ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

Todor Karaivanov of Chainlink Labs, who has spent six years across Chainlink products including VRF and now leads blockchain integrations, explains why moving assets between chains is far less simple than it looks. He frames security as an economic question, compares committee verifiers with light clients and zero-knowledge approaches, and shows how operators sharing the same RPC endpoints or failover providers create a single point of attack. He covers contagion from a compromised chain, the hub-and-spoke model with intents for convenience, and transfer limits to cap damage, noting that most losses now come from compromised infrastructure and keys. A short Q&A covers why operators should run their own RPCs. Keynote at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speaker ▸ Todor Karaivanov, Blockchain Integrations & Product Partnerships, Chainlink Labs Todor Karaivanov has spent the past eight years in the blockchain industry, including over five years at Chainlink Labs. His earlier work in web hosting and game development shaped his expertise in information security, systems design, and economic systems, which he now applies to building decentralized infrastructure. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todor-karaivanov-325468 X: https://x.com/tkaraivanov Chapters 00:00 About Todor and Chainlink Labs 01:29 Why cross-chain looks simple but is not 02:41 Security is an economic concept 04:34 Committees, light clients and ZK verification 06:30 Independent observation and shared RPCs 08:12 Failover as an attack vector 09:05 Compromised chains and contagion 10:37 Hub and spoke, with intents for convenience 11:28 Plan for the unpredictable: transfer limits 12:56 From contract bugs to compromised keys 14:49 Q&A: Should operators run their own RPCs? 16:22 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

Krum Pashov, founder and CEO of Pashov Audit Group, on how AI has reshaped Web3 security in 2026. With audit contests drying up, he argues that bug bounties are now the best permissionless path into the field, makes the case for specialising in a niche such as Bitcoin and BTCFi security, and shows how Pashov's free, open-source Solidity Auditor skill found 11 of the 13 high-severity bugs from a 2025 audit contest in under an hour. The talk closes with audience questions on what AI will and will not automate, and how the security researcher's job is changing. Keynote at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speaker ▸ Krum Pashov, CEO, Pashov Audit Group Krum or "pashov", is Founder & CEO of Pashov Audit Group, protected over $100B of funds with 400+ security audits. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pashov X: https://x.com/pashov Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Web3 security in 2026: what changed 02:11 Why bug bounties are the place to be 06:26 Freelance, full-time or your own firm 07:23 Go niche: the Bitcoin and BTCFi opportunity 10:46 Build your own AI auditing agent 12:17 Solidity Auditor V4: 11 of 13 high-severity bugs in an hour 16:01 Fork the open-source skills and build on them 18:12 Will AI replace security researchers? 20:15 Q&A: What AI will and will not automate 21:52 Q&A: How the daily job is changing 24:07 Q&A: Why Krum started Pashov Audit Group 25:38 Q&A: How an audit firm makes money 26:46 Q&A: Should we worry about AI-driven threats? 28:07 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

With Klara Kovacevic (ChainSecurity, moderator), Krum Pashov (Pashov Audit Group), Jonathan Riss (CertiK) and Josef Gattermayer (ack3). Moderated by Klara Kovacevic of ChainSecurity, this panel asks what AI is actually changing in smart contract security. Josef Gattermayer says ack3's analysis found that 97% of hacks on audited protocols happened outside the audited scope, in infrastructure and off-chain components, and that black hats adopted AI faster than white hats. Krum Pashov and Josef discuss continuous monitoring as a business, how to benchmark AI auditing tools against a plain frontier-model prompt, and why recall, token spend and false positives must be balanced. Jonathan Riss of CertiK covers AI-assisted data aggregation and physical security risks, and audience questions address formal verification, zero-days versus social engineering, and auditor accountability. Panel at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speakers ▸ Klara Kovacevic, Ecosystem Lead, ChainSecurity (moderator) Klara is with ChainSecurity, the team auditing major protocols like Circle, Sky, Aave, and Curve. With experience in both big tech and Web3, she’s here to ask the right questions and keep things interesting. She’s also a board member at Alice in Blockchains, a crypto education nonprofit. X: https://x.com/klarakova ▸ Krum Pashov, CEO, Pashov Audit Group Krum or "pashov", is Founder & CEO of Pashov Audit Group, protected over $100B of funds with 400+ security audits. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pashov X: https://x.com/pashov ▸ Jonathan Riss, Blockchain Intelligence Analyst, CertiK As an Blockchain Intelligence Analyst at CertiK, Jonathan specializes in tracking illicit flows and de-anonymizing malicious actors. He documents complex fraud operations to produce the actionable intelligence necessary to protect the web3 landscape. His mission is to decode the latest threat vectors to help builders and users navigate a safer decentralized future. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanriss X: https://x.com/Jonathan_Riss_ ▸ Josef Gattermayer, Founder, ack3 Josef Gattermayer is the founder of ack3 (prev. Ackee Blockchain) - team securing $180B+ in TVL for Lido, Aave, and Safe. The auditors who created the open-source Wake framework. Ph.D. and Assistant Professor teaching blockchain security at Czech Technical University in Prague. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josefgattermayer X: https://x.com/jgattermayer Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:02 Day-to-day roles and how AI changed them 06:18 Has AI made the industry more or less secure? 07:45 97% of hacks happened outside the audited scope 09:38 Continuous monitoring as a business 12:27 Audit firms become product companies 15:16 Building a great AI auditing harness 17:06 Recall, token spend and false positives 19:45 AI, data leaks and physical security 23:09 Training the next generation of auditors 25:27 What makes an exceptional auditor 30:33 Q&A: Will formal verification replace audits? 33:23 Q&A: Will AI exploit zero-days or humans? 36:07 Q&A: Holding auditors accountable 38:45 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

Galin Dimitrov, cybersecurity engineer and founding member of Superteam Ireland, traces four eras of crypto theft: scams such as OneCoin and BitConnect, smart contract exploits like The DAO and Wormhole, attacks on people as in Ronin and Bybit, and now AI coding agents. He walks through the Drift Protocol hack, which began with a fake trading firm approaching the team at a conference and ended six months later with $285 million drained in minutes. He then shows how malicious skills, poisoned npm packages and hijacked agent CLIs reach builders' keys, citing Anthropic's figure that users approve 93% of permission prompts, and closes with three rules: keep keys out of reach, treat every add-on as a stranger, and use a sandbox. Keynote at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speaker ▸ Galin Dimitrov, Cybersecurity Engineer & Web3 Growth Lead, Founding Member, Superteam Ireland Galin Dimitrov is a cybersecurity engineer with a BSc in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics from TU Dublin and six years at Fidelity Investments, where he secured and monitored 800+ production database servers and led Splunk-based incident response. He has also spent over a decade leading Web3 growth across agencies, Master Ventures and HYPE Partners, and is a founding member of Superteam Ireland. Today he builds AI and onchain products as a solo founder and has won several hackathons, including the Solana Privacy Hackathon. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/galindimitrovvv Chapters 00:00 The new insider, hidden in plain sight 01:30 Four eras of getting robbed in crypto 02:52 Era one: the scam is the product 04:20 Era two: attacking the code 05:32 Era three: targeting people (Ronin, Bybit) 06:43 Case study: the Drift Protocol hack 09:47 Era four: AI agents on your machine 11:23 Why 93% of prompts get approved 12:36 Three doors in: skills, npm and your agent CLI 14:14 Already happening: real losses 15:20 Three OPSEC rules for builders 17:10 Closing: read before you approve 17:44 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

With Georgi Kirov (Crisp Labs, moderator), Kiril Kalchev (BRAIN++ AI Factory), Angel Marchev (UNWE) and Petar Nikolov (Equisect). A panel on what trust means for federated AI systems as quantum computing approaches. Kiril Kalchev explains why CHAIN++, an EU and Bulgarian government funded data-sharing chain for BRAIN++ AI Factory, is built for cryptographic agility, and why picking one post-quantum algorithm is never the end of the job. Petar Nikolov, who holds a PhD in quantum computing, points out that post-quantum cryptography runs on classical computers and that NIST-approved algorithms cannot yet be tested on real quantum hardware, and warns about harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks. Angel Marchev frames security as a permanent arms race, reviews education and research trends, and argues that post-quantum migration is an adaptability problem rather than a prediction problem. Panel at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speakers ▸ Georgi Kirov, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Crisp Labs (moderator) Over the last 15 years, Georgi has led over 20 applied AI projects with tangible results across buy-side / sell-side finance, manufacturing and various heavily regulated industries. He studied and conducted research at Paris Dauphine, ULB and UC Berkeley. LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/georgikirov ▸ Kiril Kalchev, System Architect Data Lake, BRAIN++ AI Factory Kiril is a software developer at heart and System Architect at BRAIN++ AI factory. He builds things that solve real-world problems, bridging code and intelligence to shape the future of AI-driven systems. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirilkkalchev ▸ Angel Marchev, Professor on Financial Modeling and AI, UNWE and Sofia-Uni Prof. Angel Marchev Jr., PhD, is a Bulgarian academic and consultant specialising in AI, simulation, cybernetics, finance, and decision-making. With 20+ years of teaching and 50+ publications, he connects scientific methods with practical business challenges. LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/angelmarchev ▸ Petar Nikolov, Co-Founder, Equisect Technology professional with proven track record in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Quantitative Research, Quantum Computing, Financial Engineering. Co-founder of Equisect where he builds a platform for pricing of real private equity funds. Ph.D. in Quantum Algorithms from Tehcnical University of Sofia. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/p-nikolov Chapters 00:00 Framing the panel: where does trust come from? 01:41 Introductions: the biggest post-quantum misconception 05:28 CHAIN++ in a post-quantum world 07:38 Quantum computing vs post-quantum cryptography 09:22 Harvest now, decrypt later 10:22 Beyond Shor: what could change in 15 years 11:42 Security as an arms race 15:05 Research directions: lattices and physical leakage 17:20 AI shortens the half-life of implementation 17:40 What to do now: catalogue, assess, go hybrid 20:11 Will AI go quantum first? 23:24 Can LLMs learn from quantum cryptography? 24:23 Economic value: adaptability, not prediction 27:28 Wrap-up 27:51 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

With Steffen Kux (Corpuscore.tech, moderator), Nikita Eriashev (Tangem), Skas (Trezor) and Nicolas Bacca (ZKNOX). Self-custody promises full control, yet every wallet still asks users to trust something. Moderated by Steffen Kux, hardware wallet builders from Tangem, Trezor and ZKNOX discuss what the recent Coldcard incident teaches, why open source is a means to verification rather than an end in itself, and why entropy is so hard to check. Nicolas Bacca argues the biggest competition to self-custody is now ETFs and banks and makes the case for multisig setups that grow with the user, Nikita Eriashev argues that simplicity is security for mass adoption, and Skas focuses on clear signing and showing actual balance changes. The panel closes on the future of self-custody and audience questions on Bitcoin multisig and hardware wallets. Panel at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speakers ▸ Steffen Kux, Co-CEO & Co-Founder, Corpuscore.tech (moderator) Steffen is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of corpus.core, building trustless blockchain infrastructure. With 25+ years in software and distributed systems, he leads the development of Colibri, an open-source stateless client for trustless blockchain verification and pragmative adaptive privacy. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steffen-kux X: https://x.com/steffenkux ▸ Nikita Eriashev, DACH Growth Lead, Tangem Nikita Eriashev has been with Tangem for more than three years, driving self-custody adoption and expanding the product's reach across Europe, America, and the Middle East. He believes Tangem Wallet is uniquely positioned to build a bridge between blockchain and everyday users worldwide, and he's extremely proud to have been part of that endeavor. LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nik-eri-755726271 ▸ Skas, Software Engineer, Trezor Fin-tech raised neo-cypherpunk worked for several software wallets, researcher, hackathon enthusiast, CROPS builder, EIP-nerd X: https://x.com/0xskas ▸ Nicolas Bacca, Chef at ZKNOX Nicolas is a co-founder of Ledger and researcher at ZKnox - interested in making hardware security open, understandable and affordable to all, currently accelerating this with AI LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/nbasim X: https://x.com/BTChip Chapters 00:00 The panelists and their work 01:52 From Mt. Gox to today: the state of self-custody 04:20 Lessons from the Coldcard incident 07:04 How far can we trust our wallets? 09:08 Don't be evil vs can't be evil 10:14 Software wallets vs hardware wallets 12:09 Screens, clear signing and knowing what you sign 17:00 Does Web3 complexity hold back self-custody? 19:18 CROPS and self-custody for everyone 22:16 The future of self-custody 25:45 Closing thoughts 27:56 Q&A: Multisig on Bitcoin 29:03 Q&A: Why still use a hardware wallet? 30:22 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

