The market is turbulent, but it is always the many builders who are engaged in the crypto industry that drive the cycle and the craze. In order to let more people hear the voices of these builders in front of and behind the scenes, Odaily Planet Daily launched the FAT Awards 2024 Annual Ceremony again on September 16, 2024 after a three-year absence .
This event is hosted by Odaily Planet Daily, co-hosted by Bitget, and jointly supported by ArkStream Capital, Mizu, AIAChain, CoinW, Megabit and other institutions and projects. It brings together many hard-core projects, platforms, and ecological leaders from Bitget, Arbitrum, Galxe, dYdX, Movement, ME Foundation, etc., as well as thousands of industry builders from star projects and public chains, investment institutions and well-known platforms, etc. , to find the next new direction and the next weather vane of the market in the collision of views and the confrontation of ideas.
The following are the insights of the guests carefully selected by Odaily Planet Daily during the 8-hour industry ceremony. We invite you to share your thoughts.
Mandy, founder and CEO of Odaily Planet Daily: New era, new stage, new narrative
At the opening ceremony of the FAT Awards 2024 Annual Ceremony, Mandy, founder and CEO of Odaily Planet Daily, gave a speech first. She mentioned: Welcome everyone to this years FAT Awards Forum. The FAT brand started in 2020 and aims to recognize leaders and innovators in the Web3 field. We focus on new values and new paradigms, and have been held in Beijing many times before.
The name FAT comes from Joel Monegros famous 2016 article FAT Protocols , which explores the transition from the Internet era to the blockchain era and foresees that value will be concentrated in the protocol layer and the sharing layer rather than the application layer. Although some views may be outdated, the core concepts still guide many top funds and help us understand the blockchain world.
2024 is an extraordinary year for the crypto industry - the US SEC approved the Bitcoin spot ETF, opening the door for traditional investors; Bitcoin hit an all-time high, and the Ethereum ETF was subsequently successfully approved; cryptocurrency became one of the main topics of the US presidential election. It is not difficult to see that the mainstreaming of cryptocurrency is unstoppable. At the same time, we have witnessed the rise of many new narratives and ecosystems, such as AI+ Crypto, DePin, chain abstraction and modularity. Many innovative projects and new asset classes have emerged from innovative ecosystems such as Solana, Bitcoin and TON .
Meanwhile, another major topic of discussion this year has been the lack of native growth in the industry - ETF funds seem somewhat out of touch with our limited cryptosphere; altcoins have performed poorly, and many once-hot projects have become zero-sum games; some top venture-backed projects have performed poorly after the tokens were listed, and retail investors, venture capital institutions, and exchanges seem to have become antagonistic roles. Therefore, perhaps now is a good time for us to have an in-depth discussion on industry development and narrative value: on the one hand, we hope to focus on the most influential and creative organizations and projects in this cycle to point us in the direction of the future; on the other hand, we also need to discuss together where we are now, what to expect, and what we should and can do in the face of current challenges?
I hope todays event can bring different levels of inspiration to everyone, and thank you again for coming. Please enjoy the wonderful speeches and passionate discussions brought to you by many industry experts and guests. Thank you all!
Aethir Lianchuang: DePIN hardware device Aethir Edge sales have exceeded 25,000 units
Aethir co-founder Mark said that in the new era, the demand for GPUs has skyrocketed. As the complexity of AI LLM soars, problems such as insufficient purchasing power, slow product updates, and low efficiency have gradually become prominent. Decentralized, enterprise-level GPU cloud infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of the AI and gaming industries is an effective solution to the problem.
Aethir currently provides four basic computing products to the market: AI training, AI reasoning, gaming products, and virtual machines. Taking gaming as an example, Aethirs computing products make capacity expansion cheaper based on existing technology, abstract the hardware layer, and allow general players to play all games on all kinds of devices.
In addition, Aethirs newly released DePIN hardware device Aethir Edge has five major features: faster data processing speed, factual data analysis, scalability, high cost-effectiveness, and advanced AI support. So far, its sales have exceeded 25,000. Users can use the device to operate the Aethir network to earn tokens, or mine other projects.
Galxe and Gravity co-founded: the platform has 1 million daily active users and 6,000 partner companies
As a leader in well-known applications and infrastructure platforms in the cryptocurrency industry, Charles Wayn, co-founder of Galxe and Gravity, introduced to the guests that Galxe has 1 million daily active users, 28 million interactive wallets, links to more than 100 chains, and has reached cooperation with 6,000 companies.
