Guide to ETHTaipei 2025: MingEn, what is this session about?
The annual Ethereum community event ETHTaipei will open on April 1st. This content will summarize the two-day ETHTaipei agenda, briefly explaining what each session is about and why it is important. It's as if we ran into each other at the event and you casually asked: "MingEn, what is this session about?"
How to Use This Guide
Difficulty Indicator
I've marked each topic with π§ to indicate the difficulty level, from beginner to advanced, with 1 to 3 cups. The more difficult topics require more brain power, so you'll need to drink a few more bubble teas to get through them.
π§ - Beginner, suitable for everyone
π§π§ - Intermediate, suitable for those who have used Ethereum
π§π§π§ - Advanced, suitable for those with on-chain development experience
Usage Suggestions
Whether or not you plan to attend in person, you can check if there are any topics of interest to you. If you want to purchase tickets, the Blocktrend discount codeγBLOCKTRENDγcan be useful.
I've divided the two-day program into 4 half-day sessions, using lunch and tea breaks as the dividing lines. The speakers' content may differ from the topics I've outlined, but I've done my best to verify and have confidence that most will be close to what I've written.
Day 1 Morning
1
10:00am - Keynote by Vitalik Buterin
π§ The highlight of the event. He usually reviews the latest developments in Ethereum over the past year, such as the Cancun upgrade in 2024 that significantly reduces L2 gas fees. He may also mention the upcoming Pectra upgrade and what it means for Ethereum. The key is to listen to how he describes the development timeline and the significance of each upgrade.
2
10:40am - Fireside Chat with Ethereum Dreamers
π§ This is likely to make international headlines. The Ethereum Foundation has recently faced community criticism and undergone organizational restructuring. The moderator for this chat is Joseph Schweitzer, the Foundation's Head of External Relations, and the guests are Vitalik and the newly appointed Ethereum co-executive director from Taiwan, Hsiao-Wei Wang. This is suitable for those who want to hear about the long-term vision and faith in the ecosystem, and I also want to hear how they describe the recent changes in the Foundation.
3
11:30am - EIP-7702 on Ethereum and Rollups
π§ EIP-7702 is the biggest highlight of the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. It upgrades the traditional private key wallet experience, allowing people to enjoy more advanced smart wallet features without changing their wallets, such as integrating access keys and using tokens to pay gas fees. This upgrade makes wallets more intuitive to use.
4
11:30am - MEV Tax in Action: Internalizing MEV in UniswapX
π§π§π§ MEV is the income that bots earn by arbitraging user transactions. Uniswap has come up with a way to redirect the profits that were originally taken by bots, and instead return them to traders or liquidity providers. If MEV profits can be redistributed, it has the potential to make the DeFi ecosystem healthier.
Lunch Time π
Afternoon of Day 1
1:00pm
π§ Impactful Auctions: Web3's Opportunity to Revolutionize Public Goods Funding
Paddle Battle is a public funding platform that uses a mechanism similar to "Wow Auctions" - allowing people to bid on an item. When someone bids, the timer resets until no one bids a new price. Using this mechanism for public funding is a new attempt, but will the results be fairer? Will more people participate?
π§π§ Developer Tooling in the Madness of Multichain
There are now too many blockchains, and developers need to set up different APIs for each chain, which is very costly to manage. Etherscan recently launched a unified API that supports 50 chains, allowing developers to use a single API to query cross-chain data. The new tool makes it easier for developers to build and maintain multi-chain applications.
π§ Vibe coding on-chain apps and the art of one-shotting
Vibe coding is the highest level of programming: writing code with your mouth. This workshop should be about actually using your mouth to write an on-chain application. After writing this introduction, I even want to participate to see how to develop an on-chain application in 1.5 hours with the help of AI.
π§ A Hands-on Guide to Cross-Chain Interoperability
Cross-chain technology allows users to transfer assets from one chain to another. Hyperlane is a cross-chain bridge, and I've used it to transfer ezETH from Arbitrum to Zircuit to earn points. Knowing how to use cross-chain tools makes it convenient to move assets to the richest ecosystem or the highest-yielding chain.
π§π§ Lido's path to improving decentralization
Lido is the largest ETH staking protocol on Ethereum, controlling up to 27% of ETH. But in the blockchain world, being big is not necessarily a good thing, as it can introduce centralization risks. So Lido needs to think about how to balance decentralization and avoid systemic risks.
1:30pm
π§π§What's Happening with Cross-Chain Intents and Their Future
Cross-chain intents are like a phone book. In the past, people had to remember each other's phone numbers to make calls, but with a phone book, they only need to know the person's name. Cross-chain intents allow people to swap assets without manually finding cross-chain bridges, as the system will automatically find the best path.
π§π§ Beyond Competition: What Solvers Do and What We See
Solvers are a role in the intent mechanism, helping users find better trading conditions and avoid being attacked by arbitrage bots. They can ensure DeFi is fairer, protect user interests, and make transactions closer to the ideal price.