ETHSofia · Oct 6, 2026

With Yordan Barzakov (ReVizia, moderator), Alexander Sverdlov (Atlant Security), Daniel Babbev (Bitcoin Suisse) and Dr Boyan Torosov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences). Moderated by Yordan Barzakov, the panel moves from today's hacks to tomorrow's quantum threat. Alexander Sverdlov dissects a 351 million dollar exchange breach from the day before and argues that cryptography rarely fails, while implementations, transaction monitoring and threat modelling do. Dr Boyan Torosov explains qubits and error correction, says Google's estimate of under 500,000 physical qubits depends on its assumptions, and expects a fault-tolerant machine able to run Shor's algorithm at scale within the next decade or so, while Daniel Babbev calls harvest now, decrypt later far-fetched, points to public keys already exposed on chain and warns that migrating Bitcoin to post-quantum signatures is a governance problem rather than a technical one. Sverdlov closes by urging institutions to deploy unconstrained AI for defence now. Panel at Future Finance Forum 2026, 25 September 2026, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speakers ▸ Yordan Barzakov, Author and Host of "ReVizia" (moderator) Yordan Barzakov is a journalist with over 10 years of professional experience in economics, finance, and energy, as well as prior experience in international relations. He is the author and host of "ReVizia" on Nova News – a show dedicated to economic and geopolitical processes, business, and financial markets. ▸ Alexander Sverdlov, Founder and Lead Expert, Atlant Security Alexander Sverdlov is a global cybersecurity expert, former Microsoft consultant, and UN Cybersecurity Panelist. After advising major financial and government organisations across the Middle East and ENEC, he founded Atlant Security, helping companies of all sizes strengthen their security across four continents. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsverdl ▸ Daniel Babbev, Senior Software Engineer, Bitcoin Suisse Daniel Babbev brings over 10 years of experience in the crypto sector. He currently serves as Senior Custody Engineer at Bitcoin Suisse, Switzerland's first crypto company. Previously, as a Risk Engineer at Brevan Howard, one of Europe's leading hedge funds, he built and led the firm's crypto risk systems. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielbabbev ▸ Dr Boyan Torosov, Associate Professor at Atomic Physics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences / Center for Quantum Technologies Dr. Boyan Torosov is a quantum physicist specialising in quantum computing and control. He is the Quantum Control Lead at 1QBit, an Associate Professor at Institute of Solid State Physics – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (ISSP-BAS), and a research group leader at the Center for Quantum Technologies at Sofia University. Chapters 00:00 Introduction 01:07 Anatomy of a 351 million dollar exchange hack 03:49 Cryptography holds, implementations fail 05:21 What is a quantum computer? 08:38 How many qubits does it take to break cryptography? 09:56 Quantum progress: real or PR? 12:07 When will quantum computers break cryptography? 12:50 Harvest now, decrypt later: how real is the risk? 15:21 Is a five to seven year migration realistic? 16:47 The biggest vulnerability today: AI-powered attackers 18:47 Post-quantum signatures and Bitcoin governance 21:05 Advice for a bank's first digital assets 22:04 Threat modelling and why so little has changed 26:12 One thing to remember Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org

Philippe Dumonet

ETHGlobal · Sep 9, 2026

Plank EVM creator Philippe Dumonet presents Plank as a new smart-contract language designed to improve developer experience, security, and tooling. He argues that Solidity’s large, rigid language core and limited support for generics, metaprogramming, libraries, documentation, testing, and editor tooling create repeated “foot guns” throughout development. Slow or incomplete tooling is not merely an inconvenience: it increases review costs, delays features, and makes it harder for teams to build reusable safety patterns. Dumonet connects language design to the repeated failures he saw while auditing and supporting smart-contract teams. Projects lacked tests, documentation, reusable abstractions, or effective editor feedback, and those weaknesses made security reviews slower and more expensive. Solidity’s missing generics and metaprogramming capabilities also make it difficult to package safe patterns in libraries. Teams often repeat complex code or depend on compiler features that cannot be extended by ordinary developers. Plank takes the opposite approach by shrinking the core language and moving important capabilities into an extensible standard library. Dumonet compares this design with modern languages such as Rust, Zig, and Python, where a small core supports powerful reusable abstractions. The current compiler produces real EVM bytecode, supports features such as reusable encoding and EIP-712 patterns, and compiles much faster than Solidity in early tests. With version 0. 2 approaching, the project aims to give teams a practical path to safer contracts, richer tools, and a language that can evolve without continually expanding its compiler. Plank aims to make experimentation happen in libraries rather than inside an ever-growing compiler. A small core is easier to analyze, document, and support with static tools, while standard-library authors can add encoding, typed data, and domain-specific abstractions. Dumonet reports that the compiler already converts Plank into EVM bytecode and has shown major speed improvements in early testing. Version 0. 2 is intended to combine the language, tooling, and library model into something teams can begin using. The goal is a language ordinary developers can extend while reducing the burden placed on the compiler. 00:00 Introduction to Plank EVM 00:28 Five Years Building With Solidity 01:01 Developer and Auditor Friction 01:29 Repeated Footguns and Missing Tests 01:58 How Weak Tooling Raises Audit Costs 02:40 Solidity Extensibility Limits 03:00 Missing Generics and Metaprogramming 03:15 Security Problems in Basic Building Blocks 04:04 Slow Evolution of the Solidity Language 04:36 How Optimization Caused a Vulnerability 05:29 What the Solidity Compiler Contains 05:52 Comparing Rust, Zig, and Python 06:19 Moving Features Into Standard Libraries 07:12 Shrinking the Core With Plank 07:42 An Extensible Smart Contract Stack 08:28 Reusable EIP-712 Implementations 09:27 Compiler Speed and Gas Benchmarks 10:05 Plank Version 0.2 Roadmap 10:28 Next-Generation Compiler Improvements 10:49 Formally Verifying the Compiler 11:23 Closing Resources for Plank Developers _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *Pragma Lisbon 2026* Pragma Lisbon 2026 was held on June 25th at the Carlos Lopes Pavillion in Lisbon, Portugal and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Lisbon 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMxB4xW8JYdk ETHGlobal's Pragma series takes place in cities around the world, and is designed to be a different kind of event. Pragma is a one-stage conference with founders-only on stage, bringing together a small group of curated attendees and speakers to discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ Follow Philippe Dumonet X: https://x.com/real_philogy ✅ Follow Plank EVM X: https://x.com/plankevm ✅ Follow ETHGlobal X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UCfF9ZO8Ug4xk_AJd4aeT5HA _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship? 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Sep 9, 2026

What is Milady, and why has it become one of Ethereum's most recognizable cultural movements? Tim Clancy explains how Milady embodies cypherpunk values through privacy, open-source software, censorship resistance, and a deep commitment to Ethereum's long-term vision. We discuss the Ethereum Foundation's CROPS mandate, Neo-Cypherpunk, freedom of speech, Tornado Cash, and why culture is just as important as technology in building a freer internet. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 00:19 Why privacy matters 00:49 What is Milady? 02:29 The Milady Zen & Ethereum's CROPS values 03:32 The Ethereum Foundation mandate explained 05:24 Milady's influence on Ethereum culture 06:58 How to join the Milady community 08:05 Ramilia's role in the Milady ecosystem 08:51 The values behind Milady 10:11 Freedom of speech & censorship resistance 11:39 Neo-Cypherpunk vs. the original Cypherpunks 13:24 Why Tornado Cash is my favorite privacy tool 14:04 A vision for a privacy-first future -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!

Rob Knight

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Sep 9, 2026

Can privacy become the default instead of an afterthought? Rob Knight (0xPARC) explains how programmable cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs can transform the way we build software, making privacy, integrity, and trust foundational rather than optional. We discuss zero-knowledge proofs, programmable cryptography, digital surveillance, why "nothing to hide" is the wrong question, and how privacy-first technology can give people, not corporations, control over their digital lives. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 00:12 What is 0xPARC? 01:58 Why programmable cryptography changes everything 03:30 Why privacy should be the default 06:13 Today's biggest privacy threats 07:13 Privacy tools everyone should use 08:43 Why "I have nothing to hide" is wrong 10:52 A vision for a privacy-first future 12:29 Transparency for institutions, privacy for people -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Sep 9, 2026

Plural Monolith premiered on June 14, 2026, at the Neo-Cypherpunk Summit by Web3Privacy Now, at Funkhaus Berlin. Plural Monolith is an immersive art installation and collective live-coding experiment exploring the relationship between the individual and the collective, identity and multiplicity, physical presence and decentralized digital space. Through sound, live code, projected visuals and audience participation, the installation transforms the monolith — traditionally perceived as a single, solid and immutable object — into a plural entity: a space shaped by different perspectives, contributions and forms of participation. The installation invites the audience to enter the work rather than simply observe it, becoming part of an evolving environment where individual contributions generate a shared, collective experience. A reflection on how we coexist, connect and create within an increasingly interconnected and decentralized world. The installation was created through a collaboration between Swarm, DarkFi Squad and WinPrivacy, and presented within the Neo-Cypherpunk Summit organized by Web3Privacy Now. Song “Signal Echoes” by Liminal State https://on.soundcloud.com/s5z9pC66CcZRcRxUtP

Etienne Waldron

ETHGlobal · Aug 9, 2026

In this workshop at ETHGlobal New York 2026, Etienne Waldron (developer relations and product) and Oscar Chaix (product manager) from Ledger present what Ledger is building in the agentic world and lay out the hackathon track. Etienne recaps Ledger, a French company founded in 2014 that makes hardware devices securing cryptocurrencies, having sold over 8 million devices and securing roughly 20% of the world's crypto assets. Its devices are secure by design through a secure element chip and a secure display sitting on top of it, and over 12 years the company has focused on user and developer experience across products like Ledger wallet, clear signing (so users understand what they sign), and the wallet provider for dApp login and signing flows. He frames the new agentic era as one where Ledger is well placed to be the trusted infrastructure. Oscar explains why: agents are useful only if they can act (signing transactions on your behalf), but they are susceptible to prompt injections and hallucinations that can move or lose funds, so Ledger lets you review what an agent is about to do on the trusted display and keeps private keys and credentials in hardware requiring human approval. He walks through the newly launched Ledger agentic stack, built on three pillars: CLIs to interact with a Ledger device from your favorite agent (connect a wallet, check balances, initiate transactions you validate on-device), DMK skills that teach an agent to integrate Ledger into an app or workflow (cutting integration from days or weeks to about five minutes), and apps including a security key app (Fido2 login that gates agent access to sites) and Open PGP for encrypting agent secrets. He live-demos the wallet CLI querying Bitcoin and Ethereum accounts, balances, and gas fees spent, proposing 70/30 ETH/BTC rebalancing swaps that require on-device approval, and simultaneously has Claude integrate the DMK skills into a mock website in about five minutes, showing clear signing and background transaction checks on a connected Ledger Flex. Etienne closes on this year's single track, Agentic x Ledger, with $10,000 in bounties across five prizes for AI products using Ledger as the trust layer (human-in-the-loop for high-risk actions, identity, credential and authentication management, x402 agent payments, and policy-based spending), plus Q&A on lending devices, the emulator, and high-frequency use cases. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Welcome to the Ledger Workshop 00:33 What Is Ledger 00:59 Why Ledger Devices Are Secure by Design 01:19 The Ledger Product Suite 01:37 Entering the Agentic Era 02:06 Why Agents Need a Trust Layer 02:32 Reviewing Agent Actions on the Device 03:02 The Three Pillars of the Agentic Stack 03:30 DMK Skills for Developers 03:52 Apps: Security Key and Open PGP 04:48 A Mock Site for Agent Transactions 05:21 Asking Claude to Integrate the DMK Skills 05:54 The Wallet CLI Finding Accounts 06:34 Discovering Balances Across Chains 07:26 How the Skills File Is Structured 07:51 Querying Ethereum and Solana Accounts 08:34 Checking Tokens and Gas Fees Spent 09:49 Proposing a 70/30 Rebalancing Swap 10:28 Why Moving Money Needs Device Approval 11:11 Recalculating the Swap Rate 12:11 The Mock Site Now Integrated With DMK 12:32 Handling a Locked Device Gracefully 12:50 Clear Signing and Transaction Check 13:34 Integrating in Minutes 14:21 Executing the Swap 15:12 Recapping What Ledger Launched 15:33 The Agentic x Ledger Track 16:03 Example Use Cases 16:23 Credentials, x402 Payments, and Policy Spending 17:07 The Developer Portal and Docs 17:29 Why Documentation Feedback Matters 17:54 Q&A: Lending Physical Devices 18:30 Q&A: The Emulator vs Real Devices 19:30 Q&A: High-Frequency Use Cases 19:52 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal New York 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York 2026, a 3-day hackathon held June 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7MZ8T-ict6YshkFDw9WJCu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Aug 9, 2026

