Alternative Projects in the Ethereum Ecosystem: A Bridge to Web 3.0

This article is an original piece by Chain Catcher, authored by Gu Yu.

Recently, public chains represented by BSC, Solana, and Fontom have launched fierce challenges against Ethereum, especially in the application ecosystem, where they are comprehensively replicating the Ethereum ecosystem in areas such as lending, trading, and aggregators, attracting a large number of users' attention and usage through IDOs, airdrops, and more.

However, Ethereum is still favored in the crypto market, which is directly reflected in the recent continuous surge of ETH. Ethereum's moat lies in the high level of decentralization and security of its network, as well as the richness and innovation of its ecosystem, creating a relatively complete experience environment for both developers and users.

This article will focus on the lesser-known alternative ecological projects of Ethereum, which do not belong to traditional tracks such as trading, lending, gaming, NFTs, or scalability, and are even difficult to categorize using conventional methods. However, many of these projects have the potential to become important infrastructure within the Ethereum ecosystem, serving as middleware and meeting the segmented needs of different user groups, such as obtaining on-chain information notifications and automatically adding collateral for lending products.

At the same time, these projects also reflect the creativity of the Ethereum ecosystem and continue to drive its growth and prosperity. Below, Chain Catcher will detail some distinctive alternative projects within the Ethereum ecosystem.

1. EPNS

EPNS is an Ethereum information push service protocol that allows user wallets to receive DApp notifications, aiming to become a communication layer middleware in blockchain networks. Currently, the project has secured millions of dollars in funding from Binance Labs, IOSG, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Gitcoin co-founder Scott Moore, and others.

At present, Ethereum users can only receive asset transfer notifications through wallet apps, but cannot obtain more complex types of DApp information notifications, such as notifications for significant drops in gas fees, important on-chain governance voting notifications, lottery DApp winning notifications, and liquidation warnings from lending DApps. Many of these notifications are time-sensitive, but users can only access this information through proactive queries or news reports, which undoubtedly negatively impacts user experience.

EPNS aims to solve this problem by collaborating with DeFi protocols and embedding necessary communication middleware APIs and SDKs, allowing protocol developers to send messages to service subscribers based on their wallet addresses. This way, these users can receive important on-chain notifications as quickly as possible, maximizing their benefits.

Currently, EPNS is still in the testnet phase and has already partnered with projects such as Gitcoin, PoolTogether, Ceramic, bZx, and Frontier, with the mainnet expected to launch in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

2. Gelato Network

Gelato Network is an Ethereum smart contract automation tool that allows developers/robots to automatically execute transactions based on user-defined conditions without running any underlying server infrastructure.

For example, the project can help users execute trades at specific prices, transfer tokens at specific times, or automatically deposit funds when a MakerDAO position is about to be liquidated, and automatically stop-loss when Uniswap LP impermanent loss exceeds a certain range.

It is understood that the first product launched by Gelato Network is Sorbet Finance, which is an order book-based DEX built on Uniswap, allowing users to set target prices and execute buy/sell orders when the Uniswap market price reaches the target price. However, currently, each transaction incurs an additional fee of nearly a hundred dollars.

At the end of last year, the project raised $1.2 million led by IOSG Ventures and Galaxy Digital. Recently, Gelato Network announced the issuance of the GEL token, which will support operation on the Polygon network.

3. Swarm

Swarm is a storage and communication system officially launched by Ethereum, aimed at providing decentralized and redundant storage for DApp code, user data, blockchain, and state data, as well as providing underlying constructs for untraceable communication, with an incentive system implemented through smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Ethereum developers can use Swarm to complete decentralized storage tasks without relying directly on external ecosystems like IPFS and Filecoin. The main difference between the two is the technical details and incentive mechanisms.

Filecoin does not penalize storage, while Swarm does penalize storage. The former's lack of a penalty mechanism for storage leads to an overflow of junk content, while the latter improves file availability and security through storage penalties.

Currently, Swarm is in the testnet phase, with the mainnet expected to launch in the second quarter of this year.