Currently, large-scale adoption is hindered by the fragmentation between chains. Galxe, which is positioned as a super application, and Gravity, which is positioned as an infrastructure, aim to become a springboard for the public to enter the Web3 world. The two are connected by the same token (G). G has multiple attributes such as Galxe Quests utility token, exclusive airdrops, payment for Galxe products, Gravitys gas token, the native token of Gravitys consensus layer, and the governance token of Galxe and Gravity. In addition, Charles Wayn also introduced Alva, an AI collaboration tool that assists Web3 research, trading and investment.
Galxe and Gravity co-founder Charles Wayn
Offchain Labs Co-founder and CEO: Arbitrum aims to serve millions of developers
Steven Goldfelder, co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs, recalled that building a true EVM Rollup was revolutionary. Now, Arbitrum aims to take on millions of developers through the upgraded EVM Stylus, and continue to expand the advantages of developer experience, adoption, DeFi and gaming first choice, liquidity and decentralization.
Next, Arbitrum’s specific efforts include: Stylus that supports multiple VMs (the mainnet was launched on September 3), BOLD for true decentralized proof, node performance upgrades, Timeboost for capturing MEV revenue, decentralized sorting, and decentralized ZK consensus.
Steven Goldfelder, Co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs
dYdX Foundation CEO: dYdX Chain’s cumulative transaction volume reached $225 billion
dYdX Foundation CEO Charles dHaussy highlighted to the attendees the many remarkable data achievements that dYdX has achieved in 9 months:
As of September 2024, the cumulative transaction volume of dYdX Chain reached 225 billion US dollars.
It carries 43 million USDC, has more than 140 active trading pairs, and more than 144 governance proposals.
Charles further explained: “It’s easy to list on dYdX. Just go to dydx.trade/markets/new and select the market and propose a new market.”
In addition, 70% of the tokens are still unlocked in the DYDX token economics. Starting from July 2024, the monthly emission of DYDX will be reduced by 75%.
Bitget COO: Bitget Wallet users reach 30 million, Swap transaction volume reaches 8 billion US dollars
As one of the leading exchanges that has rapidly emerged in recent years, Bitgets achievements are obvious to all.
According to Bitget COO Vugar Usi Zade at the event: “Bitget currently has over 30 million users worldwide, a daily trading volume of $10 billion, over 800 listed currencies, and a protection fund size of over $400 million.
In addition, the APR of Bitget Launchpools recent projects has performed well, including GAEE 447%, ZKS 415%, VRTX 380%, ZKF 329%, RABBIT 179%, and GRAPE 174%. The latest data of Bitget Wallet is also very objective - 30 million users, supporting more than 250,000 cryptocurrencies, and Swap transaction volume of 8 billion US dollars.
Movement co-founder Cooper: The focus of future token distribution is to reward the community
In response to the communitys concerns about Movements future development direction and token distribution, Movement co-founder Cooper said at the meeting that the focus of future token distribution is not to see how much the team can hoard, but to give us the opportunity to reward builders, KOLs, and community members. The contributions of community members are related to the success of the chain or application.
At the same time, it said that the team needs to determine how to identify the contributions of members other than developers to the network and create procedures to evaluate peoples contributions. In the previous market, the builders and all stakeholders in the ecosystem did not benefit from the network. When the network or the market became difficult, they naturally had no reason to stick with it. Therefore, giving back to the community is the most important part.
Story Protocol IPFi Director: IPFi will achieve a three-step jump of function-new token form-structuring
Bu Fan, head of Story Protocol IPFi, an intellectual property blockchain ecosystem that previously completed a $80 million Series B financing round and a total financing amount of $140 million, also gave a detailed explanation of the definition of IPFi at the event. He believes that IPFi refers to supporting financial market activities (storing and transferring asset value) in the IP field and building an open and transparent financial ecosystem.
In terms of practice, Bu Fan believes that IPFi has three stages: the first stage still retains the core goals and functions of DeFi; the second stage begins to experiment through new token forms, empowering IP with new tokens and methodologies; the third stage may develop into structured IPFi, concrete IPFi services for creators, with more derivative token forms, or develop into experimental IPFi, providing IP services with purely new mechanisms, focusing on serving the long-term ecological needs of IP.