2:00pm
π§π§ Why ERC-4337 Isn't That Simple in Layer 2
ERC-4337 is a standard specification for smart accounts, like the "A4" paper size that is the same across countries. But I'm also curious about the challenges in implementing ERC-4337 on Layer 2.
π§π§ Unlocking the Power of Intents: Building Composable and Open Infrastructure for Ethereum
Similar to the previous topic, but focusing more on the collaborative capabilities between different applications. How can various intent mechanisms be seamlessly integrated to allow more developers to easily integrate this mechanism.
2:30pm
π§ Community Privacy Residency: What we learned in a month of co-creation
A sharing session on the insights from the one-month privacy-themed winter camp held in Taipei in late February. The content is not limited to blockchain. In the future, I also want to participate in similar themed co-living projects, and would like to reference how the actual activities are conducted and what kind of interactions there are.
π§π§π§ Using zkDCAP for TEE attestation with SGX and TDX
Combining zero-knowledge proof (ZK) and trusted execution environment (TEE) technologies. The former is usually used to handle privacy, and the latter is used to ensure that the program is not tampered with during execution. This topic may be a pure technical discussion, or it may propose a method to handle private and sensitive data.
π§π§π§ Validation Centric Design: agile and safe development for devs, an interchangeable AA wallet for users
Currently, different smart wallets are not interoperable. This is different from private key wallets, where users are locked into a certain ecosystem. I speculate that Validation Centric Design is a new approach that allows users to freely switch wallets without restrictions, improving the user experience.
3:00pm
Account abstraction won't save web3 UX
Account abstraction (smart wallets) makes wallet operations more intuitive, so users are less likely to lose or get hacked. But I'm also curious why the speaker says this cannot improve the user experience.
The afternoon sessions on the first day are more technical, and most topics require a certain level of blockchain background knowledge to fully understand. Especially the discussions on intent mechanisms, cross-chain technologies, and smart wallets, as these are the most cutting-edge developments in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Tea Time π°
Day 1 Evening
4:30pm
π§π§ ZK Email
ZKEmail can prove the authenticity of email content without revealing the content. For example, zkp2p uses it to connect Venmo and blockchain, triggering on-chain payment when users receive off-chain funds. This technology can connect blockchain and off-chain payment systems, expanding application scenarios.
π§π§π§ Leveraged DEX
Leveraged trading is common on centralized exchanges, but less so on decentralized exchanges. However, the information provided in the title is too little, so I'm not sure what exactly will be discussed.
π§π§π§ Reconstructing Control Flow Graphs from EVM Bytecode: Faster, Better, Stronger
Control flow graphs of smart contracts are usually used to analyze execution paths, which can be applied in program design and security auditing. But sometimes the implemented program differs from the original design. If we can verify the control flow from the underlying EVM bytecode, there's a chance to identify potential vulnerabilities.
5:00pm
π§ The path to verifiable autonomy for AI agents
The higher the autonomy of AI agents, the more important it is to ensure they are not maliciously manipulated. Otherwise, how do we know the AI financial robot in the background is not human-intervened?
π§π§π§ ZK Verifiers Exposed: Lessons from Real Bugs and Fixes
As the application of zero-knowledge proofs increases, the security of the verifiers responsible for confirming the proofs becomes increasingly important. If the verifiers themselves have vulnerabilities, all the assumptions based on zero-knowledge proofs may not hold.
5:30pm
π§π§π§ Building Consumer Private AI Apps with MPC & TEE
Combining multi-party computation and trusted execution environments is usually used to protect privacy. If future AI applications demand access to your conversation history, transaction records, and life photos, without adequate privacy guarantees, many people may be reluctant to use them.
π§π§ Boring Things in DeFi that Actually Make Money
The speaker representing Hyperplex is doing some advanced operations in DeFi. Although everyone is interested in making money, this session may require more financial knowledge to identify the money-making opportunities.
Day 2 π βοΈ
Day 2 Morning
10:00am
π§ Public Goods + Ethereum Future
Vitalik recently wrote an article discussing that we should focus more on open-source funding rather than public funding, as the definition of public goods is too vague. He proposed the concept of Deep Funding, which evaluates the importance of a project based on its "dependency graph". This approach may change the way public resources are allocated in the future.
π§ OSS and Funding Mechanism
Open-source software is the foundation of blockchain, but it has not yet developed a mature business model to generate stable income. It is speculated that this session will discuss some innovative funding mechanisms that are currently being experimented with for the audience's reference.
π§ What You See Is What You Sign: How Anchorage is scaling Blockchain interactions
Blockchain transaction signing is often difficult to understand, leading to the risk of "blind signing". Anchorage, an institutional-grade asset custody service, has developed a new method to make the transaction content more transparent and understandable, reducing the security risks brought by blind signing.
10:30am
π§ Exploring AI's Role in Smart Contract Security
Smart contract vulnerabilities can lead to significant financial losses. AI can strengthen security protection, such as identifying common programming vulnerabilities. For example, Zircuit directly embeds AI security into the operation of the Ethereum L2. This technology can reduce audit costs and improve coverage.
