Bridging Eastern and Western Developers: A Quick Overview of BeWater DevCon 2022 Developer Conference

Author: BeWater Community

On June 18, BeWater DevCon 2022, the global developer conference, was successfully held in the Silicon Valley Bay Area. This was the first cross-cultural exchange between the East and West, gathering over 100 hardcore blockchain developers offline and connecting with global developers via video, engaging in in-depth discussions on programming languages, cryptography, decentralized protocols, privacy technologies, secure computing, open finance, and more.

Evan Shapiro, CEO of the Mina Protocol; Austin Griffith, core developer of Ethereum; Bowen Wang, head of the Pagoda Protocol; Ye Zhang, co-founder of Scroll; Moore Lee, head of technology at Map Protocol; David Chaum, computer scientist at XXNetwork; Sam Williams, co-founder of Arweave; Liu Yi, founder of Octopus Network; Jake, head of the Cube Technical Committee; Stiles Luke, technical VP of Urbit; and Aman Johar, co-founder of The NFT Brewery delivered outstanding speeches.

At the same time, guests from Polychain Capital, Uphonest Capital, DFG Capital, and Foresight Ventures participated in a roundtable discussion.

Community initiator BMAN talked about the original intention of founding the BeWater community, aiming to create a blockchain developer community that is non-anxious, open, altruistic, and focused on essence.

This BeWater DevCon 2022 was the first time BeWater held a DevCon in Silicon Valley and also the first time it was live-streamed online to connect builders in Asia, bridging developers between the East and West.

For Western developers: to discuss cutting-edge blockchain technologies and trends, and to build a channel and ecosystem for Eastern developer communities; for Eastern developers: to understand the cutting-edge blockchain technology trends in the West and engage in dialogue with Western web3 developers.

BeWater will continue to embody the wisdom of Laozi in the Dao De Jing, "The highest good is like water. Water benefits everything by giving without taking or contending."

Be the Water behind builders, and pursue the most hardcore technology.

To support builders, BMAN also co-founded the ABCDE fund focused on investing in Web3 Builders with Huobi co-founder Du Jun. The ABCDE fund has a scale of $400 million and will collaborate with top global exchanges like Huobi, the BeWater developer community, security auditing firm Fairyproof, one of Asia's largest blockchain media outlets Jinse Finance, and top global SAAS companies ChainUp to create a full-stack investment ecosystem, providing end-to-end support for developers.

Next, let’s follow the perspective of a developer on-site to see what collisions of ideas and inspirations this pure, hardcore technical sharing brought.

First, Evan Shapiro, founder of the Mina Protocol and former co-founder and CEO of O(1) Labs, shared on the topic "The Future of zk-Based Blockchains," discussing Mina's design choices. Additionally, he shared multiple examples such as the BeWater Devcon DAO Example, demonstrating how to develop zkApps on Mina and introduced the zkBridge cross-chain bridge solution.

Bowen Wang, head of the Pagoda Protocol and a partner in the Near ecosystem, shared on the topic "Scaling for Web3: How NEAR's Sharding Works," providing an in-depth analysis of the challenges faced by sharding technology, NEAR's sharding design Nightshade, and its progress.

Ye Zhang, co-founder of Scroll, provided an overview of the zkEVM field and introduced Scroll—a zkEVM-based scaling solution for Ethereum, comparing it with other zkEVM projects.

Austin Griffith, core developer of Ethereum, introduced an innovative development tool project—Ethereum Speedrun. This is an interesting project that allows users to prove their technical skills through challenges, thereby building their Buidler Portfolio: https://speedrunethereum.com/.

Moore Lee, head of technology at Map Protocol, shared on "How Cross-Chain Infrastructure Empowers Multi-Chain DApps," indicating that multi-chain DApps need to be supported by cross-chain infrastructure, and shared the technical implementation and advantages of Map Protocol, as well as how to build cross-chain DApps on Map Protocol.

David Chaum, computer scientist at XXNetwork, shared on "Protecting User Anonymity with Cryptographic Protocols," introducing the privacy network XXNetwork and how to develop dApps on XX Messenger through its privacy protocol.

Sam Williams, co-founder of Arweave, shared on "Permanent Storage: Realizing Ownerless Network Applications," demonstrating how to achieve ownerless network applications with censorship-resistant features based on Arweave and its future prospects.

Liu Yi, founder of Octopus Network, shared online, discussing "The Oracle Applications of Octopus Network." Liu Yi believes that highly customizable AppChains are a key direction for building future blockchain applications.

Jake, head of the Cube Technical Committee, shared on "High-Performance Modular Blockchains Supporting Multi-Chain Structures," stating that multi-chain networks will undoubtedly become the foundation of the future, explaining the technical features and roadmap of the Cube chain that supports multi-chain.

Stiles Luke, technical VP from Urbit, shared online about the several stages of becoming an Urbit developer. Urbit solves the challenges of implementing peer-to-peer networks in the kernel (including identity, NAT traversal, and one-time delivery), allowing application developers to focus on business logic.

Aman Johar, co-founder of Brewery, engaged with the attending developers about building the infrastructure for the Metaverse.

Next, guests from Polychain Capital, Uphonest Capital, DFG Capital, and Foresight Ventures participated in a roundtable discussion on "How VCs Invest and Support Builders in a Bear Market."

Jacob Philips from Polychain Capital mentioned that the industry is currently in a consolidation phase, and builders should focus more on solving problems.

KJ from Uphonest Capital stated that VCs should act as co-entrepreneurs, not just investors who step back after funding.

Joanna from DFG Capital noted that the fundamentals of this bear market are significantly different from those of the bear markets in 2018 and 2019, with substantial development in infrastructure, encouraging exploration.

Msfew from Foresight Ventures suggested that builders could try new approaches in the bear market, such as experimenting with programming languages like Move or Cairo, exploring the possibilities of new ecosystems. Foresight Ventures will also focus more on truly disruptive innovations and the development of crypto-native cultures around DAOs or NFTs.

This concludes the introduction to BeWater DevCon 2022, the global developer conference.

BeWater's mission is to bring innovation and achievement to every developer. If you are creating something, you are a developer, whether you are an engineer, a technical researcher, a cryptographic punk, or an open-source project contributor.

Additionally, thanks to our BeWater co-builders and community partners: Li Aohua, Rong'er, Nüxia, Liu Su, Tong Yang, Liu Yan, Cai Wen, Huhu, BMAN, Qiu Chen, He Wei, Wang Kun, Wesley, Joanna, KJ, Meta, Trudy, Ron, Fang Qiangqiang, Guo Yukun, etc. Together, we created a pure and hardcore developer conference.