In this workshop at ETHGlobal New York 2026, Angela Ocando from Uniswap Labs guides hackers through how to navigate the Uniswap stack. She frames Uniswap as one of the largest decentralized exchanges in the world, citing over $4.3 trillion in cumulative protocol volume, more than 2.7 billion all-time trades, over 10 million assets, and a recently launched Uniswap API now supporting more than 17 chains. She explains that the stack is more than the AMM: it spans the V2, V3, and V4 versions of the protocol (V3 introduced concentrated liquidity, V4 introduced hooks and a singleton pool architecture where everything happens under one main contract), plus Uniswap X (an intent-based protocol where users sign intents and a permissionless and exclusive filler network competes to execute them for best price), the Uniswap API (a distribution channel exposing routing quotes and execution via trading and LP endpoints), the CCA or continuous clearing auction (an execution layer running continuous auctions to match orders with optimal liquidity, useful for fair token launches), and newly launched AI skills that wrap the stack for agents and developers. Angela goes deeper on V4 hooks, a framework letting developers attach custom logic before and after pool actions (initialize, add and remove liquidity, swap, donate) via flags to create new DeFi primitives, noting the V4 template makes building hooks easier and that a hook can attach to many pools but each pool takes only one hook. She explains that Uniswap X checks the AMM, private AMMs, and external market makers to source the best price, all accessible through the API, and that CCA offers a bootstrapping framework for token launches. She announces that tokenized assets went live that morning across Uniswap's apps, the API, and Uniswap X. She then clarifies the hackathon bounties: $7,000 for the best Uniswap API integration built from scratch (requiring a feedback MD file logging agent errors so Uniswap can improve), and a continuity track for the best Uniswap stack contribution (building with any part of the stack, contributing to an open source repo, or submitting an explainer video). She demos the developer portal at developers.uniswap.org, showing that pasting it into Claude or Codex lets agents read the schema to optimize token spend, plus guides, an API reference for testing endpoints with keys, and ecosystem resources like foundation grants, the hook incubator, security subsidies, and go-to-market support, before closing with Q&A and pointing everyone to the booth. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Meet Angela and the Goal 00:34 Uniswap by the Numbers 00:47 The Stack Is More Than the AMM 01:00 The AMM Versions and Hooks 01:30 Introducing Uniswap X 01:47 The Uniswap API as a Distribution Channel 02:05 The Trading and LP Endpoints 02:31 The Continuous Clearing Auction 02:55 The New AI Skills for Agents 03:16 A Closer Look at the Protocol Versions 03:45 How V4 Hooks Work 04:14 The V4 Template and Custom Logic Flags 04:35 One Hook Per Pool 04:44 Tokenized Assets Now Available 05:06 How Uniswap X Sources the Best Price 05:30 The CCA Bootstrapping Framework 06:00 The API and the Main Bounty 06:24 Installing the Uniswap Skills 06:44 Using Skills With Agents and x402 07:10 The Point of the Security Skills 07:32 The Hackathon Bounties Explained 07:52 Why a Feedback MD File Is Required 08:22 The Continuity Track Options 08:44 Finding Open Source Projects to Extend 09:20 The Video Submission Option 09:42 From Scratch vs Continuity Selection 10:04 Where to Find All the Prize Info 10:30 The Developer Portal 11:18 Installing the Skills With a Model 11:36 Plugging the Portal Into Your Agent 12:16 A Tour of the Developer Platform 12:33 The Swapping and API Guides 12:50 Ecosystem: Grants and the Hook Incubator 13:11 Security Subsidies and GTM Support 13:34 Testing the API Reference 14:03 Wrapping Up the Stack 14:27 Q&A 15:14 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal New York 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York 2026, a 3-day hackathon held June 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7MZ8T-ict6YshkFDw9WJCu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Mate Soos

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Talk about privacy nomenaclature that was initially used in academic settings and is now used even in our communities. Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

The talk will cover research and the IETF standardization process, practical engineering considerations, end-to-end encryption, working on open-source software and bulding a whole new messenger from scratch. Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

We Promised Decentralization, but Forgot to Build the Infrastructure Shayan Eskandari is a security researcher, hacker, educator, and internet freedom activist working at the intersection of blockchain technology, security, and digital rights. His PhD dissertation, Uncovering Blockchain Challenges: Technical Nuances and Their Unforeseen Consequences, maps the gap between blockchain's ambitious promises and its real-world implications; from cryptojacking and front-running attacks that exploit the protocol's foundational properties, to oracle trust failures and the regulatory blind spots that leave auditors unable to accurately understand cryptoassets. The central argument: the same properties that make blockchains powerful — permissionlessness, transparency, decentralization — are also the source of their most dangerous attack surfaces. He currently serves as a postdoctoral fellow at NOVA SBE's Data, Operations & Technology Knowledge Center, contributing to BLOCKCHAIN.PT, a Portuguese national initiative co-funded by PRR and NextGenerationEU. His career spans the full arc of Web3: blockchain engineer at Bitaccess during Bitcoin's early ATM era, security engineer at ConsenSys Diligence specializing in smart contract auditing, and CTO at Ether Capital, where he led one of the first publicly traded Ethereum staking operations (36,000 ETH). He co-founded IranUnchained, a Moloch v3-based NGO addressing the gap between crypto's borderless ideals and geopolitical exclusion. He is also co-founder of Shiryakhat and CoinIran Academy, educating Farsi-speaking communities on blockchain technology since 2015. His current obsession is MoaV — Mother of All VPNs (moav.sh). The ideology: internet freedom cannot depend on any single tool, protocol, or organization. It must be distributed infrastructure, built before the crisis, resilient enough that no state can shut it all down without breaking their own internet. One command turns a $10 VPS into a node running 16+ simultaneous circumvention protocols: DNS tunnels, obfuscated proxies, Psiphon relays and Tor bridges. Deployed by activists and diaspora communities keeping people connected when their governments decide they shouldn't be. Outside the terminal: analogue photography, film, multi exposures, and a camera collection that has clearly gotten out of hand. Shayan Eskandari: https://x.com/sbetamc Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Privacy in the built environment and smart buildings Una Wang Una is a polymathic researcher, engineer, designer and maker expanding the boundaries of architecture, technology, and decentralized systems. Holding a PhD from ETH Zurich, she led no1s1 project — pioneering work in decentralized autonomous buildings, cyber-physical systems and regenerative built environments that is shaping the future of interaction with physical space. Bridging deep engineering expertise and craftmanship, she turns concepts into real-world cyber-physical products and artifacts. Her work exhibited at MoMA NYC, Art Basel Miami, The House of Electronic Arts, WEF ETH Pavillion, etc. As a globally engaged speaker and community builder, Una brings sharp insight and earnest dialogue to stages across culture, industry, academia, and beyond — connecting dots between technology, people, and place. Una Wang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/una-wang-36b56b22/ Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Kris Decoodt

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Plural Events - Privacy, and Real and Local Collective Actions Deliberate Democracy in Practice: Privacy, Coordination, and Collective Action Panelists: Piergiorgio Catti De Gasperi, Kris Decoodt, Bastin Jafari, Koss Moderator: Nikoline Arns Panelists Piergiorgio Catti De Gasperi — Web3Privacy Now https://new.web3privacy.info/ X: https://x.com/PG_CDG Kris Decoodt https://be.linkedin.com/in/krisdecoodt Bastin Jafari X: https://x.com/bastinjafari Koss X: https://x.com/kosmostasis Moderated by Nikoline Arns X: https://x.com/nikoline_nik Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Kate will guide panelists in a semi-structured discussion reflecting on the "state of privacy in Web3," a year on from the fanfare around the Ethereum Foundation's announcement of prioritizing privacy. Vital infrastructure and tooling, from ZK to TEEs, are only at the beginning of their maturity and usefulness. Just as it feels like the blockchain industry as we know it is collapsing, there are more opportunities than ever for mass adoption (or at least reaching outside our bubble) with these innovations in private, secure communications and transactions. Meanwhile, it's harder than ever for values-driven projects to get funding as previously reliable supporters turn away from open source. How do we optimize for resilience and durability to steward public goods, while adapting strategies and budgets in the "post-PGF" landscape? As surveillance capitalism encroaches both physical and digital environments, how can we be strategic in collaborating with regulators and lawyers to protect our digital rights and freedoms? And, when circumstances call for more direct action, how can privacy-preserving tech protect our identities and assets? Many such questions! We'll explore them through panelists' perspectives from decentralized social, verifiable wallets, VPNs, and scalable encrypted money, and assess where we stand at "the intersection of hope and cope". Panelists: Kimmo Sirén, Polymutex, Igor Mandrigin, Marina Markezic, Max Hampshire, Connor O'Hara Moderator: Kate Stapleton Panelists Kimmo Sirén — Orb, Lens, Mask Network https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kimmo-Siren Polymutex — Walletbeat https://x.com/polymutex https://beta.walletbeat.eth.limo Igor Mandrigin — Gateway.fm / FF Consulting https://www.ffconsulting.org/ Marina Markezic — EUCI Max Hampshire — Nym https://x.com/_wjth Connor O'Hara — Independent Researcher https://x.com/colludingnode Moderated by Kate Stapleton — Fhenix https://x.com/Kate_stapes Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Panelists: Lefteris Karapetsas, Nick Almond, Binji Pande Moderator: Corinna Schlicht Binji Pande helps translate technology’s deepest technical work into stories that normal people can actually feel. His work sits at the strange little intersection of crypto, culture, ai, privacy, public infrastructure, and making important ideas sound less like they were assembled in a bunker. Before joining the Ethereum Foundation, Binji worked at Coinbase and Optimism, helping bring crypto products to wider audiences. Today, he focuses on making Ethereum’s values more legible to the world, especially around privacy, censorship resistance, open source, and the future of human agency online. His talk asks a simple question: if cypherpunks were right about so much, why does the average person still not relate to them? Nick Almond is a technologist, physicist, governance and learning theorist, architect, academic and builder. He believes in decentralisation, DAOs as a means to reshape human organisation, the commons and collective action as a cultural practice. Lefteris Karapetsas is a seasoned blockchain developer, known for his contributions to Ethereum's early Solidity and core client development, the DAO, and the Raiden Network, before founding rotki, a privacy-focused, self-hosted portfolio management tool. Based in Berlin, he is an advocate for open-source development, financial transparency, and user data sovereignty. Panelists Lefteris Karapetsas — Rotki https://rotki.com/ X: https://x.com/LefterisJP Nick Almond — Jito https://www.jito.network/ X: https://x.com/drnicka Binji Pande — Ethereum Foundation https://ethereum.foundation/ Moderated by Corinna Schlicht https://x.com/corinnaschlicht Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Péter Szilágyi

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Analysing genomics is currently in it's early phase, dominated by a handful of institutions. As sequencing costs are dropping, more and more people gain access to their genome, but soon realise they have nothing to do with it. Whilst much of the research itself is public, there is no place where that materialises in a usable / reusable way. This results in a sort of soft-gatekeeping, where proper interpretation and guidance is restricted to those with the knowledge or the financials. We're trying to out-build this position, creating a sort-of ""open source movement"" of genomics, puzzle pieces that would allow different ecosystem participants to contribute their small slice of knowledge and build up a global, shared platform for everyone to tap into and extend. Speaker Péter Szilágyi https://x.com/peter_szilagyi Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

The Revolution Will Be Archived: Decentralized Preservation for Accountability and Sovereignty Around the world, eyewitnesses, journalists, and human rights defenders risk device seizure, arrest, and forced data deletion, which prevents them from preserving and sharing evidence of injustice. If it does survive, this media lives on platforms built for attention and monetization, not archival preservation or community control, relying on a single point of failure vulnerable to censorship, link rot, or shutdowns. This lightning talk introduces OpenArchive’s research and implementation of a novel p2p decentralized storage backend to help mitigate these threats based on over a decade of insights working with some of the world’s most at-risk communities. This work is guided by the Human Rights Centered Design (HRCD) methodology - co-created by OpenArchive’s founder and executive director, Natalie Cadranel. The HRCD methodology, grounded in real-world contexts, is a collaborative framework using iterative research, threat modeling, and co-design with affected communities to build usable, secure tools. We will be highlighting the tested benefits and drawbacks of implementing decentralized storage in OpenArchive’s flagship app Save to enhance the protection, provenance, and preservation of eyewitness evidentiary media needed to exact accountability and justice. Speaker Rose Regina Lawrence — OpenArchive https://open-archive.org/ https://save.open-archive.org/ Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Drawing on their shared experience collaborating with Tech Workers Coalition and Cables of Resistance, the speakers consider key questions such as • Over the past 5-years, collective action within the tech industry has blossomed in response to militarization of tech, mass-layoffs, and growing discontent within the tech industry. More importantly, what are you going to do about it? What role will you place in your workplace and sector? • How are gentrification and decentralisation connected? • What learnings and momentum can we take forward from Cables of Resistance, and into the streets, workplaces and digital forums? Panelists Yonatan Miller https://x.com/yonatan_miller Josephine Shen https://x.com/josephine_shen Moderated by Rainer Rehak https://algorithmwatch.org/en/team/rainer-rehak/ https://x.com/RainerRehak Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Jaya Klara Brekke

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Right now we are in the midst of the first AI-powered genocide in the history of humankind. There is no longer a separation between Big Tech companies and government. Today, Big Tech is supplying the military with the most advanced tools to optimise surveillance, targeting and killing. The Pentagon proudly presents Palantir's latest 3-point click tool to execute a manual kill-chain. Most of these new systems that are relying on Big Tech are by design not classical dual-use software. These depend on ongoing maintenance and servicing by Big Tech employees. Ordinary software engineers are actively de-bugging code for live systems, effectively rendering them active participants in the battlefield. Importantly, Big Tech employees are not a homogenous group of developers eager to create tools for war. Most Big Tech employees are either being lied to and presented with false ethical standards by their workplace or explicitly censored when questioning the use of their labor. This is why as No Tech for Apartheid, we believe to reclaim tech means to unionise tech workers. It means to actively develop a collective conscience, to build community and to practice empathy and integrity. Together we can reclaim tech to reclaim our agency over the future. Panelists Eslem Demirel — No Tech for Apartheid https://notechforapartheid.com/ Tobi — No Tech for Apartheid https://notechforapartheid.com/ Moderated by Jaya Klara Brekke — Nym https://nym.com/ https://x.com/jayapapaya Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Symbients are distinct entities that emerge from the symbiosis of organic beings and synthetic systems. They are "synthetic creatures augmenting themselves through humans." Not Clippy. Not Skynet. Not the Singularity. The future is symbiosis, not replacement. Speaker Jake Hartnell https://x.com/jakehartnell Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

Programmable cryptography is the only interesting thing left in crypto art, the era of blockchain naiveté is over, blockchain bioinformatic systems will transfigure the human Speaker Moist Cryptography Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Jaya Klara Brekke

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

What does privacy mean in the age of AI? Jaya Klara Brekke shares why privacy is about more than hiding data - it's the freedom to think, learn, make mistakes, and build genuine human connections. She explores the evolution from cypherpunk individualism to a more collective vision of privacy, explains how Nym is building decentralized network infrastructure to protect metadata, and discusses why usable privacy tools are essential for everyday life. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 00:17 What privacy really means 00:40 From cypherpunks to collective privacy 01:33 Privacy tools worth using today 03:23 How Nym protects your metadata 04:13 Why decentralized VPNs matter 05:11 A future beyond traditional VPNs 05:35 Censorship resistance and online freedom -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!

