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University students reveal new Web3 solutions at ETHDenver 2023

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1000’s of attendees not too long ago gathered at Denver’s Nationwide Western Complicated for ETHDenver 2023 to be taught in regards to the present and future cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

John Paller, founder and government steward of ETHDenver, informed Cointelegraph that 15,000 ticketholders attendedr ETHDenver’s primary occasion.

Whereas ETHDenver attracted a various crowd, many college students from main universities attended the occasion, showcasing new options to advance the crypto and Web3 sector.

Devs deal with UX, safety and privateness

Gil Rosen, president of the Stanford Blockchain Accelerator — a program that connects Stanford College college students and alumni founders within the blockchain house — informed Cointelegraph that he believes present Web3 know-how platforms are usually non-performant. “These platforms typically lack privateness preservation, are extraordinarily difficult to develop on (particularly advanced functions), and are much more advanced to make use of,” he mentioned.

Given this, Rosen talked about that pupil attendees at ETHDenver 2023 appeared to be targeted on constructing developer instruments, and options to simplify person expertise and privateness. “These options will allow future functions to be simply constructed and totally succesful. That is what the groups which might be a part of the Stanford Blockchain Accelerator are primarily targeted on this yr,” he mentioned.

Pupil builders at ETHDenver 2023. Picture credit score: Tim Gillies

For instance, Rosen famous that Stanford’s “0xPass” group was current at ETHDenver 2023 to reveal how account abstraction could possibly be used sooner or later to allow Web3 wallets to be externally managed by good contract code. Such a function would imply that pockets homeowners would now not must log off on each transaction. The launch of the new ERC-4337 standard is ready to allow use instances like account abstraction.

Kun Peng, an adviser for 0xPass and a Stanford lecturer on Web3 entrepreneurship, informed Cointelegraph that whereas a number of tasks had been demonstrating how the ERC-4337 customary could possibly be used for account abstraction, 0xPass is exclusive as a result of it has constructed a software program growth package (SDK) to simplify account abstraction implementation. He elaborated:

“This SDK will present decentralized apps with a considerably higher onboarding and authentication expertise. Because of this, the Web3 market will increase to ‘normies’ who don’t need to use wallets with non-public keys. Such a function will enable the usage of social logins for authentication, the identical login for a number of wallets, password restoration and extra.”

Whereas enabling higher pockets experiences has change into important, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) had been additionally closely mentioned at ETHDenver 2023. For instance, the Modulus Labs Stanford group spoke at zkDAY Denver — a aspect occasion targeted on ZK-proofs — about zero-knowledge approaches to confirm synthetic intelligence (AI) fashions. As AI turns into extra extensively used, verifying accurate information using cryptography will change into essential.

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Ryan Cao, chief know-how officer of Modulus Labs, informed Cointelegraph that functions constructed on the prevailing smart-contract ecosystem are restricted of their capabilities. He defined that Modulus Labs had constructed an answer to allow offline computation to be verified as conforming to sure AI traits.

Ryan Cao, chief know-how officer of Modulus Labs at zkDAY Denver. Supply: Modulus Labs

For instance, Cao defined that Modulus had constructed a proof-of-concept that may be a totally autonomous, on-chain buying and selling bot powered by AI that may make predictions in regards to the value of Ether (ETH). In response to Cao, this might allow cryptographically honest AI decision-making. He mentioned: 

“At zkDAY we demonstrated an on-chain AI sport known as ‘Leela vs. the World,’ the place gamers stake to compete towards a hyper-intelligent AI chess bot. The sport is totally on-chain, and the choices of the AI bot are fastidiously verified by cryptography. In different phrases, gamers can guess with or towards the sport figuring out that nobody can secretly shift the end result towards one’s favor.”

Along with privateness functions utilizing ZK-proofs, contributors demonstrated a variety of safety options. Tianzuo Zhang, a grasp’s pupil at Tsinghua College in China and a pupil ambassador for the Algorand Basis’s college program, informed Cointelegraph he’s constructing a safety defender utility to mitigate the harm that decentralized applications (DApps) might face from varied safety threats.

Referred to as “HoneyDApp,” Zhang shared that the undertaking was one of many winners of the “OpenZeppelin Bounty” competitors, which was hosted throughout ETHDenver’s BUIDLWeek.

In response to Zhang, HoneyDApp makes use of Defender OpenZeppelin — a safe operations platform for good contracts — to detect and determine assaults towards DApps. As well as, Zhang famous that the “honeypot” protocol might lure attackers earlier than they will trigger any important hurt.

Such an answer could also be important, as Zhang defined that the dangers of cyberattacks and vulnerabilities have gotten extra frequent with the rise of Web3 DApps. “HoneyDApp turns into essential, because it supplies a proactive safety resolution that may detect, reply to and defend towards assaults. It limits harm and reduces danger to the undertaking,” he mentioned.

College students targeted on Web3

Whereas many college students demonstrated options at ETHDenver this yr, college packages targeted on Web3 development will probably push innovation ahead.

For instance, Polkadot — a Web3-focused blockchain undertaking — will launch its third iteration of the “Polkadot Blockchain Academy” (PBA) with the College of California, Berkeley, from July 10 by way of Aug. 10, 2023.

Pauline Cohen Vorms, head of the Polkadot Blockchain Academy, informed Cointelegraph that PBA has beforehand carried out programs on the College of Cambridge and the College of Buenos Aires. She famous that that is the primary time PBA programs will likely be taught at a college in the USA.

Polkadot Blockchain Academy on the College of Buenos Aires. Supply: Polkadot Blockchain Academy

In response to Cohen Vorms, PBA goals to teach and help the following era of blockchain engineers and builders. She added that PBA’s curriculum is led by Gavin Wooden, founding father of Polkadot and a co-founder of Ethereum. “PBA doesn’t solely deal with the Polkadot ecosystem. Our intent is to offer a powerful basis of blockchain and Web3 that may be utilized to completely different tasks.” 

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Whereas it’s tough to foretell what college students will deal with constructing at PBA in Berkeley, Cohen Vorms shared that programs will deal with cryptography fundamentals, governance choices, interoperability between blockchain networks and instruments obtainable to assist builders construct their very own blockchains and parachains.

Rosen added that college students at Stanford are primarily targeted on constructing infrastructure, developer instruments, and safety and analytics mitigation instruments for institutional and enterprise use instances, all whereas specializing in the simplification of the person expertise. He added:

“Most builders in the present day are constructing for the 90% of present Web3 customers and builders whose use instances had been typically exchanges, decentralized finance and social nonfungible tokens. However these will probably characterize 10% of future customers. Subsequently I imagine that pupil builders must deal with the broader use instances now, and never be as targeted on the present person base that was interested in the final bull market.”