Check These 14 Ethereum Projects Picked by an Investor

Sead Fadilpašić
Last updated: | 5 min read

Kyle Samani, managing partner at crypto hedge fund Multicoin Capital, tweeted about 14 projects from the popular EthBerlin he chose as his top picks.

Source: iStock/Andy Carton

The three-day event for the Ethereum developers held last week was filled with speakers, discussions, presentations, and – of course – a hackathon, proposing various solutions for problems you might’ve not known are even a thing. Amidst numerous impressions, Samani, who apparently didn’t attend the event, shared some of his “favorite submissions”.

Let’s check out these top picks, as the investor himself listed them, “in no particular order,” with original commentary:

1. The Graph Oracle (TGO)

Inspiration: Even simple queries on Ethereum data from smart contracts are not possible, but if they were, more powerful applications on Ethereum could be built.

What it does: TGO allows users to utilize the power of the Graph, a decentralized query protocol for blockchains, directly from their smart contracts.

2. EthMotionPictures

Inspiration: Smart contracts are limited to the types and bandwidth of data they can process, so the goal was to see if a higher bandwidth and near-real-time data could be passed between two smart contracts.

What it does: EthMotionPictures streams videos between two points through Ethereum smart contracts, proving that video streaming through blockchain is possible. Running on top of the Skale Labs (blockchain infrastructure provider) implementation of Ethereum blockchain, using millisecond time resolution for mined blocks, allows 1,000 video frames to be published during 1 second of time flow.

3. RateLock

Inspiration: Despite a number of decentralized loan platforms on Ethereum, the volatility of the interest rates discourages many borrowers.

What it does: RateLock comes with the fixed interest rate term loans created through an algorithmic, open-source protocol that allows for the creation of money markets on the Ethereum blockchain, Compound Finance. This is powered by an on-chain, interest-rate swap, order-book system, with the smart contract system comprised of three contracts.

4. ShoutBox

Inspiration: The need for a chat box that cannot be altered or shut down.

What it does: Shoutbox is described as a fully decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) chat, which is not hosted on any third parties servers, and which enables users to run their own in-browser node and send messages in a fully decentralized way.

5. WordDao

Inspiration: Words, which are string type data objects, are currently “prohibitively expensive” to store on the Ethereum blockchain, which means that smart contracts can’t be string-aware in an affordable way, nor can they store large amounts of on-chain data or easily interact directly with strings.

What it does: WordDao created a single central Map of all words on chain – a master list of some 450,000 English words – where they can be referenced by integer data types at “a tremendous” gas savings. Users collectively pay the fee required to build public infrastructure.

6. Meshim

Inspiration: There are numerous products being built on libp2p, a network framework that allows writing of decentralized peer-to-peer applications, but the goal is for this tool to be useful to the developers too.

What it does: The Meshim app enables developers to create a graph that represents nodes in a p2p network, thanks to which they can build a topology and write applications.

7. YAW

Inspiration: The need for a wallet that automatically pays for gas costs.

What it does: YAW is an Ethereum smart contract wallet that enables users to preserve a minimum account balance of 100 DAI in order to provide gas-free transactions, whereby the network fees are paid with interest earned, through Compound Finance.

8. 3chan

Inspiration: 4chan, memes, and the need for real-time, meme-driven, unmoderatable, uncensorable, anonymous and decentralized image board.

What it does: 3chan is a decentralized, anonymous and uncensorable image board, where no gas is needed for posting, there is no server owner, and it’s completely running on a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol, InterPlanetary File System (IPFS).

9. paydai

Inspiration: The need for an option to pay on Amazon with the DAI stablecoin.

What it does: paydai is a browser extension for Amazon, which does away with the need for a bank account and/or access to a stable monetary system in order to buy something online by allowing buyers to pay for their purchases in DAI via MetaMask wallet, that way also contributing to crypto adoption.

10. My-DAO-dashboard

Inspiration: Things getting out of hand when a person is a voting member of more DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) than they can manage, while also having the option to create new DAOs, hence having a different stake in each DAO, different contracts, and various responsibilities. “It’s going to get really messy really quickly.”

What it does: My-DAO-Dashboard is a user-centric dashboard, enabling each user to manage all their DAOs, based on their individual Ethereum address.

11. VollgasDAO – Gas Futures on Ethereum

Inspiration: At the time when scheduling transactions on Ethereum is becoming increasingly popular, estimating the future execution costs remains an obstacle for users, due to the volatility of gas prices on Ethereum.

What it does: VollgasDAO Gas Futures allows users to mint 30-day Gas Futures that can be redeemed for the actual off-chain gas price. Users can prepay a fixed fee for an amount of gas at a locked price, while the price will equal to the future real average gas price at time of redemption, as determined by the data which ChainLink Oracle system gets from EthGasStation API.

12. SelloutDAO

Inspiration: This project comes from Mariano Conti, Head of Smart Contracts at MakerDAO, the protocol behind the stablecoin DAI, who wanted to simulate “bad actors in on-chain governance and its ramifications moving forward”.

What it does: A lot is in the name. SelloutDAO creates a proxy contract that you then set as your delegate voting key on platforms like MolochDAO, YangDAO, MetaCartelDAO, and OrochiDAO, and this will let you sell your voting power to the highest bidder.

Inspiration: Currently, third parties that are incentivized to manipulate API data can theoretically affect Chainlink oracles.

What it does: The developers say that they “broke Chainlink and then fixed it by building a secondary dispute layer on top of Chainlink to utilize Augur‘s resolution mechanics,” thanks to which Chainlink is secured via Augur (a decentralized prediction market platform), while a fallback dispute mechanism that utilizes Chainlink for primary resolution is created and the financial incentive for a Chainlink Oracle Node to operate in bad faith is removed.

14. Cherry Swap

Inspiration: The volatility of interest rates in crypto markets.

What it does: Cherry Swap is an autonomous, open-source platform created for interest rate swaps on Compound Finance markets. A new type of derivative is created based on pooling the interest rate swaps, allowing users to predict interest rate trends and commit funds into a fixed-term pooled deposit, while the accumulated interest is pooled and returned to participants at the end of the lock-up.