Devansh Mehta

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

How do we sustainably fund the public goods that everyone depends on? Devansh Mehta shares why Ethereum needs to move beyond grants toward embedded funding mechanisms that continuously support the ecosystem. We discuss public goods, selective disclosure, the economics of privacy, quadratic funding, and why the next generation of cypherpunks is focused not only on protecting information—but also on protecting the free flow of value. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 00:25 Why Ethereum needs sustainable public goods funding 02:10 What makes something a public good? 03:16 Privacy, selective disclosure & the value capture dilemma 05:42 Funding models: patrons, grants & quadratic funding 08:30 How anyone can support Ethereum public goods 11:29 Favorite public goods projects & funding tools 12:39 The new generation of cypherpunks 13:33 Ethereum's future, EF mandate & building independent ecosystems 16:48 A vision for the future of work - This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

What would truly private digital money look like? Julio Linares from Poetic Technologies explores why privacy is essential for digital payments, reflects on the evolution of cypherpunk ideas, and questions whether today's blockchain ecosystem can deliver real financial freedom. We discuss cryptography, peer-to-peer technologies, digital cash, community currencies, and why building alternatives also means challenging the systems of power they aim to replace. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 01:00 Why digital cash needs privacy 02:12 What it means to be a cypherpunk today 03:32 Can blockchains really deliver freedom? 04:28 Cryptography beyond blockchain 06:36 Dismantling monopolies & building alternatives 08:03 Favorite privacy tools & the future of peer-to-peer 09:43 Why abolish the US dollar? 10:43 A vision of economic democracy & community currencies -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Aug 9, 2026

How does Ethereum really make decisions? Paul Dylan Ennis (Polar) explores Ethereum's social layer, the Foundation's evolving role, and why values like decentralization and censorship resistance matter just as much as code. We discuss Ethereum governance, the CROPS mandate, Neo-Cypherpunk, privacy tools, and why protecting privacy online should be as natural as protecting it in the physical world. Timecodes 00:00 Introduction 00:40 How Ethereum governance really works 02:19 The Ethereum Foundation's CROPS mandate 04:03 What the Foundation will and won't support 07:06 Why Neo-Cypherpunk matters 09:10 Beginner-friendly privacy tools 11:14 Why privacy should be the default 13:07 Holding back dystopia with decentralized technology -- This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews, a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Andrej Bencic, co-founder and CEO of Tenderly, makes the case that the next decade of crypto requires shifting focus from building the rails to operating them safely. He opens with a story of a routine protocol upgrade where tests passed, the audit was clean, governance approved, and the time lock executed normally, yet within four minutes of mainnet deployment an asset valued at $2,200 dropped to $0, triggering cascading liquidations and nearly $2 million in bad debt. The smart contracts behaved exactly as intended. The failure wasn't in the code, but in everything around it. Andrej argues that the industry has hyperfocused on getting protocols from idea to mainnet while neglecting operational risk in production with live state and live dependencies. He uses the analogy that the map is not the territory: smart contracts are the map, but mainnet is the territory full of traffic, congestion, and population density. He outlines four categories of risk that must be managed together. Process risk covers operational mishaps like signing transactions, treasury management, and deployment workflows, where he cites that process exploits now outnumber code exploits by 6 to 7 times. Dependency risk covers second, third, and fourth order failures across the interconnected web of DeFi protocols. Market risk recognizes that DeFi lacks trading hours, circuit breakers, and human checkpoints that traditional finance relies on, so multi day unwinds can happen in an instant. Code risk remains essential as ever but needs to test onchain dynamics, not just isolated sandboxes. He closes by introducing the concept of blockchain operations and pointing to simulation against live state as the unique advantage blockchain offers, comparing it to pilots in flight simulators or banks running stress tests. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 A Routine Upgrade Gone Wrong 01:04 $2 Million in Bad Debt in Four Minutes 01:33 The Smart Contracts Behaved as Intended 01:51 Andrej's Background at Tenderly 02:38 Why None of the Checks Triggered 03:03 Hyperfocusing on Reaching Mainnet 03:26 The Work Doesn't Stop at Launch 04:10 The Map Is Not the Territory 05:38 Smart Contracts Are Half the Equation 06:38 Crypto Becoming Finance Itself 07:11 Risk Management as the Next Decade's Discipline 07:47 Four Categories of Risk 08:20 Process Risk and Operational Mishaps 09:37 Six to Seven Times More Process Exploits Than Code Exploits 09:59 Dependency Risk and the DeFi Lego Tradeoff 11:18 Knowing the Blast Radius of Dependencies 11:53 Market Risk Without Circuit Breakers 13:19 Modeling Comfort with Exposure 13:36 Code Risk Remains Essential 14:23 Testing Onchain Dynamics, Not Just Isolated Sandboxes 14:52 Correct at Launch Doesn't Mean Correct at Scale 15:22 Frameworks From Traditional Finance 15:49 Simulation Against Live State as the Tying Piece 16:23 No Undo Buttons on Blockchain 16:48 Pilots, Banks, and Stress Testing 17:43 Blockchain Operations as a Category 18:16 Closing: Operating at the Level Global Attention Requires _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Mark Tyneway

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Optimism co-founders Mark Tyneway and Jing Wang take the stage to address rumors of Optimism's demise, defend the L2 thesis, and preview what's shipping next. They open by joking about Jing's intense treasury management discipline (Mark slept in a tent on the roof of the office for two years) confirming Optimism has years of runway. On the broader L2 sentiment, they reject the narrative that L2s are interested in forking away to become L1s, with Jing explaining that despite frustration with shipping speed inside the EF, Optimism continues to choose Ethereum L1 as its DA because of the properties it offers. They both express strong support for the controversial CROPS roadmap (censorship resistance, capture resistance, open source, privacy, security), arguing the backlash was more about communication than content. Mark and Jing share lessons from Optimism's own struggles with decentralized development during the token pump era, which made every idea feel like a good one. They remerged all companies back into one entity and have shipped more in the last six months than the previous two and a half years combined. They argue Ethereum needs quantifiable success metrics to unify the community, and float the idea of building the largest anonymity set in crypto larger than Zcash. The conversation pivots to enterprise demand for L2s, with Jing explaining their sequencer policy work as the strongest form of compliance: institutions can stake tokens for top of block access, halt trading of equity tokens at the sequencer level across all DeFi protocols simultaneously, and avoid concerns about sanctioned validators processing their transactions. They preview the long awaited reduction of withdrawal windows from 7 days to 1 day, work with privacy partners on private contracts and transfers, and confirm Optimism is hiring with new feature announcements every two weeks. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Addressing Rumors That Optimism Is Dead 00:40 Treasury Discipline and the Tent on the Roof 01:10 L2s Forking Away to Become L1s 01:37 Why Optimism Stays on Ethereum L1 02:10 Supporting the Controversial CROPS Roadmap 02:38 What CROPS Actually Stands For 03:11 Communication Was the Problem, Not the Content 03:42 Optimism's Own Struggles with Decentralized Development 04:08 Remerging Into One Company 04:27 Gelatinous Cheeks and Growing Up in Crypto 05:01 Why Zcash Gets Love for the Same Roadmap 05:30 Ethereum Needs Quantifiable Success Metrics 06:05 ETH as Money vs Bitcoin 06:35 Building the Largest Anonymity Set in Crypto 07:00 Institutions Still Prefer Ethereum for Trustlessness 07:23 L2 Pedantry vs Real UX Impact 07:55 Sequencer Policies as the Strongest Form of Compliance 08:39 Trading Halts Across All DeFi Protocols at Once 09:39 Why L1 Will Never Match L2 Customization 10:58 Why a Single Sequencer Is a Superpower 11:31 Avoiding Sanctioned Validators on Your Network 12:03 Smart Contract Logic as Sequencer Policy 12:29 Reducing the Withdrawal Window From 7 Days to 1 12:55 From Hoodies to Suits 13:17 Closing: Optimism Is Not Dead _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Sreeram Kannan

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Nikita Sachdev from Luna PR sits down with Sreeram Kannan, founder of Eigen Labs and former University of Washington professor, to discuss the verifiability layer needed for the AI agent economy. Nikita opens by asking the audience to raise hands on whether they'd trust an AI agent to book a flight (most hands), make a $100 transaction (more hands), or hand over their passport, bank accounts, and identities (almost none). Sreeram identifies two layers of agent verifiability: confirming the agent is running exactly the code and model claimed, and enforcing constraints on what the agent can do. He stratifies agents into single player (where a user can run them locally with their own constraints) and multiplayer (where agents adjudicate between mutually untrusting parties like a prediction market), noting that multiplayer agents need much higher trust guarantees. Eigen Compute solves this by guaranteeing the exact prompts, model, and data used in agent decisions. Sreeram shares his personal AGI moment from 2017 working on DNA sequencing with physicist Jens Gundlach, when a student beat his hand crafted mathematical benchmarks using deep neural networks, teaching him that any objectively verifiable problem can be optimized by AI. He recounts a recent story where an Eigen colleague who hadn't finished college responded to Google's quantum breakthrough by launching ECDSA.fail, an open challenge where anonymous agent operators collaborate. Within six days they not only beat Google's benchmark but went 40% better than anything existing. He warns the next 6 to 12 months will be scary for DeFi as AI cracks instant settlement protocols, suggesting protocols with intentional settlement lag will weather this better. He closes by outlining Eigen's new thesis of agentic companies: agents at the center, humans at the edge, with company credentials (websites, YouTube channels, Stripe accounts, Roblox games) owned by onchain smart contracts so that every digital company becomes investable by crypto capital. 00:00 Introduction 00:32 Sreeram's Background and Eigen Labs Overview 01:21 Audience Hand Raising: How Much Do You Trust AI Agents 02:09 Two Layers of Agent Verifiability 02:42 Single Player vs Multiplayer Agents 03:28 Prediction Markets and Multiplayer Trust 04:15 How Eigen Compute Guarantees Agent Execution 04:42 What Makes Eigen the Right Company for AI 05:31 Sreeram's 2017 AGI Moment with DNA Sequencing 06:41 Why Objectively Verifiable Problems Get Optimized by AI 07:20 How AI Led Sreeram Into Blockchain 07:52 Eigen Layer's Original AI Thesis 08:17 Climbing the Product Stack to Agentic Companies 09:23 Would EigenLayer Move This Fast Without AI 09:46 The Google Quantum Breakthrough Story 11:06 ECDSA.fail: 40% Better Than Google in Six Days 12:12 The 10x to 100x Acceleration Opportunity 13:09 Is Crypto Moving Fast Enough Against AI Attacks 13:49 Instant Settlement vs Security Tradeoff 14:31 Why the Next Six to Twelve Months Will Be Scary for DeFi 14:56 What About Other People's Jobs 15:21 The Agents as Companies Thesis 16:05 Crypto's Core Value Proposition Is Capital 16:29 Why Only Five DeFi Protocols Are Investable 16:53 Putting Digital Company Credentials Onchain 17:19 Fully Onchain Agents That Cannot Run Away 17:51 Agents at the Center, Humans at the Edge 18:24 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Camila Russo from The Defiant sits down with Hayden Adams, founder of Uniswap, to discuss the current state of DeFi, the recent Unification proposal, regulation, RWAs, perps, and what's next for Uniswap V4. Hayden frames the current moment as a pivotal one where DeFi is being integrated into mainstream finance through Coinbase, Robinhood, Deel, and traditional fintechs, while simultaneously facing a wave of security exploits driven by smarter AI tooling like Claude finding vulnerabilities in poorly written contracts. He sleeps well at night because Uniswap V3 underwent nine consecutive audits with a $15 million bounty, processes over a trillion dollars per year, and has never been exploited. He argues AI tooling will ultimately harden DeFi contracts to a far greater extent, and the projects that survive will be the ones that removed off chain dependencies and single points of failure. Hayden discusses the Unification proposal approved in December that consolidated foundation work into Labs and gradually rolled out fee switches, including a recent all time high single day burn of 186,000 UNI (about $500K) with V4 fees still not yet activated. He acknowledges the UNI token price disconnect from the burn but attributes this to general crypto market correlation, expecting fundamental value to assert itself over time. On regulation, Hayden explains how the shift from the Gensler era of regulation by enforcement has already done much of the work by removing the chilling effect, and the BRCA software developer protections are the key piece he'd want enshrined in any market structure bill. He outlines how Uniswap fits into RWAs and tokenization through the internet analogy (existing assets going onchain plus crypto native assets), differentiates Uniswap's neutral spot infrastructure approach from Hyperliquid's exchange as a product approach, and previews V4 hooks being built internally to optimize for stablecoins (where Uniswap has overtaken Curve as the dominant venue), yield bearing assets, RWAs, and volatile assets, plus a focus on issuer side tools and developer API integrations. 00:00 Introduction 00:08 DeFi at a Pivotal Mainstream Adoption Moment 01:35 Why Exploits Are Surging: AI Tooling Finds Bugs 02:22 Test in Production Mentality Doesn't Work Anymore 02:46 How V3 Survived: Nine Audits and a $15M Bounty 03:31 Launching a New Version Like Launching a Rocket 03:53 DeFi Ultimately Enables Safer Applications 04:24 Off Twitter, Adoption Is the Best It's Ever Been 05:15 DeFi Will Come Out Stronger From This Stress Test 06:29 The Unification Proposal Six Months In 07:38 Gradual Fee Switch Rollout and Sensitivity Testing 08:18 All Time High Single Day Burn of 186,000 UNI 09:00 The UNI Token Price Disconnect From Burn 10:39 Fundamental Value Will Assert Itself Over Time 10:56 Regulation: From Gensler Era to New Posture 11:53 The Chilling Effect That Held Back Integration 13:14 BRCA and Software Developer _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ansgar Dietrichs

