ETHCC Insights and Reflections: The Competitive Landscape of ZK Projects Is Settling, While Uniswap V4 May Play a Key Role in the DeFi Space
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ETHCC Insights and Reflections: The Competitive Landscape of ZK Projects Is Settling, While Uniswap V4 May Play a Key Role in the DeFi Space
Thoughts on ZK, Modular, MEV, and AA
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Rui, Investment Manager at HashKey Capital
Summary of ETHCC (weekly report to follow next week): Discussions were primarily infrastructure-focused, centering on three major themes: ZK, Modular, and MEV.
ZK
The main ZK events included Geometry (ZKparis), Manta (ZKDay), and Starknet (StarkCC), alongside LambdaClass’s ongoing hackathon and talks throughout the conference. A series of ZK-themed hackathons took place, with nearly all key ZK project founders present and highly engaged.
Overall, it felt like the competitive landscape for ZK projects has largely been established. Most ZKVMs and ZKEVMs have already launched; entering now would mean starting at least six months behind, which is hard to overcome. Top-tier ZKVMs and middleware such as Axiom and Risc0 are focused on narratives around off-chain computation with on-chain verification—use cases like ZKML and coprocessors dominate. There's significant overlap between projects, and collaboration or alignment among them is very evident.
Modular
The modular track hosted the highest-profile events, especially since this was Celestia’s first major gathering since Vitalik Buterin introduced the “endgame” vision last April. The talks were insightful, covering progress and roadmaps from all leading projects aligned with Vitalik’s modular narrative. Indeed, over the past year Ethereum has successfully transitioned from a monolithic chain to a Rollup + Modular architecture, and projects like Celestia are nearing mainnet launch.
It’s clear that there is strong thematic crossover across different projects—in other words, Project A is increasingly doing what used to be Project B’s domain (e.g., Succinct investing heavily in shared sequencers, next steps on modular including ZK-based ECDSA signatures). This is exactly what Vitalik wants to see, but another way to put it is that competition has intensified. When everyone builds similar things, whoever captures the narrative may gain an edge.
PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation) was also discussed in depth here, with comprehensive designs presented for both in-protocol and out-of-protocol solutions.
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In-protocol solutions could be implemented as early as next year;
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Out-of-protocol solutions will likely require two more years of research and development before deployment.
MEV
MEV was the most interesting theme, tightly intertwined with Account Abstraction (AA). In fact, AA bundlers represent a core manifestation of intent-centric design. While Vitalik’s keynote centered on AA, AA itself had relatively low visibility across side events. In contrast, MEV research—from builders to relayers and validators—was abundant, and intent emerged as a major theme alongside modular.
Intent-based transactions might evolve into the next generation of EOA-to-AA wallets. They can reduce load on the blockchain while lowering the barrier for users to understand transactions. In the long term, intent represents a sustained narrative, although we’re still in the early stages (current solvers are poorly designed—Flashbots’ implementation is suboptimal, UniswapX’s Dutch auctions incur high on-chain fees, etc.). Nonetheless, the protocol and infrastructure layer here holds substantial investment potential.
AA
Outside dedicated tracks, AA remains closely tied to the Safe ecosystem. MetaMask’s stance on AA remains ambiguous, whereas Safe strongly supports it and enables integration with various modular components. The future of DeFi lies in Uniswap V4 hooks, though there was limited discussion about V4 during the conference. That said, many researchers (from EF and VCs) expressed strong optimism about V4.
Cosmos and Polkadot
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Cosmos received little attention overall, though Berachain proposed using Cosmos’ Tendermint as a base layer while leveraging Ethereum as a settlement layer within a modular stack;
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Polkadot was nearly silent at the event, yet developer experience remains the best among all modular blockchains. Gavin Wood emphasized that this year’s focus is on further improving developer experience—less attending conferences, less drinking, more building.
NFTs and GameFi
NFTs and GameFi saw declining interest overall. While some events occurred, attendance was low. Attendees were concentrated on ZK, Modular, and MEV topics. Developer gatherings now typically follow a cycle: Denver → CC → Devconnect. Many founders and researchers indicated they plan to attend Devconnect, continuing the rhythm of building for three months then regrouping to exchange new ideas.
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