4. Tornado.cash

Tornado.cash is an Ethereum privacy transaction tool that enhances the privacy of user addresses and assets, addressing the shortcomings of Ethereum's privacy features. Since all transaction records and address balances on Ethereum are public, it is easy for outsiders to obtain specific individuals' asset balances and transaction records through associated transaction transfer records.

Through Tornado.cash, users can transfer assets from their addresses to the smart contract address of the product, mixing them with other users' assets. Subsequently, another address can withdraw the funds, and based on zero-knowledge proofs, others cannot determine who the parties to the transaction are. Moreover, there is no custodial behavior in this process, allowing users to maintain control over their assets at all times.

To prevent misuse for money laundering, Tornado Cash has also added compliance tools to allow users to prove the legitimacy of their fund sources.

5. ENS

ENS is an Ethereum domain name service project aimed at providing users with short and readable domain names. ENS can securely and decentralizedly assign a human-readable domain name ending with ".eth" to machine-readable data such as hexadecimal Ethereum addresses, while resolving simple human-readable domain names to on-chain address resources, making it easier for users to remember and use.

For example, Vitalik Buterin can register and associate "vitalik.eth" with his Ethereum address through ENS, allowing his friends to use vitalik.eth as the target address to send Ethereum assets to him, reducing the likelihood of entering the wrong address.

Currently, most mainstream wallet applications already support this service, and many well-known figures in the crypto industry are using it. In a recent interview, Vitalik openly stated that ENS is currently the most successful non-financial application in the Ethereum ecosystem.

6. InstaDApp

InstaDApp is a DeFi aggregation protocol characterized by using smart wallets and bridging protocols to integrate major DeFi protocols. Users need to first register a smart wallet and transfer funds on the website using MetaMask to use it. All user wallets are uniformly controlled by the InstaDApp smart contract, and users do not own private keys or mnemonic phrases.

Currently, the DeFi protocols integrated by InstaDApp include Maker, Aave, Compound, and Uniswap, allowing users to trade their crypto assets on the platform and manage their trading pairs LP on Uniswap while using LP as collateral for leveraged financing in supported lending protocols.

By using smart wallets, InstaDApp also provides users with features such as one-click withdrawal of all collateral, collateral swaps, debt swaps, and automatic debt refinancing, while also supporting users in migrating collateral between various protocols.

In December 2019, the project raised $2.4 million from institutions such as Coinbase Ventures and Pantera Capital. Currently, the website has approximately 20,000 smart wallet users.

7. Kleros

Kleros is a decentralized arbitration protocol based on Ethereum that provides arbitration for subjective conflicts that smart contracts cannot resolve. After a DApp that follows the project's smart contract standards initiates arbitration, the protocol randomly selects a group of jurors for each dispute and allows them to vote based on the evidence submitted by the parties to ensure a correct ruling.

Any user can become a Kleros juror by staking tokens and earn token rewards through arbitration. Currently, representative arbitration cases of Kleros include the arbitration of the prediction market Omen regarding the 2020 U.S. presidential election results and the listing arbitration of the decentralized exchange Ethfinex for the Baer token, with a cumulative total of nearly 700 arbitration cases.

8. Mask Network

Mask Network is a Web3 privacy tool built on the Ethereum ecosystem, aiming to serve as a gateway for users transitioning from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. The project attempts to develop tools on traditional social giants' platforms like Twitter and Facebook, enabling users to seamlessly send encrypted messages, cryptocurrencies, and even build decentralized applications.

Currently, Mask Network has developed a series of tools on the Twitter platform, allowing Twitter users who install its plugin to directly purchase cryptocurrencies on DEX, donate to Gitcoin, and more, without needing to navigate away from the page, thus lowering the barrier for traditional social platforms to enter the crypto world.

The above are just a few representative alternative projects within the Ethereum ecosystem. They help significantly optimize user experience, reduce usage costs and barriers, while enhancing the privacy, fairness, and timeliness of on-chain behavior, accelerating the arrival of the Web 3.0 era.