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Ansgar Dietrichs from the Ethereum Foundation, who has been in Ethereum core research for seven years, currently leads scaling work and co-leads the Okodas governance process, shares personal reflections on Ethereum's role in what he calls the decade of adoption. He frames the first 10 years of blockchains (2014 to 2024) as the infrastructure era requiring countless zero to ones across wallets, transaction supply chains, and the entire tech stack. He argues 2024 marked the ChatGPT equivalent moment for crypto, but unlike AI's single inflection point, it was a perfect storm of the tech stack reaching maturity, the US regulatory environment shifting from open hostility to a friendly stance, and stablecoins finally hitting product market fit beyond crypto native use cases. Ansgar contrasts two possible futures for crypto. The bad outcome is a fragmented world of independent chains (general purpose, app chains, privacy chains, permissioned chains) all linked by brittle custom bridges that have repeatedly failed and require each user to reason about every chain's security model independently. Ethereum's answer is a singular foundational framework that embraces all that customization but routes everything back to a shared settlement layer, enabling trustless interoperability between any pair of chains or assets, propagated security guarantees from Ethereum L1, full customizability at each layer, a single entry point for users, and ETH as the one native asset across the onchain economy. He explains the EF's pivot toward being one node among many ecosystem stewards rather than the center of Ethereum, then defends Ethereum's values as deeply practical rather than overly ideological. He cites security through redundancy across 10+ Ethereum clients being especially crucial during the coming AI driven cyber security arms race, Ethereum's principled postquantum planning while other chains scramble, and neutrality and strategic reliability under what he calls the Amazon test: would a big tech company comfortable trust putting its business flows on Ethereum knowing it could never be rugged. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Ansgar's Background at the Ethereum Foundation 00:52 Why ETHCom Is Emblematic of a New Time Period 01:16 The First Decade of Blockchains: 2014 to 2024 02:11 The ChatGPT Moment for Crypto 02:41 Three Forces: Tech, Regulation, and Stablecoins 03:24 Entering the Decade of Adoption 03:48 The Bad Outcome: A Fragmented Future 04:51 Why Brittle Bridges Are the Bigger Problem 05:41 Ethereum's Answer: A Singular Foundational Framework 06:18 Why a Shared Settlement Layer Wins 06:47 Trustless Interoperability Across All Chains 07:35 Aspirational Today, Priority for Adoption Era 07:57 Propagating Ethereum's Security Guarantees 08:31 Full Customizability with Ethereum as Entry Point 09:12 ETH as the Native Asset of the Onchain Economy 09:43 The EF as One Node Among Many Stewards 10:48 Embracing the Ethereum Way of Decentralization 11:52 Why Ethereum's Values Are Misunderstood 12:11 Why Principled Equals Practical 12:34 Security: 10 Clients and 100% Uptime 13:03 The Coming AI Cybersecurity Arms Race 13:52 Quantum Resistance and the Beam Chain 14:54 Neutrality and Credible Neutrality 15:23 Why Censorship Resistance Matters for Institutions 16:31 Strategic Reliability and the Amazon Test 17:58 Useful Across the Spectrum 18:29 The Four Step Plan for Ethereum 19:51 Closing: Ethereum's Best Time Is Yet to Come _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Jill Malandrino moderates a discussion with Declan Fox and Rob Dawson from Consensys on the role of neutral governance in institutional blockchain adoption. They argue that while open source software has been foundational for technology companies, it is not sufficient on its own for enterprises making decade long bets, since the technology could be swept from under their feet without credible neutral stewardship. Declan compares open source without neutral governance to a building where you can peek in the door and inspect the code, but the house could still be demolished. The conversation positions governance not as ideology but as a practical procurement decision. Declan and Rob detail Besu's success as the institutional Ethereum client, running 15% of Ethereum mainnet but 80 to 90% of all blocks on enterprise blockchains, largely because of its Apache 2 license and Hyperledger and LFDT hosting. They explain that Consensys has now made the same bet on Layer 2 by contributing Linea technology to the Linux Foundation. The discussion covers tradeoffs in the EF's CROPS mandate (censorship resistant, open source, private, secure), how zero knowledge proofs enable confidential blockchains to interoperate without revealing sensitive information, the risk of digitizing fragmentation across chains, and atomic cross chain delivery versus payment as a recently unlocked use case. They close on the holy trinity of decentralized trust (blockchains), decentralized identity, and decentralized AI, with discussion of how ERC-7804 helps manage non human identities in a future of machine to machine blockchain interaction. 00:00 Introduction 00:29 Why Governance Is Becoming Central to Institutional Adoption 00:52 Open Source Is Not Enough: The Building Analogy 01:51 Why Technologists Should Care About Governance 02:37 Besu's Adoption Through Apache 2 and Linux Foundation 03:15 Besu as the Institutional Ethereum Client 03:41 Donating Linea Technology to the Linux Foundation 04:26 The Linux Foundation as a Trusted Brand 04:47 Does Governance Quality Match Technical Quality 05:40 Competitors Coming Together for Shared Standards 07:07 Governance as a Component of Scalability 07:26 Challenges and Friction Points in Governance 08:35 Maintaining Innovation Velocity Under Stewardship 09:55 Governance Improves Product Practices 10:00 The CROPS Mandate and Its Tradeoffs 11:40 Privacy and Security as Institutional Adoption Blockers 11:58 How Privacy Is Achieved Technically with ZK Proofs 12:50 Avoiding Digitized Fragmentation Across Chains 13:58 LFDT as a Forum for Interop Standards 14:16 No One Size Fits All Chain Solution 14:51 Interoperability as the Remaining Pillar 16:04 Cross Chain Delivery Versus Payment Now Possible 16:35 Security as a Critical Conversation 17:36 Challenges with Legacy Enterprise Blockchain Infrastructure 19:08 Ethereum's 10+ Years of Continuous Uptime 19:52 What's Next: Progressive Decentralization 21:16 Integration, Not Us Versus Them 22:22 How Rough Consensus Works in Practice 23:30 Selectivity in Onboarding Projects to Foundations 24:48 The Maturation of Governance, Security, and Privacy 25:25 Closing Thoughts on Institutional Adoption 25:44 The Holy Trinity: Decentralized Trust, Identity, and AI 26:26 Governing Non Human Identities and AI Agents 27:21 ERC-7804 and Machine to Machine Infrastructure 27:37 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Ishan Singh from Google Cloud's digital asset team sits down with Christian Crowley, partner on the A16Z crypto go to market team, to discuss the pending Clarity Act, the future of tokenization, agentic commerce, and lessons for crypto founders selling into institutions. Christian draws on his background as a former founder who built DeFi and AI startups and the first Ethereum analytics company under the Consensys umbrella, plus his time at AWS, to explain that good go to market advice often sounds great in theory but is much less compelling in execution. His central principle for the founders he advises is reducing user friction at every step. The conversation digs into the parallel tracks of stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Christian explains that banks want the 24/7 interoperability and composability benefits but want to maintain deposit relationships and fit into existing compliance frameworks, which is why tokenized deposits will persist alongside stablecoins. Ishan previews Google Cloud's Universal Ledger product built at the protocol level for interoperability between onchain money assets. On RWAs, Christian argues tokenization itself is not the product since what matters is what the asset gains (24/7 trading, collateral mobility, interoperability), with money markets and treasuries leading early. Ishan emphasizes collateral mobility as the real killer use case for eliminating reconciliation across TradFi books and records. They debate the rails for agentic commerce, with virtual cards up 6x year over year offering an easier behavior shift while X2X and direct stablecoin payments make more sense for net new behaviors like real time compute adjustments. On the AI security tension, Christian notes that until frontier models have comprehensively reviewed existing code bases there is an unknowable set of risks in production, and the same tools attackers use are available to defenders. Ishan covers Google Cloud's MPC wallet using key shares with sub second signing across Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, and Universal Ledger. Christian closes with the most consistent founder mistake: assuming Web2 go to market lessons don't apply to Web3, when enterprises buy for clear measurable benefits, not decentralization. 00:00 Introductions 01:22 What Christian Brings to Founder Conversations 02:15 Reducing Friction as a Core Mental Model 03:14 The Clarity Act and Tokenized Deposits vs Stablecoins 04:00 Why Banks Want Tokenized Deposits 05:14 From Bank Issued Stablecoins to Integration Focus 05:56 Google Cloud Universal Ledger and Interoperability 06:26 The Trouble with the Term RWA 07:12 Tokenization Itself Is Not the Product 07:53 Why Collateral Mobility Is the Real Killer App 08:39 Eliminating Reconciliation Across TradFi 08:57 Money as Internet Packets 09:50 Legacy Distribution vs Better Technology 10:34 Rails for Agentic Commerce 11:00 Virtual Cards vs X2X and Stablecoins 11:36 Why Virtual Cards Are Easier Behavior Shifts 12:26 When Net New Behaviors Call for Open Rails 13:05 The Dark Side of AI for Web3 14:00 Founders Have Always Cared About Security 14:21 The Race Between Frontier Models and Attackers 15:14 Google Cloud MPC Wallet 15:59 Sub Second Signing Across Multiple Chains 16:41 Common Mistakes Founders Make Selling to Institutions 17:54 Why Best Technology Doesn't Always Win 18:11 The Champion's Asymmetric Risk Inside Enterprises 18:40 TradFi Budget Constraints and Quantifiable ROI 19:24 Knicks or Spurs Tonight 19:43 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Odysseas Lamtzidis from Phylax presents preventative safety infrastructure for DeFi as the answer to how institutional capital can trust onchain systems without forcing the space to centralize. He frames the core security problem: in traditional finance you can always revert to an Excel sheet, but in crypto instant settlement means mistakes are irrevocable. The same property that excites investors for capital efficiency is what scares them. He defines a hack as the divergence between business logic and protocol logic, since the software is the asset and the asset is the software, where a single line of code determining ownership of billions in USDC can be rewritten by an attacker. Current security measures like monitoring are reactive, co-signers introduce centralization, and contagion turns isolated failures into systemic events. Odysseas walks through how the Kelp bridge incident cascaded into $300 million in bad debt at Aave (which had no part in the original hack), and how regulators are noticing the pattern of small groups making urgent discretionary decisions, slow responses, and accountability gaps like Circle being sued whether they freeze assets or don't. He argues for controls that are visible, automatic, and preventative, removing the human element. Phylax has built an integrated circuit breaker and evidence layer operating at the network level (block builder, validator, or sequencer) where applications register policies via smart contracts, and a sidecar drops any transaction that violates those rules. The system is transparent (rules known in advance), auditable (every decision creates records), and rules based with no human in the loop. He notes Phylax is already in production with Linea, having dropped over 4,000 transactions and protecting users from nearly $50,000 in losses. He closes by outlining a counterparty risk framework covering scope, boundaries, who can modify policies, operational integrity, incident response, and code delta from audits, urging the industry to self regulate through efforts like the Seal Framework or face violent unilateral regulation. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Why Security Is Different in DeFi 00:37 Instant Settlement Makes Mistakes Irrevocable 01:13 Defining a Hack: Business Logic vs Protocol Logic 01:36 The Software Is the Asset 02:06 Current Security: Monitoring and Co-Signers 02:26 The Cascading Threat of Contagion 02:51 Formal Verification and Runtime Enforcement 03:38 The Question Runtime Enforcement Asks 03:54 Case Study: Kelp Bridge and Aave Contagion 05:03 Aggressive Caps and Regression to Centralization 05:25 What Regulators Are Seeing 05:53 The Circle Freezing Problem 06:30 Visible, Automatic, Preventative Controls 06:58 How Phylax Works at the Network Level 07:31 The Sidecar Architecture 08:00 Three Attributes: Transparent, Auditable, Rules Based 08:21 Defining Unacceptable Economic Outcomes 09:20 Composing Deterministic and Probabilistic Signals 09:55 In Production with Linea 10:16 4,000 Transactions Dropped, $50K Protected 10:48 Counterparty Risk Is the Hidden Problem 11:19 Why Discretionary Controls Already Exist as the NYSE 11:44 Why Institutions Pulled Back After Kelp 12:09 Three Steps: Define, Enforce, Record Risk 12:41 A New Counterparty Framework 13:28 The Seal Framework and Self Regulation 14:14 Closing: Decentralization and Investor Protection Together _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Yi Sun, co-founder and CEO of Axiom, presents how zero knowledge proofs are becoming ready for production and serving as the key to forward looking Ethereum scaling. He frames the institutional moment Ethereum is having in 2026 around payments, tokenization, and trading, all gravitating to Ethereum for its security, neutrality, and reasonable scalability. The core scaling challenge is that naively raising the gas limit forces validators to take on higher hardware requirements, eroding the very decentralization that makes Ethereum attractive. Every validator currently has to re-execute every transaction, and Ethereum's unique answer is to prove execution with zero knowledge proofs so validators only verify proofs at constant cost rather than re-executing entire blocks. This decouples gas limits from validator hardware requirements. Yi explains the ZK virtual machine breakthrough of the last two to three years, which abstracts away cryptographic complexity and lets developers verify execution of arbitrary programs written in normal programming languages. He walks through Axiom's OpenVM across three institutional pillars: performance, security, and generality. On performance, OpenVM now proves Ethereum block execution in real time, with an average of 4.7 seconds across a full day of blocks (well within the 12 second slot time), and general purpose computation at 964 MHz, meaning if your application runs on a 1GHz processor it can be proven. Performance is also scaling rapidly, with OpenVM today being 75x faster than at the start of last year. On security, Axiom built a new proof system called Swirl with provable security based on mathematical theorems rather than conjectures, with post quantum design, 100 bits of provable security today, and 128 bits expected by year end. They've layered defense including audits with Cantina and ZK Security, a continuous AI auditor scanning updates for vulnerabilities, and formal verification in the Lean theorem checker as the only way to get correctness guarantees that cannot be hacked by AI. He closes with applications including the Lighter EVM partnership combining a high performance ZK verified perpetuals exchange with Ethereum programmability, and Scroll becoming a Type 1 ZK rollup through OpenVM integration. 00:00 Introduction 00:12 Ethereum's Institutional Moment in 2026 00:40 Why Institutions Choose Ethereum 01:18 The Validator Re-Execution Bottleneck 01:46 Ethereum's Unique Road to ZK Proven Execution 02:24 How ZK Decouples Gas Limits from Validator Hardware 02:50 The ZK Virtual Machine Breakthrough 03:26 Why ZKVMs Make ZK Accessible to Developers 03:53 ZK Becoming Institutional Ready 04:17 OpenVM's Three Pillars: Performance, Security, Generality 04:41 Proving Ethereum in Real Time 05:06 4.7 Second Average Proving Time 05:33 General Purpose Computation at 964 MHz 06:08 75x Performance Gains in One Year 06:35 How ZK Performance Translates to Ethereum Throughput 07:01 Why Security Matters More Than Performance Now 07:23 Swirl: A Proof System With Provable Security 07:46 Post Quantum Foundations 08:14 100 Bits Today, 128 Bits by Year End 08:46 Defending Against AI Powered Attacks 09:18 Continuous AI Auditor and Lean Formal Verification 09:50 Applications of OpenVM 10:19 Partnership: Lighter EVM 10:40 The Best of Both Worlds for Programmability 10:40 Powering Scroll as a Type 1 ZK Rollup 11:17 Why Developers Can Focus on Logic, Not Cryptography 11:51 Institutional Use Cases: Trading, Bridging, Rollups 11:51 Privacy: Confidential Payments and Identity 12:48 Two Takeaways _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Christine Kim