π§π§ Enhancing Staking Rewards: Home Staking with DVTs
Most people use Lido or exchange services to stake ETH, which requires paying fees. Home staking not only can increase returns, but also enhance the decentralization of the blockchain. Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) can reduce the technical threshold for individual staking, allowing more people to participate.
11:00am
π§π§ Deep Funding
Deep Funding evaluates the importance of a project based on its dependencies. This can more objectively allocate resources to support those unassuming but actually very important foundational projects. I am most looking forward to how this method can be used in the future to assess the role and importance of entities in the ecosystem.
π§π§π§ A Deep Dive into EOF and Its Impact on Program Analysis
Ethereum Object Format (EOF) is a new data format for Ethereum, which aims to improve the structure and execution of smart contracts. This format will change the way contracts are written and analyzed, affecting the workflows of developers and security researchers.
11:30am
π§ AI and Public Goods
The title does not reveal the specific content. It may discuss how to apply AI in the creation and funding of public goods.
π§π§π§ Empowering Everyone: Taking Specialization Out Of Formal Methods
Formal verification uses mathematical methods to prove program correctness, but the threshold for use is very high. If this technology can be made accessible to ordinary developers, it can improve the security of smart contracts. There is no need to involve experts every time, which reduces costs.
Lunch Time π
Afternoon of Day 2
1:00pm
π§π§ Why have we given up on algorithmic stablecoins?
Algorithmic stablecoins were once a popular DeFi experiment. But after the de-pegging of Terra/UST, even if someone dares to launch one, no one dares to participate. But I'm also curious, has no one come up with a new method since then?
π§π§ Uniswap: Unstable by Design
Uniswap is the largest decentralized exchange. But from the title, it's not clear what the speaker means by "unstable" - the price mechanism, governance, or something else.
π§π§π§ EIP-7784: GETCONTRACT opcode
This is a new proposal for an EVM opcode that allows smart contracts to more easily query information from other contracts. Improving interoperability between smart contracts can enable the creation of more complex on-chain applications.
π§π§ Mopro: makes client-side proving on mobile simple
The computational cost of generating zero-knowledge proofs is usually high, so the data is often sent to the cloud, computed on-chain, and the result is then returned. If mobile devices can also generate proofs, users' sensitive data can be verified on the device without leaving the phone.
π§ PMF - Top 5 DeFi Apps in 2025 and What's Still Needed
There are so many DeFi applications, I'm curious to hear the speaker's take on which ones are successful. I'm hoping to hear metrics beyond just TVL that better reflect real-world usage.
1:30pm
π§π§π§ WTF is Surge: The ULTRABASED Rollup
Surge is a component of the Ethereum roadmap to increase transaction throughput. If Ethereum's processing speed can match centralized systems, it would remove a key reason for not deploying applications on-chain.
π§π§π§ MPCStats: secure and private analysis of verified data
Multi-Party Computation (MPC) allows multiple parties to collaborate without sharing the original data. MPCStats further applies the MPC concept to let different institutions share verified data while protecting data privacy, which can be useful for data sharing between financial or healthcare institutions.
2:00pm
π§ May the Proof Be With You: Fighting Sybils with Self Protocol
Sybil attacks are a common problem because users can create an unlimited number of wallets. Self Protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify user identity without revealing personal information. Solving the Sybil attack problem would allow more projects to confidently airdrop tokens to users.
π§π§π§ CoSNARKs in halo2
CoSNARKs and halo2 are both related to zero-knowledge proofs. Combining the two is likely an effort to improve proof generation efficiency and reduce computational costs, so that zero-knowledge proofs can be applied in more use cases.
2:30pm
π§π§ How did Portus reach 100M in 365 days: Portus is a Solver within the Intent mechanism, responsible for finding the optimal execution path for trades. Although this is a success story, understanding the details may require significant background knowledge.
π§π§ Plurality x Progcrypto
I'm not sure exactly what this session will cover. Plurality is about the multiverse. Progcrypto is about programmable cryptography (like zero-knowledge proofs). My guess is it will discuss how to use cryptographic tools to create more inclusive governance and collaboration models.
π§π§ AI Agent
AI agents can perform complex tasks on behalf of users. Combined with blockchain, they can manage assets and execute transactions for people. This workshop may involve building a simple on-chain AI agent to experience the changes they can bring.
3:00pm
π§π§π§ How Snap Sync Works on Ethereum and Starknet
For a blockchain to operate stably, it heavily relies on sufficiently decentralized nodes that can synchronize information with each other. Snap Sync reduces node hardware requirements, allowing people to run nodes on simple devices.
π§ Real DAOs Have Never Been Tried
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have great ideals, but also face many practical challenges. The speaker may believe that current DAOs are not "true DAOs" π
3:30pm
π§π§ Who's Blob?
Blob is a new data structure on Ethereum that can reduce the data upload costs for L2s. This allows more diverse applications to be deployed on-chain without congesting the blockchain.
π§π§ MPC: The Missing Distribution Link
Multi-Party Computation (MPC) allows multiple parties to collaborate without sharing the original data. But from the title, it's unclear what the speaker means by the "Distribution Link", so I can't speculate on the content.
Dadaocheng Banquet π