ME Foundation Manager: MagicEden accounts for more than 80% of the transaction volume in the Ordinals and Runes fields
Matthew Szenics, manager of the ME Foundation, mentioned that MagicEden leads the NFT market in terms of data, connecting 3.4 million wallets and having a transaction volume of over $6 billion. It also accounts for more than 80% of the transaction volume of Ordinals and Runes, and there will be huge opportunities to develop the BTC market.
ME is committed to enabling all major on-chain transactions and activities, such as NFT trading, Mint, token trading, wallets and asset portfolios.
deBridgeBD head: deBridge has generated $12.4 million in revenue
At the same time, Gal Stern, head of deBridge BD, also announced the latest relevant data on the operation of the deBridge project at the meeting: while maintaining a 100% online rate and 0 security incidents, deBridge has bridged a total of US$4 billion in assets, generated US$12.4 million in revenue, connected 15 chains, and has 526,000 independent users.
At present, its ecosystem has integrated multiple infrastructures, ecological networks and application platforms such as Birdeye, Jupiter, Zeta, Banana Gun, OKX Wallet, Solflare, and BNB Chain.
Roundtable Forum on Traditional Capital Takeover vs Native Innovation Boom
Traditional capital and native innovation have always been one of the focuses of the crypto industry, and the takeover of traditional capital and the prosperity of native innovation are also complementary. Investors from well-known investment institutions such as Arkstream Capital, 1kx, Spartan Group, ABCDE Capital, SevenX Ventures, GSR, and No Capital discussed and shared the main driving forces of the current market and the subsequent development direction.
1kx Partner: ETFs will drive continued market growth and the impact on the crypto space will continue to spread
Diana Biggs, partner at 1kx, said in the roundtable discussion , “ETFs can cover any market. When I was the CEO of Valor, I found that investors usually value the convenience and compliance of traditional stock exchanges when choosing investment targets. In the European Union, crypto ETPs have been launched since 2018. Although the user base was not strong at the time, these products still provided services to users, and I think this will further promote the growth of the market.”
Finally, Diana said: In the EU, we have launched these products for quite some time. As a regulator, we have invested a lot of resources in education to help users gain more trust and confidence in financial services. I believe that the expected impact on the crypto space may not have yet been fully manifested.
Arkstream Capital Founding Partner: Meme is the price of consensus for a political movement
Meme coin, one of the “main theme tracks” of this year, attracted the main interest of Ye Su, founding partner of Arkstream Capital. He said : “The magic of Meme token is that it creates a new market that allows the issuance of assets. Meme token is the consensus price of a political movement. If someone believes in this idea, a continuous movement will be formed.”
In addition, he believes that Meme tokens have good liquidity. Although they cannot enter traditional finance, they can still be actively traded in the crypto market due to their inherent power.
Spartan Group Partner: The global economic situation is digesting challenges, and the crypto field is still full of opportunities
Melody He, partner at Spartan Group, expressed her views on the current state of the market: “Not only the crypto space, but the entire world is experiencing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – severe inflation.”
She also said, “The reality is that it will take longer for us to digest these challenges, not just in the crypto space, but also for traditional investors and technology to understand the real value proposition and respond based on user behavior. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but a good thing, because it can get back to basics a little bit.”
GSR Ventures Head: The integration of cryptocurrency and AI will promote the development of identity authentication and data management
Quynh Ho, head of venture capital at GSR, said at the roundtable forum that what makes everyone excited about the integration of cryptocurrency and AI is its ability to verify identity and data. Especially for AI-created content, how to verify AI and humans becomes a key factor, and how to customize personal exclusive AI is also worth studying. For example, this is very practical in game applications, where players can not only play games, but also train their own AI.
But Quynh also said that the threshold for integrating the two is very high and involves a lot of knowledge. Developers must combine AI with cryptocurrency to ensure that AI technology is applied in the crypto industry.
ABCDE Capital co-founder: AI and blockchain will be deeply integrated, and 99% of transactions in the future will be completed by AI
BMAN, co-founder of ABCDE Capital, agreed with the above view and later said , AI is making a lot of money now. 90% of daily active users are not humans, but robots and AI. I think 99% of transactions and interactions in the future will be completed by AI and robots.
BMAN mentioned, “Perhaps in the next 10 years, we should give AI human rights. They should have their own identities, accounts, and even become independent entities. Therefore, I think blockchain is a good entry point for AI. Blockchain provides an ecosystem and economic system for AI. I believe that AI will dominate the operation of blockchain in the future.”
