A thead 🧵 1/6

After much thought, I'm finally sharing my experiences from attending DC7 and ETHGlobal Bangkok. 

It took me a while to reflect and decide if this was worth posting: probably you will find the majority of things as “facts”, but appears as a “discovery” to a newbie like me.

Please have mercy. Now, I humbly share my thoughts and learnings here in FC to place an immutable mark in my decentralized journey.

Build authentic experience.

angpao.money
miracam.xyz

2/6

Ethereum Reintroduced : The Internet Computer

I’m no stranger to this term, but now I start to comprehend why & how. Mentioned by Vitalik during the opening ceremony and highlighted in Gubsheep’s keynote, Ethereum is (becoming) the public computing layer. If we look beyond smart contracts as just tokens or NFTs, you’ll see essentially an API plus a database.

This means that deploying your API as a smart contract eliminates scaling and deployment issues, offering a pay-as-you-go model. With gas fees dropping and TPS increasing on both L1 and L2, this is becoming more significant every day. The best part is that each API you build can be extended and chained with others without worrying about the database.

If we set aside the idea of Ethereum as just a currency, what would you build on-chain?

4/6

On-chain Encryption is hard

Not everything can go on-chain(yet). Since data isn't encrypted on-chain, storing private information like secret keys is tricky. I get to experience this first hand while building Miracam. Private pictures need to be encrypted before storing them on-chain, where encryption often happed off-chain solutions. An off-chain key introduces more problems, and ideally, I'd like to access all pictures once I connect my wallet with the right privileges.

For Miracam, we're using Lit's MPC to store the encryption key, which only decrypts when the authorized wallet connects. While this works, I'm hopeful that one day we'll be able to store keys directly on-chain—perhaps using fully homomorphic encryption in smart contracts, where an AES 256-byte key can be stored securely.

Once that’s a reality, we might stop seeing “decentralized twitter” taking headlines, and see “decentralized facebook”.

5/6

Crypto x AI

Blockchain is well-suited for AI. With clearly defined interfaces, AI can read and write states via RPC calls. It's not just about giving wallets to AI agents to spend, though that's significant. The blockchain also serves as an immutable ledger to make AI accountable, such as through commitment hashes.

6/6

Closing Thoughts

I'm continually learning new things in this space, and this is amazing. The feeling of keep seeing people building new and cool stuff excites me like a kid getting a new Christmas present.

Since ETHGlobal SG, I've met amazing people who generously shared their experiences and offered assistance while I met roadblocks in my decentralized journey. I apologize for not being able to tag each one of you—you all rock.

Finally, as we approach 2025, perhaps it's time to set goals that are publicly verifiable and, once again, immutable. If you made it this far, I would like to thank your time in reading my reflection. I’m happy to discuss anything if you feel like doing so.

3/6

Modular, Not Fragmented

From the outside, Ethereum might seem fragmented, but I believe it's modular. Most projects are built with interconnectivity in mind, allowing them to be pieced together relatively easily. The real face of fragmentation is: siloed database where only a proprietary driver written 10 years ago can read, and business logic spread across .NET, Java, Python and communicate using RPS / flat files. 

I'm not saying everything here is perfect (sorry but FE isn’t) — but integrating multiple smart contracts from different parties is **relatively** straightforward.