metaverse is vast, so vast that no single blockchain can currently support it, and even combined, they cannot form it. However, it is certain that the immutable characteristics of blockchain naturally align with the metaverse. Whether the metaverse can change the public chain landscape is still unknown, but it indeed provides direction for the development of public chains. Avalanche hopes to form a large L1 aggregate through subnets, and if it develops to a sufficient scale, it should bring us the prototype of the metaverse.

Dafeng believes: Many public chains possess the infrastructure needed for the development of the metaverse, so I would like to explore whether the metaverse can change the current development landscape of public chains. I think it depends on whether public chains can find killer applications to retain incoming users. Just like many people once thought Yahoo was the internet, for new users entering the space, the emergence of a killer application might represent their version of the metaverse, and if this killer application develops deeply, it could very well have the power to disrupt the public chain landscape; this possibility certainly exists.

Herbert stated: Public chains indeed need to empower the metaverse. In this regard, DFINITY has hired executives from Unity Technologies to lead the development of Web3 games. Game + DeFi will be the two verticals to watch in the ICP ecosystem in 2022.

Vic mentioned: In fact, each public chain is a part of the metaverse. I believe the true underlying infrastructure of the metaverse is still based on NFTs. The metaverse projects we can see at this stage are actually running based on NFTs. Not every game project is on-chain; the on-chain parts are actually NFTs that trade directly with each other, and characters and items are also presented in the form of NFTs. In the future, various NFTs will need to achieve cross-chain interoperability and circulation, so the native cross-chain bridges or protocols based on this chain could play a role in changing the entire metaverse infrastructure. Just like the Layer Zero cross-chain protocol we recently saw, which can achieve cross-chain circulation of NFTs and assets, gradually building the entire metaverse ecosystem.

Steve mentioned: Public chains can empower the metaverse in two ways: on one hand, by handling the flow and recording of assets within the metaverse; on the other hand, by storing some on-chain data. This places relatively high demands on the underlying public chains regarding high concurrency, performance, storage, NFT rule perfection, and cross-chain capabilities.
It is evident that the development of blockchain sectors is mutually reinforcing. With ETH 2.0 about to be launched, is it an opportunity or a challenge for other public chains?

Wilson stated: First of all, the goal of Ethereum 2.0 is still to become a smart contract platform, and once achieved, it can only ensure that it becomes better in terms of security, sustainability, and scalability. The goal of Avalanche is to become the center of blockchain or L0, helping various types of projects build their own blockchains and interact conveniently with each other. For public chains, Ethereum undoubtedly possesses strong innovation and serves as a reference, but they are not completely competing in the same vertical track. Whether it's the launch of 2.0 or the future development of Avalanche, we hope to bring new changes to the blockchain world.

Dafeng believes: ETH 2.0 will definitely be successfully launched, but the process may be quite chaotic. This is due to the large-scale migration of underlying consensus algorithms, which we have not experienced before, and the numerous stakeholders involved in the entire process. The competition among stakeholders will lead to chaos and uncertainty. However, a multi-chain landscape will be the norm for future development. Therefore, each public chain should find its own positioning. For EOS, high TPS will still be a focus. Additionally, I believe there will be significant development in the cross-chain bridge sector in the future. However, the cross-chain bridge should ultimately not lead to a monopoly; users can choose based on their needs, desired efficiency, and costs.

Herbert mentioned: The launch of ETH 2.0 presents an opportunity for ICP. Currently, POW appears to be relatively inefficient, and sharding is inevitable. This is essentially POS and subnets on ICP. As the direct integration of ETH and ICP progresses, smart contracts on ETH and ICP will interact with each other, achieving true interoperability in a Web3 style—something bridges cannot accomplish. ICP is not compatible with EVM; it is a general-purpose application blockchain, not just for DeFi/NFT. Whether Ethereum can successfully upgrade to 2.0 does not actually affect the pace of the Internet Computer. ETH 2.0 will threaten some L1s that currently outperform ETH 1.0 on certain performance metrics. The flaws of Ethereum provide them with room for development. When ETH transitions to 2.0, these L1s will need to work harder to defend their value.

Vic mentioned: The upgrade to ETH 2.0 is undoubtedly a significant challenge for every public chain. However, the current development and competition among public chains do not hinge on underlying facilities and infrastructure but rather on whether the public chain can find excellent developers, or whether the development experience on this public chain is simple, comfortable, low-cost, and highly incentivized, thus stimulating the development of innovative applications. Therefore, I believe that the launch of ETH 2.0 will only lead to significant improvements in TPS and performance, but if we can better upgrade the development experience for developers within our ecosystem and find more excellent and suitable projects, it could actually be a good opportunity for developers to challenge ETH.

Steve mentioned: ETH 2.0 is both an opportunity and a challenge. During the launch of ETH 2.0, how public chains can interact with Ethereum and how to plan the future relationship between public chains and Ethereum becomes particularly important.

After two and a half hours of heated discussion, all guests expressed their understanding and views on the current development and challenges of public chains, as well as how to pursue new developments and integrate with new blockchain hotspots and innovations. We can also clearly understand the current state of public chain development, key focuses, and existing advantages. Public chains are an extremely important sector and topic in the exploration of the blockchain industry, and 7 O'Clock Labs will continue to pay attention to the development of public chains, working with partners to contribute to the progress of the industry.