New Narrative: How Can Web3 Attract the Next Billion Users? Roundtable Forum
Although the crypto industry has started its mainstreaming process, Mass Adoption remains a long-term topic of concern to industry insiders. What new narratives can help to promote the rapid development of this process? Guests from many high-quality projects such as ZetaChain, Zircuit, Mizu, Chainbase, Monad, Moonbeam, etc. also shared their key points and follow-up directions.
Zircuit co-founder: From the perspective of user experience, reducing friction costs is crucial
Angel, co-founder of Zircuit , said , The difference in gas costs between different chains is small, but for many users, there are many friction costs in this process. For Zircuit, user experience comes first, which is why we centralize many on-chain operations. Users do not need to click on other websites, check specific operations, and pay attention to the final results. Instead, they can complete all operations in Zircuit. For us, everything is for the user. In addition, it is crucial to make users and builders happy to be part of the community based on economic incentives.
In addition, Angel said: “We expect to carry out Mainnet migration in two weeks, and the process is currently in the final stage of collecting signatures.”
Chainbase COO: Chainbase will combine Web2 and Web3 to effectively utilize multi-chain data
Chainbase COO Chris Feng said that many entrepreneurs do not have the opportunity and channels to deeply contact the blockchain world, which is the reason why Chainbase was born. Chainbase is building a comprehensive data infrastructure designed for Web3, combining Web2 and Web3 so that data on different chains can be effectively utilized.
Chris further stated, “Although they attracted 15 million wallet users through airdrops, Chainbase is working hard to identify core users because these users can bring them sustainable growth. Chainbase cares more about the quality of users rather than the quantity, and they hope that their tokens can be circulated in as many transactions as possible to achieve sustainable growth.”
ZetaChain Core Contributors: Focus on Crypto-Enhanced Applications, Not the Other Way Around
Regarding “because Solana is not compatible, they have to force themselves into every track”, ZetaChain core contributor Ankur N said , “This approach is unsustainable. We should focus on applications that are enhanced by encryption technology, rather than applications just for applications, or tokens for tokens.”
Monad Infrastructure Director: The next wave of millions of users depends on the reduction of Gas costs
Joey Anthony, infrastructure director at Monad, said that in order to bring in the next wave of millions of users, a platform with backend support from Web3 is needed, and the key to everything is to reduce Gas, but most blockchains lack horizontal scalability, and many blockchains are limited by scale. Even Solana faces this problem.
Joey said that although blockchain can attract users through subsidies, in the long run, increasing user penetration requires differentiated product experience or functions on the one hand, and the establishment of community feelings and culture on the other.
Mizu BD Director: New experiences such as payment limits and financial scenarios are extremely important, and the Telegram ecosystem boom will continue
Hany Velasco, head of Mizu BD, said , As the first wallet in the Telegram ecosystem, Mizu is more from the perspective of business, production and consumers, hoping to provide users with new experiences including increased payment limits and financial scenario coverage. In the future, we believe that users only need to connect their accounts to enjoy user-friendly platform services, and the usability of the product will be greatly improved. We have reason to believe that the Telegram ecosystem boom will continue to lead the development of the crypto industry.
Moonbeam Developer Relations Director: Improving industry adoption is a common proposition, and Ethereum will continue to play an important role in the industry
At the end of the roundtable, Alberto Viera, head of developer relations at Moonbeam, also spoke : Although the target users and developer groups of many crypto projects are not always exactly the same, increasing adoption is a common proposition in the industry. On this basis, we welcome the birth of more competitive products, and we also call for friendly coexistence between different projects and platforms. Only in this way can we usher in a brighter future. In addition, many projects present are also trying to solve the problems of certain chains to meet the needs of rapid use and scalability. There may be better chains for different sub-scenarios, but from the perspective of the community, Ethereum, with its extremely strong ecosystem, will continue to exist and continue to play one of the important roles in the industry.
Value discovery, industry pain, liquidity recovery: Cryptocurrency is surging towards immortality
Finally, looking back at the turbulent crypto market this year, Odaily Planet Daily would like to express our sincere gratitude and highest respect to every builder who is still working silently and forging ahead in the industry. After experiencing the years of value, pain and recovery, we gather here again to witness the history we have fought for, promote the present we are fighting for, and look forward to the future we care about. Among countless blocks and keys, the spirit of encryption is still shining, and industry construction is still unswerving.
The tide is surging, encryption is immortal, and we will see you at the next FAT Awards annual ceremony!
