Last week, the MyBit team sponsored the Status Hackathon and attended Devcon 4, the annual gathering of Ethereum enthusiasts, developers and designers in Prague, Czech Republic. This year saw a record turnout and MyBit was proud to be a part of the movement bringing blockchain technology to a global audience.

This blog will explore what the team got up to — as well as a couple of the MyBit team’s highlights from Devcon 4.

Status x MyBit Hackathon

MyBit sponsored this year’s Status hackathon. During the event, the MyBit team worked with devs, giving them the opportunity to get hands-on with the MyBit Software Development Kit that the team have been developing over the past few months. Status proved to be the perfect partner for MyBit as both teams are passionate about the potential of a decentralised future. It was great to play a part in bringing together some of the brightest minds — while getting them to try out the MyBit SDK and the MyBit Network.

Some of the great work done by the developers at the Status Hackathon included DAOhouse, which allows the management of rent payments via a smart contract. The turnout was incredible with a good number of devs contributing through our Decentralised Development Fund and contributing to the development of MyBit applications. Thanks to everyone who attended or contributed!

‘Team meeting’: Ash, Jose, Kyle and Vitalik Buterin

A Universal Login for DApps

A key presentation was delivered by Alex Van De Sande who set out Ethereum’s ‘universal login’ that is in development. This can replace the usual signup/login with a minimal Ethereum native scheme, that doesn’t require passwords, backing up private keys or typing seed phrases.

This is a crucial step because one of the key barriers to mass adoption of blockchain technology is still accessibility. From a user point of view, a universal login would make using dApps easier than ever. For developers, it requires a new way to think about Ethereum transactions and consideration for how this will affect the user journey in the future.

Needless to say, it is a step in the right direction for user experience.

A new way to login to dApps

MetaMask

MetaMask made some exciting announcements at Devcon. The project already operates a popular Ether and ERC20 token wallet as well as a browser add-on that let users run Ethereum dApps without having to run a full Ethereum node. This year, they announced a native mobile browser which the MyBit team have been following closely — and is set to come out early next year.

Designing with Blockchain

We joined Consensys and Cryptokitties at their talk about designing for blockchain. This focused on two key issues: how to make blockchain dApps more accessible to the mainstream — as well as how to tackle the challenges blockchain poses through good design principles.

Their talk looked in particular at the importance of design in bridging the gap between a complex blockchain dApp and an easy to use interface that almost anyone can use. Interestingly, they placed a heavy emphasis on ‘failure paths’ and sought to enable and empower users to create, connect and express. That is especially important in the blockchain space because technology is evolving so quickly — and just when you think projects like MetaMask are a solely desktop experience, they announce a native mobile app.

The Keynote Speech

No round-up of Devcon would be complete without the keynote speech from Vitalik Buterin. Devcon 4 was no different.

This year, he released the roadmap for the move to Ethereum 2.0 ‘Serenity’. The transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake model is now in its final stages. This will completely change how transactions are validated resulting in vastly improved transaction speeds up to 1000x. Given his learnings from Ethereum 1.0, he stated that he has planned a gradual transition to 2.0 with additional, continuous testing.

Despite the markets performing poorly over the past few months, there was a real buzz around the conference and the MyBit team and countless other developers are excited to see what’s next for the Ethereum.

Final Thoughts

That concludes our round-up of Devcon 4; hopefully, it has been enlightening. As always, if there are any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to us on Telegram.

Until next time!