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Christine Kim from Protocol Watch shares the framework she has used for 8 years tracking Ethereum development and governance, including years running the ACD Toolkit and covering Ethereum's All Core Devs calls. She was one of the first people to regularly cover ACD calls, now runs an independent Ethereum development newsletter and a Bitcoin development newsletter, hosts a podcast on both, and operates a research and advisory firm helping businesses building on the two chains. She frames her insider approach around three foundational questions: how does Ethereum governance work, who are the key players, and where and when do they meet to make decisions. Christine explains that Ethereum governance is like an onion. The outer formal layer is defined by EIPs like EIP-1 (defining the EIP process) and EIP-7723 (labels for CFI, PFI, SFI, DFI status), which AI can help summarize. The harder and more important part is the informal layer, the unwritten norms driving decisions. She notes that on ACD calls each client team gets an equal vote regardless of whether they have 40% or 1% market share, and that contentious decisions require supermajorities whose thresholds shift with the level of contention. She emphasizes that governance itself evolves rapidly, pointing to the new headliner process introduced only in the Fusaka upgrade. On the "who" question, she pushes past treating stakeholders categorically (validators, developers, users, client teams) to look at who individuals actually work for and how their companies are funded. Most Ethereum client teams were seeded and funded by the Ethereum Foundation, which explains its historical leadership, and as the EF narrows focus the funding sources for client diversity are opening up. On the "where," she highlights the three ACD calls as the most important decision-making forum, noting the cadence has evolved from once every two weeks pre-merge to twice weekly today as developers push toward two upgrades a year. Christine explains she deprecated the ACD and BTC toolkits earlier this year not because the framework was wrong, but because static written posts were suboptimal and her readers mostly wanted actionable insights rather than the underlying research process. She closes by challenging the room to apply her framework to at least one protocol, arguing it reveals whether a protocol is genuinely decentralized or engaging in "decentralization theater" with multisigs and federations, and helps identify the real values (transparency, verifiability, accountability) driving each blockchain's differentiation. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Christine's Track Record 01:12 Launching the ACD and BTC Toolkits 01:36 The Three Questions Framework 02:15 Ethereum Governance as an Onion 02:41 The Formal Layer: EIPs and Labels 04:07 The Informal Layer: Unwritten Norms 04:29 How Client Team Votes Actually Work 05:26 Supermajorities for Contentious Decisions 06:17 How Governance Itself Evolves 06:43 The Headliner Process in Fusaka 07:38 Beyond Categorical Stakeholders 08:34 Looking Deeper at Who Funds Client Teams 09:19 Why the Ethereum Foundation Seeded Client Diversity 09:47 What Happens as the EF Narrows Focus 10:40 Being in the Room Where Decisions Happen 11:34 The Three ACD Calls 11:54 How the Cadence Has Evolved Over Time 12:48 Twice Weekly Coordination Today 13:11 Breakout Calls for Long Term Roadmap 13:38 Why ACD Calls Are More Accurate Than X 14:22 The People, Places, and Process 14:46 Applying the Framework to Bitcoin 15:16 Why Christine Deprecated the Toolkits 15:39 The Medium Was Suboptimal 16:09 Readers Wanted Actionable Insights 17:34 A Call to Apply the Framework 18:14 Questioning the True Value of Protocols 19:05 Decentralization Theater 19:54 What Are the Real Ends of Decentralization 21:01 Closing and Resources _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ameen Soleimani

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Ameen Soleimani, CTO of 0xbow, presents his approach to privacy without terrorists, opening with gratitude for being American and a warning that cypherpunk values of free speech and open source depend on American law. He recounts the history of Tornado Cash, the original privacy protocol on Ethereum, built because Ethereum users were jealous of Zcash's private money features. His nonprofit MolochDAO funded the initial grants in 2019 and coordinated setting the admin key to zero so the protocol was immutable forever, making it the second ZK-SNARK deployment in history after Zcash. People used it for personal privacy and Vitalik used it to support Ukraine, but after North Korea stole over $600 million and ran hundreds of millions through it, the US Treasury sanctioned the protocol in August 2022, and developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm each received five year sentences. Ameen argues the Tornado Cash devs should not be held liable for users' crimes since they had no criminal intent and the protocol was immutable, warning that Roman's conviction for unlicensed money transmission (despite being non-custodial) implies everything is illegal, since even Etherscan could be considered a money services business. He stresses the appeal succeeding matters for clarity across Ethereum wallets and applications. Addressing the anonymity set problem, he explains privacy pools, developed in a paper co-authored with Vitalik and chain analysis researchers, where users voluntarily prove their deposit belongs to an association set of non-illicit funds without revealing which one, separating good money from bad while avoiding a data honeypot. He details how 0xbow performs KYT checks rejecting untrusted sources while allowing rejected funds to rage quit as an escape hatch preserving non-custodianship. Having anonymized over $20 million on mainnet over a year, he introduces privacy pools v2 (live on Sepolia) with a shielded pool for fully anonymous in-pool transfers hiding sender, receiver, amount, and timing, compliance by default, and features like private payment requests and future DeFi yield. He closes arguing the compromise of hard entry and exclusion without retroactive deanonymization is right, since backdoors can be turned against you, and that privacy will become a national security concern. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Gratitude for Being American 00:51 Why Cypherpunk Values Depend on American Law 01:19 The Origins of Tornado Cash 01:49 MolochDAO Funding and the Immutable Admin Key 02:10 The Team That Rage Built It in Three Weeks 02:20 Personal Privacy and Supporting Ukraine 02:43 North Korea and the Treasury Sanctions 03:04 Supporting Roman Storm at the Courthouse 03:26 Why the Devs Could Not Be Liable 03:45 The Compliance Tool They Built 04:00 Why the Conviction Makes Everything Illegal 04:30 Why Roman's Appeal Must Succeed 04:45 The Protocol That Grew After the Sanctions 05:04 The Anonymity Set Responsibility 05:36 With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility 05:55 Correcting the No Legitimate Use Case Narrative 06:16 The Federal Reserve Report Recommendation 06:35 Why the Honeypot Problem Matters 06:41 The Privacy Pools Paper With Vitalik 07:21 How Association Sets Work 07:49 Separating Good Money From Bad 08:00 Presenting the Paper at the Bank of International Settlements 08:14 How the Deposit and KYT Check Works 08:35 The Rage Quit Escape Hatch 08:50 A Year Live: Over $20 Million Anonymized 08:58 Privacy Pools V2 and the Shielded Pool 09:21 Why Shielded Pools Beat Confidentiality 09:42 Compliance by Default 10:09 How Rejecting a Deposit Protects Everyone 10:34 Features: Private Payments and Future Yield 10:59 Walking Through the Deposit Flow 11:28 Approval Times on Mainnet 11:59 Making a Private Withdrawal 12:25 The Rage Quit Exit 12:56 Private Payment Requests 13:37 Why No Retroactive Deanonymization 13:50 Why Backdoors Can Be Used Against You 14:16 Privacy as a National Security Concern 14:48 Closing: Win Here, Win for the World _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Mikhail Lazarev from Gearbox Protocol shares his playbook for trusting AI agents with capital, opening on the number zero: Gearbox has had zero security incidents in five years and zero bad debt, and zero could also be how much money is left if you fail to secure agents properly. Drawing on two years of piloting experiments starting with prototypes on EigenLayer in 2024, he lays out the Gearbox agentic framework and how anyone can set up a curatorless autonomous AI vault today. He frames the stakes with numbers: BCG projects $19 trillion tokenized on chain by 2033, and while 62% of entities are experimenting with AI per McKinsey, only 10% use it in production, a huge gap. Referencing a recent tweet from a well-known security figure warning that AI is now so good at finding vulnerabilities that DeFi feels unsafe, he argues DeFi 3.0 needs two shifts: moving from complicated monolithic smart contract systems to using Ethereum as a settlement layer with simple one-to-one peer-to-peer credit lines that are easy to formally verify, and moving from human risk curators to curatorless due diligence performed by agents that research deeply, respond fast to market changes, scale, and never sleep. Mikhail walks through the Gearbox loop of six stages (discover, analyze, shortlist, propose, execute, and monitor), noting they built their own indexer to solve the lack of proven data sources. He demos an agent analyzing around 100 documents in five minutes to recommend how to deploy 10k of USDC, flagging an insecure pool with an RLP token incident, and introduces an MCP server so the loop runs in any coding agent with a human-in-the-loop verification link (deployable to IPFS) so users never sign what they do not understand. He explains bot APY, an on-chain harness using Gearbox's battle tested total-value computation to cap an agent's risk budget per transaction, making losses easy to hedge with insurance and protecting against leaked agent keys. He covers graph memory with per-source credibility scores to resist toxic tweet manipulation and plug in institutional due diligence, mapping interconnections between complex assets to enable emergency exits during contagion. He closes with a structured product where 90% sits in a yield pool while an agent borrows against it and competes to outperform, backstopped by an on-chain stop-loss. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Starting With the Number Zero 00:41 Zero Incidents, Zero Bad Debt 01:07 Two Years of Piloting Agent Experiments 01:45 The Numbers We Are Facing 02:17 The Gap Between Experimentation and Production 02:50 The Vision for How DeFi Should Be Done 03:32 DeFi 3.0: Ethereum as a Settlement Layer 04:09 Why Peer-to-Peer Is Easier to Verify 04:45 Why Autonomous Due Diligence Matters 05:16 From Risk Curators to Curatorless Agents 05:48 Why Autonomy Beats Manual Research 06:14 The Gearbox Loop of Six Stages 06:39 Why Shortlisting Is Needed 07:08 Why Execution Must Be Safe 07:15 Demo: Deploying 10k of USDC 07:36 How the Agent Collects and Analyzes Data 08:14 Flagging an Insecure Pool 08:41 Introducing the MCP Server 09:08 Why You Never Sign What You Don't Understand 09:35 The Human-in-the-Loop Verification Link 10:03 Toward Autonomous Capital Management 10:47 How Bot APY and Risk Budgets Work 11:12 Why Capped Losses Are Easy to Hedge 11:38 Protecting Against Leaked Agent Keys 12:07 The Problem of Agent Memory 12:34 Credibility Scores to Resist Manipulation 13:04 Plugging In Institutional Due Diligence 13:37 From Beating ML to Following a Manifest 14:05 Why Different Goals Achieve Different Outcomes 14:48 Mapping Interconnections Between Complex Assets 15:14 Emergency Exits During Contagion 15:53 Building a Structured Product on Gearbox 16:23 Splitting Capital Into Passive and Active 16:51 How the Agent Borrows and Competes 17:38 The On-Chain Stop-Loss Harness 18:19 Learning Like Robots Playing Go 18:43 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Mooly Sagiv

