A Detailed Look at 12 Crypto Builders to Watch in 2024

Original Title: "12 Crypto Builders I'm Watching in 2024"
Original Author: David Hoffman, Bankless
Original Translator: Mars Finance, MK

Dear Bankless Nation, we are entering a new era of crypto innovation.

The significant milestones of the Ethereum roadmap have become history. Emerging Layer 1s are driving unprecedented innovation in the crypto space. The cost of all computational resources is rapidly approaching zero.

New leaders in the crypto space are quickly pioneering or building new frontiers. Our leaders are also evolving. I am optimistic that as we grow as an industry, we are also more judicious in selecting leaders, learning from past experiences. Outstanding leadership is crucial for the mature development of crypto.

As we step into 2024, some leaders in the crypto space are experts in the current crypto metaverse. I have specifically selected 12 builders (including a few pairs of partners) whom I will pay special attention to as we enter the next phase of the crypto space.

Sreeram Kannan // EigenLayer

Founder of EigenLayer, father of modern restaking, respected philosopher of large-scale coordination

The future envisioned by Sreeram Kannan is the future I yearn for. His vision of how EigenLayer enables humanity to coordinate at scale brings a breath of fresh air to an industry that often feels lost.

He connects technical details with abstract principles about trust and coordination, making him and EigenLayer a focal point for the next phase of Ethereum scalability—before EigenLayer introduced the concept of restaking, we didn't even know this phase existed!

With the most important parts of the Ethereum roadmap now in the past, restaking is set to become the dominant narrative for Ethereum in 2024.

As EigenLayer approaches mainnet launch, with new AVS architecture coming online and the development of the restaking market, you will feel the excitement from the Ethereum community and the broader crypto industry. The biggest question is: can "trust as a service" penetrate non-crypto use cases and non-crypto tech companies?

Nick White // Founder of Celestia

Founder of Celestia, data provider, chain weaver, modularity geek, minimalist monolith geek, with hair that looks like he just came back from surfing

Nick White is pushing the modularity frontier in the crypto space. How modular can crypto become? Essentially, modularity has characteristics that resonate highly with crypto: antifragility, redundancy, replicability, expressiveness, etc. The Celestia project has become the focal point for investing in the modularity concept itself.

Proponents of modularity believe that Celestia represents explosive growth in the innovation space of the modular ecosystem. Is cheap data availability (DA) really the missing key element in the modularity argument? What would this new asset TIA look like? Celestia's DA enables Ethereum to support more Rollups, which is crucial for Ethereum's long-term development… but is it also a Trojan horse mechanism for Celestia itself based on the Rollup ecosystem? Will TIA become a currency?

I am keeping an eye on Nick's movements, trying to answer these questions. That's why I am particularly looking forward to attending the modularity summit this year, wherever and whenever it may be!

Neel Somani // Founder of Eclipse

Founder of Eclipse, creator of the Platypus project, connector of ecosystems, explorer of parallel worlds

Neel Somani is driving forward a new domain he has discovered, starting from first principles. After creating a company serving Rollups, he turned to Eclipse, and his story about how to form the Eclipse argument provides rich inspiration.

Being at the extremes is often not the best position; Neel has found a balance between multiple leading projects—Ethereum, L2s, Solana, and Celestia.

As the SVM ecosystem grows, Eclipse's success becomes more feasible. Does the argument for SVM on Ethereum hold up? As the views of Solana geeks and modularity geeks increasingly diverge, can Eclipse find common ground between the two?

As Eclipse approaches mainnet, we will witness how a single L2 built on a highly secure Ethereum L1 can bring value to the world.

In any case, Neel will provide us with many valuable lessons along the way.

Keone Hon // Founder of Monad

Founder of Monad, father of Molandak, parallelizer of EVM, parallelizer of databases, parallelizer of I/O, promoter of parallelism

Keone has become the spokesperson for the Monad project, which aims to introduce parallelism into the EVM ecosystem. "With the speed and low cost of Solana, and the network effects of Ethereum" has become a popular narrative.

Some thought leaders point out that merely parallelizing the virtual machine is not enough; what really needs to be parallelized is database access. In fact, Keone and the Monad team have achieved this, which is why MonadDB has become a key component of Monad's innovation.

The release of Monad in 2024 is highly anticipated—just look at the Nads (Monad enthusiasts) trying to earn roles in the #TheRoom channel on Monad Discord. People are starting to pay attention to this project, trying to find a balance between Ethereum and Solana.

Andrew Huang // Founder of Conduit

Founder of Conduit, gardener of chains, grower of traffic, reducer of costs, copier & paster of frameworks, standout at the bottom of the basin

Andrew Huang is dedicated to reducing the cost of deploying new Rollup chains. All costs are being cut. Thanks to Andrew and Conduit, costs, technical complexity, and other barriers are disappearing. If you think Rollups on Ethereum will become as ubiquitous as blogs on the internet, then you should feel optimistic about Andrew's work.

Conduit is a Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) provider—think of it as a cloud service platform for Rollups. The economies of scale of RaaS are enormous. Reducing the resource costs of Rollups means more applications can develop into application chains, and all chains supporting Conduit will automatically gain the highest level of Rollup security. As Ethereum's Rollup-centric roadmap matures, Andrew, Conduit, and other RaaS projects will lead us into this fertile garden ready for Rollups.

Ultimately, I hope Andrew can break some limiting perceptions about Rollups. We often think of Rollups as merely faster and cheaper blockchains. I believe this view is overly simplistic and lacks imagination regarding the future possibilities of Rollups. Lowering the costs of Rollups will not only make them faster and cheaper but will also open up a whole new design space, defining the future possibilities of Rollups.

I will keep an eye on Andrew to see how he brings the Rollup world from two dimensions into three dimensions.

Jill Gunter // Chief Strategy Officer of Espresso

Strategist at Espresso, primary sorter, explorer of L2 transaction pathways, leader of composability, abstractor of chains, connoisseur of historical anecdotes

Jill Gunter has always been a quiet force in my mind within the crypto space. Since joining Espresso Systems as Chief Strategy Officer in 2021, she has provided forward-looking insights into the development direction of Ethereum Rollups.

Espresso sits at the intersection of Ethereum and modular chain arguments. Espresso is a serialization module for L2 chains, making it a shared sorter for multiple chains that integrate it. The era of L2 reorganization is approaching, and Jill's perspective at Espresso, combined with her ability to articulate complex topics, may make her a frequent focal point in 2024.

It was a sad day when Jill's podcast "Grind My Gears" aired its last episode with Meltem Demirors. It was one of the best podcasts in the crypto space at the time, providing a model for "Bankless" to emulate.

With the rapid growth in the number, construction, and complexity of Rollups, shared sorting projects like Espresso will be key to maintaining the shape of Ethereum's superstructure.

I expect Espresso to become more important in 2024, whether it's Jill entering her podcast tour era or CEO Ben Fisch becoming a focal point worth watching.

Luca Netz // CEO of Pudgy Penguins

Reviver of Pudgy Penguins, maturing NFT PFPs, king of distribution, executor of industry promises

In 2021, the NFT industry collectively made many promises about the potential of NFTs. Real-world footprints, gaming metaverses, infinite brand value. However, as prices fell, these bull market dreams rotted, and founders abandoned their projects.

Luca Netz purchased the Pudgy Penguin project in 2022, revitalizing it and aiming for Valhalla. Pudgy Penguin plush toys are now available at Walmart, and the Pudgy World metaverse is also set to launch.

However, it seems that Pudgy Penguins is just the beginning of a larger plan. While other NFT projects are still looking for the starting line, Pudgy Penguins have already begun their race.

What will this frontier bring us? How significant can the impact of virtual assets be in the real world? How far can the Pudgy metaverse develop?

To find out these answers, you need to keep an eye on Luca.

Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart // ETF Experts

Unexpected key figures, spokespeople for traditional finance, coordinators of worldviews

After years of waiting, the spot Bitcoin ETF has finally launched, breaking all trading volume records for ETF launches. Now, a spot Ethereum ETF may also gain approval in May.