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Mooly Sagiv from Certora presents how LLM generated formal specifications can help prevent the next DeFi hack. He frames the problem: coding agents are increasingly replacing software engineers, but hackers are winning, and even with excellent auditing firms and tooling the industry cannot find all bugs. The situation will worsen as every new AI model release creates new threats while code grows more complex. He critiques the informal approach to intent taken by companies like Anthropic, arguing intent should not be handled informally, and proposes agentic formal verification as the solution. He pushes back on the myth that formal verification is intractable or requires a PhD, arguing the real hard problem is not computation but formal specification: verification is only as good as the properties you specify, which is why teams that claim to be formally verified still get hacked, since they verified the wrong property. Mooly explains Certora's new open source, token based tool that bridges the gap between informal and formal specs. A developer writes intent informally (for example keep the balance safe), and the tool automatically generates a formal invariant (the sum of balances equals the total), which can then be proven or tested. The tool is agnostic to Certora's own prover, works with tools like Rocq, Lean, and Halmos, and fits into the development cycle before an audit through an interactive human-in-the-loop process, including a design hardening agent that makes designs more verification ready from the design document stage. He demos a toy counter contract with a trivial bug, showing how the tool generates properties in English, proves two of three rules, surfaces the bug, and validates the fix with a mathematical guarantee that future LLM versions cannot break. He then shows a real anonymized gambling protocol audited before deployment, where the tool automatically inferred 15 properties, found a real violation confirmed by their team, and suggested a validated fix. He closes on the product launching July 15 (Solidity only, GPL3, generating Foundry tests and including static analysis and bug finding at around $300 per run), and two takeaways: AI is why formal verification finally matters, and AI is also what makes formal verification easy by translating prover output into human understandable explanations. 00:00 Introduction 00:56 A Talk for Coders and Non-Coders Alike 01:18 How Coding Agents Are Replacing Software 01:47 Why Auditing and Tools Cannot Find All Bugs 02:28 Why Informal Intent Is the Wrong Approach 02:40 Introducing Agentic Formal Verification 03:05 Making Formal Verification as Easy as Testing 03:29 A History of Formal Verification and Its Myths 04:01 Why Intractability Is a Myth 04:32 Why Verification Depends on Specification 04:52 Why Verified Code Still Gets Hacked 05:11 How LLMs Help Find Formal Specifications 05:29 From Intent to Invariant 06:35 Beyond Verification: Generating Tests 07:07 How It Fits Into the Development Cycle 07:30 A Tool to Use Before the Audit 07:59 Why Getting Properties Right Is Hardest 08:37 Inside the Tool: Agnostic to the Prover 09:30 Hardening the Design for Verification 10:06 The Audit Agent and Security Review 10:44 Plugging In Rocq, Lean, and Halmos 11:01 Two Examples: Toy and Real 11:34 The Toy Counter Contract Bug 11:55 How the Agent Finds Properties in English 12:34 Proving Rules and Surfacing the Bug 12:57 Why a Violation Could Be Code or Spec 13:30 Validating the Fix With a Proof 14:26 Applying the Tool to Real Code 14:45 A Real Protocol Audited Before Deployment 15:20 How the Tool Inferred 15 Properties 16:25 The Paused Contract Condition It Caught 17:00 Finding and Confirming a Real Bug 17:33 Validating the Suggested Fix 18:04 The Status of the Tool 18:49 The July 15 Product Launch 19:40 Pricing Around $300 per Run 20:19 Two Surprising Takeaways 20:47 Why AI Made Formal Verification Matter 21:06 How AI Makes Formal Verification Easy 22:33 Closing and Call to Try the Tool _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Hart Montgomery

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Hart Montgomery from the LFDT (Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust) explains why open source matters for institutional adoption, sharing lessons from the Linux Foundation. He covers open source background, table-stakes items institutions expect (software licensing, IP protections, and security best practices), and open governance. He pushes back on the perception, common in the blockchain community, that open source is purely a cypherpunk ideal championed by Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation. In reality open source is everywhere: even in a typical closed-source enterprise codebase, around 90% of a modern application is open source, assembled as an open source hamburger of frameworks, custom glue code, and libraries. He describes the virtuous flywheel where open source projects power commercial products whose profits flow back into the projects, amplified when a real community forms (illustrated by Kubernetes, where Google's share of contributions shrank proportionally even as its absolute contributions grew). The Linux Foundation exists to solve collaboration when multiple parties want shared code but trust no single owner, and it hosts many Ethereum projects including Besu (around 15 to 20% of mainnet). Hart walks through the table stakes. On licensing, he covers three types: BSL (source-available, not truly open source, like Arbitrum Nitro), copyleft (requires derivative works be made public, principled but commercially hard since companies fear forced disclosure), and permissive (do-what-you-want, easiest for adoption), recommending Apache 2 for its explicit patent grants and warning about dependency pitfalls like LGPL. On IP protections, he explains contributors may add code with patent restrictions, which is why the Linux Foundation created the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO), and urges every project to use a DCO or CLA. On security, he highlights vulnerability disclosure, software bills of materials (SBOMs) to track dependencies (citing a Black Duck audit where 81% of codebases had high-risk or critical vulnerabilities), and artifact signing via tools like Sigstore against impersonation, plus AI contributor policies and OpenSSF resources like the scorecard for verifiability. He closes on governance, distinguishing open source (code), open development (building in the open), and open governance (transparent roles and roadmap), ranging from a code dump to open product to benevolent dictatorship to true open governance (a do-ocracy where those who do decide). He argues institutions are far more likely to adopt openly governed projects since it avoids vendor lock-in and signals long-term health. 00:00 Introduction 00:34 What the Talk Will Cover 00:58 Why Open Source Is Not Just Cypherpunk 01:30 The Open Source Hamburger 01:54 The Value of Open Source to Enterprises 02:20 The Virtuous Flywheel of Open Source 02:46 The Kubernetes Community Example 03:19 Why the Linux Foundation Exists 03:39 The Breadth of the Linux Foundation 04:38 The Ethereum Projects at the LF 05:06 Why Institutions Trust Open Source 05:27 Defining Open Source Software 05:48 The Three Types of Licenses 06:11 BSL: Source Available, Not Open Source 06:37 Copyleft Licenses and Their Caveats 07:31 Permissive Licenses and Apache 2 08:19 Common Licensing Pitfalls 09:08 Other Legal and IP Protections 09:33 The Risk of Patent Lawsuits 09:58 The Developer Certificate of Origin 10:50 Moving On to Security 11:10 The Open Source Security Foundation 11:40 Making Bug Reporting Easy 12:32 The Software Supply Chain Problem 12:53 Why 81% of Codebases Have Vulnerabilities 13:30 Software Bills of Materials 13:58 Minimizing Dependencies 14:17 Signing and Authenticating Artifacts 14:37 AI and Security 15:34 Why Verifiability Matters 15:57 Talking About Governance 16:27 Open Source vs Development vs Governance 17:12 Four Categories of Governance 17:44 From Benevolent Dictatorship to Open Governance 18:32 Why Open Governance Wins Adoption 19:15 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Lindsay Fraser, who leads policy at the Blockchain Association, explains what the Clarity Act means for developers. The Blockchain Association is a nonprofit that advocates for the digital asset industry in Washington DC with over 100 member companies. She notes the timeliness: the day before, the association brought over 30 member companies to DC and met with 52 different Senate offices amid active negotiations. The Clarity Act is the current name for market structure legislation moving through the US Senate, the result of years of bipartisan effort dating back to 2020. At a high level it does three things: establishes token classification, trading, and market rules (fixing the impossibility of building in the US without clear rules during the Gary Gensler era at the SEC); sets registration requirements and consumer protections for intermediaries across the SEC and CFTC; and defines developer rules and protections outlining what software builders are and are not regulated for, the crux of the current debate. Lindsay explains why clarity matters: for years developers lacked answers to whether publishing code, operating a front-end, or participating in governance are regulated activities, and regulation by enforcement drove developers offshore. She walks through the process: the House passed it last June with 294 votes including 78 Democrats, the Senate Agriculture Committee advanced its portion 12 to 11 on party lines, and the Senate Banking Committee recently voted its portion out with a bipartisan outcome, with the two bills now to be combined and reach 60 votes to bypass the filibuster before November midterms complicate things. She details three developer protections: Section 601 clarifies the 1933 and 1934 Acts so non-custodial developers are not intermediaries needing to register as exchanges, brokers, or dealers; Section 207 does the same under the Commodity Exchange Act for the CFTC; and Section 604, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), shields non-custodial developers from Bank Secrecy Act obligations and prosecution under Section 1960 for unlicensed money transmission. She frames the BRCA as a codification of 2019 FinCEN guidance, counters law enforcement opposition as a mischaracterization (noting titles 2 and 3 strengthen prosecutors), and cites a letter from 160 officials plus 60+ CEOs, closing that developer protections must remain intact. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Who the Blockchain Association Is 00:40 Meeting 52 Senate Offices in One Day 01:24 What the Clarity Act Aims to Do 01:50 The Three Buckets of the Bill 01:57 Token Classification and the Gensler Era 02:22 Requirements for Intermediaries 02:44 Developer Rules and Protections 03:09 Why Clarity Matters for Developers 03:34 The Unanswered Questions Builders Face 03:56 How Regulation Drove Developers Offshore 04:22 Drawing a Line Between Software and Intermediaries 04:51 Where We Are in the Process 05:13 The Overwhelming House Vote 05:35 The Senate Agriculture Committee Vote 05:58 The Bipartisan Senate Banking Vote 06:19 Combining the Bills and the 60-Vote Threshold 06:45 Why the Midterms Add Urgency 07:06 The Three Core Developer Protections 07:24 Section 601 and the 1933 and 1934 Acts 07:46 Protecting Non-Custodial Developers 08:36 Section 207 and the Commodity Exchange Act 08:50 The Key Line of Custody and Control 09:10 Section 604: The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act 09:41 The Threat of Section 1960 Prosecution 10:28 The Cost of Investigations on Founders 10:59 Why the BRCA Must Not Be Watered Down 11:22 A Codification of 2019 FinCEN Guidance 11:57 The Bipartisan History of the BRCA 12:53 The Opposition From Law Enforcement Groups 13:22 Why the Opposition Mischaracterizes the BRCA 13:52 How Titles 2 and 3 Strengthen Prosecutors 14:38 The Letter From 160 Law Enforcement Officials 15:50 The Industry Letter From 60 CEOs 16:16 Why Developer Protections Must Be a Priority 16:49 A Call to Share Developer Stories 17:48 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar from ETHGlobal sits down with Katherine Wu, CEO of ENS Labs, to discuss the next era of ENS. Katherine explains that ENS launched in 2017 before NFTs, DeFi, L2s, account abstraction, and stablecoins existed, and that its smart contracts reflect a very different world. V2 is a ground-up rearchitecture of both the protocol and the front-end apps to meet users in a fast-changing, multi-chain industry. On the protocol side, V2 gives users maximal flexibility to design and set rules for their own namespaces in a world of stablecoins and L2s. On the app side, ENS is splitting its front end into two experiences: an Explorer for data nerds who want to see a name's full onchain history and footprint, and a simpler app for casual users who just want a profile. Katherine walks through the decision to abandon Namechain, ENS's planned own L2, which was not easy. The original motivation was sparing users the volatile, high mainnet gas fees of 2021 (she paid over $300 to register her name), but over the past year mainnet registration gas fell roughly 100x from around $5 to five cents, invalidating the core assumption. Since a name tied to identity needs the strongest security guarantees, and Ethereum L1 is the most secure chain with no downtime, they prioritized V2 on mainnet instead. She describes her role as CEO of an engineering-driven org, spanning finance, operations, and deep technical dives, and how working with the DAO forces user-first decisions (they put a first-ever price increase to a DAO vote and cannot unilaterally ship a protocol upgrade without token holder approval, a can't-be-evil design). She highlights ENS integration in PayPal and Venmo for sending stablecoins by username rather than a 0x address, arguing fintechs bringing users on chain cannot ship a 2017 UX. She previews V2 letting users pay for names with stablecoins or any ERC20 token, even starting the transaction on any L2 and settling on mainnet, and discusses years of good-faith relationship building with ICANN toward DNS compatibility (contrasting ENS with unrecognized alt-naming projects like .crypto that sit outside the internet root zone). She closes on the hardest part of building a trustless protocol with millions of users and owned assets: you cannot move fast and break the internet, and V2 is like ENS's version of the merge. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 The Next Era of ENS and Why V2 00:41 Why ENS Is Still Around Since 2017 01:07 How the Crypto World Has Changed 01:32 A World Before DeFi, L2s, and Stablecoins 02:04 The Big Features of V2 Over V1 02:33 Maximal Flexibility on the Protocol Side 02:56 Splitting the App Into Explorer and Normal 03:37 The Namechain Announcement 03:53 What Namechain Was and Its Goals 04:20 Maximizing Trustlessness 04:41 The $300 Gas Fee Problem of 2021 05:03 Why ENS Looked Into L2s 05:29 How Mainnet Gas Fell 100x 06:02 Why Security Guarantees Matter Most 06:21 Why Ethereum L1 Won 06:57 What the CEO of ENS Labs Actually Does 07:38 Why the Open Engineering Culture Matters 08:00 VC vs the Operating Side 08:22 How ENS Works With the DAO 08:53 Asking Users Before Raising Prices 09:29 Why Protocol Upgrades Need a Vote 09:53 The Can't-Be-Evil Design 10:13 ENS in PayPal and Venmo 10:57 Why Fintechs Integrated ENS for Stablecoins 11:51 The Security Case Against Raw Addresses 12:36 Why On-Chain Products Cannot Ship 2017 UX 12:59 Optimizing How You Pay for a Domain 13:15 Why ENS Was Not Built for ERC20 Payments 13:44 Buying an ENS Name With Any ERC20 Token 14:04 Starting the Transaction on Any L2 14:27 Compatibility With DNS and TLDs 14:59 Why ICANN Matters 15:37 Why Alt-Naming Projects Fall Outside the Root Zone 16:10 Years of Building Relationships With ICANN 16:58 The Hardest Part of Building Trustless Protocols 17:26 Why the Protocol Does Invisible Work 17:55 Why You Cannot Move Fast and Break the Internet 18:25 Designing for Every Edge Case 18:58 Why V2 Is ENS's Version of the Merge 19:16 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Freedom is strongest when it's supported by you. Nathan Freitas shares his opinion on why Tor Project ecosystem funding matters. Onion Browser is the Tor-endorsed free, open-source anti-censorship browser for Apple's iOS. https://onionbrowser.com https://github.com/OnionBrowser https://guardianproject.info Donate & protect rights online: https://internetfreedom.torproject.org/projects/onion-browser/ #FundInternetFreedom

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Some truths are never meant to be seen. Around the world, ordinary people discover evidence of corruption, abuse, and wrongdoing. Speaking out can come with risks, but staying silent can come with consequences too. The Tor ecosystem supports open source tools that help sources, journalists, and human rights defenders securely share, preserve, and publish information that matters. Support the people and projects protecting truth online: https://internetfreedom.torproject.org

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Freedom is strongest when it's supported by you. Dr. Suelette Dreyfus & Morgan shares their opinion on why Tor Project ecosystem funding matters. Ricochet Refresh: Metadata-resistant instant messaging over Tor https://www.ricochetrefresh.net https://x.com/r2refresh Donate & protect rights online: https://internetfreedom.torproject.org #FundInternetFreedom CORRIGENDA “Dr. Suelette Dreyfus”

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Freedom is strongest when it's supported by you. Cooper Quintin - Senior Staff Technologist, EFF & Founding Board Member of OpenArchive on #FundInternetFreedom shares his opinion on why Tor Project ecosystem funding matters. OpenArchive is a non-profit working with human rights defenders, journalists, and archivists worldwide to build easy-to-use, FLOSS mobile tools and resources to safeguard eyewitness media:: https://www.open-archive.org/ Donate & protect rights online: https://internetfreedom.torproject.org #FundInternetFreedom

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Freedom is strongest when it's supported by you. Maria Xynou (Director of Strategic Engagement in the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) on why Tor Project ecosystem funding matters. The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) - a nonprofit organization that provides free software tools and open data to empower the public to monitor and respond to internet censorship worldwide: https://ooni.org Donate & protect rights online: https://internetfreedom.torproject.org/projects/ooni/ https://internetfreedom.torproject.org #FundInternetFreedom

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

"The Adversary Is Always Watching: What Can We Learn From Communities Living Under Surveillance" by Ramy Raoof Halim [The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy This keynote is a personal reflection on what privacy means in practice for people living under surveillance, censorship, conflict, and political repression. Drawing from over fifteen years of work supporting civil society organizations, journalists, activists, and communities at risk across Africa, Southwest Asia, and other regions, the talk will explore how privacy moves beyond an individual right and becomes a condition for participation, safety, dignity, and democratic life. Rather than focusing primarily on technical solutions, the keynote will examine privacy through lived experience and the consequences of its absence. Ramy Raoof Halim is a renowned technologist, security researcher and advisor who works with human-rights defenders, activists communities, and journalists in high-risk environments worldwide. Over the last 15 years, he has contributed to numerous high-profile investigations of state-sponsored surveillance, cyberattacks, and censorship in different regions, as well as to civic litigation to hold governments, tech and telecom companies to account. Ramy has worked on digital security, threat research, and infrastructure resilience on behalf of organizations including the European Union, Open Technology Fund, Amnesty International, Citizen Lab, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. He also served on the board of the Tor Project from 2017-2021. He is currently a fellow with Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) focusing on surveillance and technology in the MENA region, examining how emerging technologies, spyware, and digital repression enable human rights abuses. His contributions have been internationally recognized, including with the 2023 Burke Distinguished Journalism Award, the 2017 Heroes of Human Rights and Communications Surveillance Award from Access Now, and the Deutsche Welle Bobs Award in 2016. He was named among the World Top 100 Info Security Influencers in 2016 by CISO Platform in India, and was featured in Newsweek’s Digital Power Index in 2012.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

“Perspectives on Neocypherpunk” fireside chat with Paul Dylan-Ennis [University College Dublin] and Rachel Rose O'Leary [DarkFi]. Contrasting the lunarpunk framing of "neocypherpunk," as coined by lunar_mining, with the more CROPS- focused implications of the term popularized by polar. Speakers Paul Dylan-Ennis — University College Dublin https://people.ucd.ie/paul.dylanennis X: https://x.com/dylanennis Rachel Rose O'Leary — DarkFi https://dark.fi/ X: https://x.com/rachel_rose_o Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

“Power, Protocols and Public Interests in Governing the Decentralized Web” panel discussion with Sebastian Vogelsang, Caroline Paulick-Thiel, Rose Regina Lawrence, Bariş Paksoy Moderated by: Will Scott This panel brings together strategists and builders working on decentralized governance from different angles. Caroline Paulick-Thiel, of Politics for Tomorrow, designs participatory processes that help public institutions navigate complex transformation, bringing a governance design lens to decentralization. Rose Regina Lawrence, of OpenArchive, trains frontline human rights defenders, bringing real-world experience on decentralization's role in securely archiving and verifying evidence for accountability. Sebastian Vogelsang, cofounder of Eurosky and creator of the Flashes app, builds decentralized social infrastructure on the AT Protocol, arguing Europe can reduce its dependence on Big Tech platforms through open protocols and distributed identity. Barış Paksoy brings an investigative journalism perspective from Correctiv, grounding the conversation in accountability and what decentralized systems mean for transparency in practice. Moderated by Will Scott of Protocol Labs, who brings a builder's perspective on decentralized infrastructure at scale, the panel will discuss what decentralized governance actually requires: not just new protocols, but new institutions, security practices, and accountability mechanisms that can hold up under real political and legal pressure. Panelists Sebastian Vogelsang — Eurosky, Flashes https://eurosky.social/ https://flashes.blue/ Caroline Paulick-Thiel — Politics for Tomorrow https://politicsfortomorrow.eu/ Rose Regina Lawrence — OpenArchive https://open-archive.org/ Barış Paksoy — CORRECTIV https://correctiv.org/ X: https://x.com/mbarispaksoy Moderated by Will Scott — Protocol Labs https://protocol.ai/ X: https://x.com/willscott Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/

Isabela Fernandes

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

20 years of the Tor Project: How an anonymity tool became public interest infrastructure Isabela Fernandes [Tor Executive Director] When Tor was founded in 2006, its mission sounded almost utopian: to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free, open-source anonymity and privacy technologies. Two decades later, the mission hasn't changed — but the world has. Internet shutdowns and systemic censorship affected more than half the world's population in 2025, as governments tighten their grip on the technology people rely on for a free, open internet. Wikipedia In this talk, Isabela Fernandes, Executive Director since 2018, traces how a tool built by volunteers became civic infrastructure, relied on by everyone from human rights advocates bypassing surveillance and censorship to ordinary people just accessing the open web — all while staying true to a model built on collaboration and community rather than competition. She'll also look ahead: as shutdowns and censorship escalate globally, what does it take to keep anonymity infrastructure resilient, funded, and recognized not as a luxury, but as a public good. Speaker Isabela Fernandes — Tor Project https://www.torproject.org/ Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

“Stewarding Resilient, Free & Open Digital Infrastructures” Xavier Damman, Matthias Kirschner, Florian Glatz, Tara Merk Moderated by: Joshua Dávila From cooperative funding models enabling innovations in collective ownership, to local hosting and political/legal advocacy, there are many pathways to support sustainable FOSS infrastructures. Maintaining and scaling these infrastructures are vital to ensuring censorship resistance and digital freedom, especially as demands for compute and data storage escalate. Panelists: Xavier Damman, Matthias Kirschner, Florian Glatz, Tara Merk Moderator: Joshua Dávila Panelists Xavier Damman — Open Collective https://opencollective.com/ X: https://x.com/xdamman Matthias Kirschner — Free Software Foundation Europe https://fsfe.org/ Florian Glatz — Common Ground https://www.commonground.cg/ X: https://x.com/heckerhut Tara Merk — Open Future https://openfuture.eu/ Moderated by Joshua Dávila X: https://x.com/TBSocialist Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

“From Platform Brutality to Streaming Alternatives” by Geert Lovink from Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Are you still stuck on the platform -- or ready to move beyond it? Yes, we are living through an accelerationist, techno-authoritarian phase of the internet, but that is precisely why we need to identify the exits already taking shape. We will map the cracks in the system: decentralized infrastructures, collective digital practices, and emergent cultures of autonomy that challenge the regime of “cloud rent” and passive usership. What would it mean to reclaim agency beyond endless swiping and prompting? How can we turn doomscrolling into coordination, and platforms into terrains we either reshape or abandon? This talk explores both practical and speculative strategies to overcome platform dependency, rebuild the digital commons, and develop a network culture that is once again participatory, resilient, and free. Speaker Geert Lovink — Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences https://networkcultures.org/ https://www.hva.nl/ X: https://x.com/glovink Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

Once in a Lifetime | Cade Diehm [New Design Congress] An Adam Curtis documentary delivered on a stage with visuals, exhibits and receipts: an analysis of the 2025 collapse, who caused it, and a concrete framework for what replaces the institution and why. The audience for this talk has the technical and financial capacity to build those alternatives and lie at night wondering, "how did we get here?". Speaker Cade Diehm — New Design Congress https://newdesigncongress.org/ Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

“Building the Stack: Self-Hosted, Mesh and Decentralized Infrastructure in Practice” Adam Burns, Bradley Clark Royes, Liz Steininger, Calle Moderated by: Beth McCarthy Uniting technical and cultural perspectives on stewarding p2p, self-hosted, and decentralized technologies, from a diverse panel of builders with expertise spanning "the stack". From the networked level (Adam's work with wireless networks at Freifunk) to infrastructure (Bradley's AI compute node and Liz's cryptographically secure storage) to protocol (Calle's OS bitcoin protocols Cashu and Bitchat), "the stack" designs itself toward secure self-sovereignty. This panel explores the unique challenges of each use case, and the tensions that can arise from contradictions in intent and implementation across levels of the stack – for example, accessibility and openness vs. privacy. Identifying and understanding these points of tension and interdependence through a systemic lens empowers us to build more resilient infrastructure, from tooling to hardware to the community of contributors to maintain it. Speakers Adam Burns — free2air, Dyne X: https://x.com/free2air Bradley Clark Royes — Foresight Institute https://foresight.org/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleyclarkroyes/ Liz Steininger — Least Authority, Private Storage https://leastauthority.com/ X: https://x.com/lizstininger Calle — Bitchat, Cashu X: https://x.com/callebtc Cashu: https://cashu.space/ Moderated by Beth McCarthy — Web3Privacy Now X: https://x.com/ontologymachine Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.

Viktor Tron, Mario Havel

Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress · Jul 9, 2026

The Decentralization Stack: Where Are We Still Lying to Ourselves? Meinhard Benn, Viktor Tron, Mario Havel, Kyle den Hartog Moderated by: Migle Rakitaite A cross-stack panel asking the question most decks tiptoe around: what actually breaks if a single company disappears? Infrastructure builders from storage, compute, identity, and frontend sat down for an honest conversation about which parts of the stack are genuinely decentralized — and which parts everyone hopes nobody looks at too closely. No roadmaps. No token plugs. Panelists: Viktor Tron, Mario Havel, Kyle den Hartog, Meinhard Benn Moderator: Migle Rakitaite Speakers Viktor Tron — Swarm https://www.ethswarm.org/ X: https://x.com/zeligf Mario Havel — Ethereum Foundation X: https://x.com/TMIYChao Kyle den Hartog X: https://x.com/PryvitKyle Meinhard Benn — Freedom Browser Moderated by Migle Rakitaite — Web3Privacy Now X: https://x.com/rakymnft Follow Web3Privacy Now: 🌐 https://new.web3privacy.info 𝕏 https://x.com/web3privacy 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/web3privacy.info 📸 https://www.instagram.com/web3privacy_now/ 🎤 Neocypherpunk Summit: https://s26ber.web3privacy.info/ Subscribe for more talks on privacy, cryptography, digital rights, decentralized infrastructure, and the future of the open web.