Even if the spot Ethereum ETF is denied (though this is unlikely), Eric and James will still be at the center stage. Even if the spot Ethereum ETF is rejected again (again, this is unlikely), it will just be resubmitted time and again until it is finally approved.

As the crypto market value surpasses $2 trillion and could reach around $10 trillion in the next cycle, more assets under the traditional finance stack will become interesting targets for ETF applications. What comes after ETH? I don't know, but we should make a bingo card for crypto ETF approvals. Every time we mark an X, you can be sure that Eric and James will provide valuable commentary on the related events.

Even if no more ETFs appear in this market cycle, that's okay. They will eventually come. Crypto is the birth of a whole new asset class, and currently, only one asset has an ETF.

If you follow Eric and James on Twitter, it's clear that they have been infected by crypto culture. It's a one-way street. They are ours now.

Li Jin // Co-founder of Variant

Co-founder of Variant Fund, passionate advocate, promoter of labor reconstruction, thoughtful expresser, warm emotional presence in cold code

Crypto will fail unless it can have a substantial impact on global culture. Crypto culture is significantly different from cultures elsewhere on the internet. Gradually, everything crypto touches will be influenced by the culture we create, for better or worse.

Li Jin represents the "better" side of this equation. As crypto rises in products and influence, it will begin to have a more substantial impact on the psychology and culture of the people using its rails. "If you adopt a crypto protocol, you adopt crypto values."

Mainstream crypto products will be cultural products—this is what we see in friend.tech! Cheap data availability, modular blockchains, and parallel VMs are excellent attractions, but these investment themes are prepared for internal communities. We need to explore new cultural metaverses to export crypto products to the other 500 million internet users.

Li Jin focuses on the frontier of consumer crypto products, which is why I pay attention to what Li Jin is focused on.

Podcasts

I love podcasts! I've been listening to them. Taking the prompt "people I’m watching" more literally, here are a few podcasts I will particularly focus on in 2024:

Mike Ippolito // Co-founder of Blockworks

Co-founder of Blockworks, man of multiple podcasts, thoughtful thinker, and defender of order

Every time I talk to Mike, I always learn something new and gain new perspectives. Fortunately, he has a podcast. It's technical, deeply researched, and rich in content—definitely worth a listen. Mike seems to have an immune gene that keeps him neutral about chains while still retaining the instinct we all should have to reject XRP.

Beyond Mike personally, his company Blockworks has become one of my favorite sources for crypto news. Reporting on crypto is a daunting task, and Blockworks strikes the right balance between journalistic integrity and crypto consistency.

Anthony Sassano // Founder of The Daily Gwei

Endless creator, bald Australian with a beard, accumulator of Gwei, amateur node operator, humble ETH bull, statue connoisseur

Anthony Sassano is different from the aforementioned figures. When I mention "people to watch in 2024," I am more literally referring to Anthony Sassano and his podcast "The Daily Gwei." If you listen to "The Daily Gwei" every day, you have graduated from crypto university and entered maintenance mode.

Anthony's carefully curated "The Daily Gwei" Discord channel is a fortress for informed, technical Ethereum investors and enthusiasts. I highly recommend listening to "The Daily Gwei."

Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins // Co-hosts of Too Online Podcast

Co-hosts of Boys Club podcast, dynamic duo, world builders, emotion sharers and vibe conveyers, grounded dreamers

One of my recent favorite new podcasts is "Too Online," hosted by Natasha Hoskins and Deana Burke, co-founders of the Boys Club.

Natasha and Deana are crypto natives who create internet-themed content for crypto enthusiasts and even crypto skeptics. In "Too Online," each of them brings a story from the internet that happened the previous week and shares it with the other. This is often unrelated to crypto but always manages to pique the interest of crypto natives since we are all too online.

After listening to over ten hours of intense crypto podcasts each week, their light-hearted and delightful 30-minute internet gossip show feels like a breath of fresh air and reminds me that 99% of the world doesn't care about crypto-native topics (at least not yet?).