ETHGlobal · Sep 9, 2026

Philippe Schommers, Head of Infrastructure at Gnosis, explains how the Ethereum Economic Zone can enable synchronous composability between Ethereum and compatible chains. Today, users bridge assets, wait for finality, and manage separate transactions before interacting with another network. The proposed system coordinates blocks at matching timestamps and uses composers plus crosschain proxy contracts to recognize chain boundaries, execute calls across networks, and preserve atomic behavior even when Ethereum reorganizes or one leg of a transaction must be cancelled. He explains that synchrony requires more than a fast bridge. Participating chains must reference Ethereum consistently, coordinate execution at compatible timestamps, and reverse dependent actions when the L1 reorganizes. A composer determines when execution crosses a chain boundary, while proxy contracts represent remote calls and return values. Transactions are assembled into batches so each network can execute its portion without asking Ethereum to pause while another chain runs. Schommers describes capabilities already demonstrated on Gnosis Chain, including instant deposits and withdrawals, crosschain calls with return values, flash loans, and nested L1–L2 calls inside one transaction. The design could let an application source liquidity on another chain and return without a separate bridge flow, reducing fragmentation and improving user experience. He also addresses practical constraints: faster block times, heavy multichain simulation, validator requirements, proofs, reorgs, and missed bundles. The goal is a repeatable, fault-aware path that lets multiple chains behave like one economic environment while retaining diverse execution and proof systems. The implementation supports nested calls that can move from L1 to L2 and back several times while remaining one atomic transaction. This opens designs such as borrowing on one network, swapping against deeper liquidity on another, and returning the result without exposing the user to separate bridge steps. Schommers also distinguishes the specialized composer from ordinary validators because multichain simulation is computationally heavy. 00:00 Introduction to the Ethereum Economic Zone 00:48 Why Crosschain Bridging Is Cumbersome 01:10 One Atomic Crosschain Transaction 01:33 Swapping on L2 and Returning to Ethereum 01:56 Reorg Requirements for Synchronous Chains 02:18 A Communication Framework, Not a Stack 02:38 How the Multichain Composer Works 03:23 Simulating Transactions Across Chains 03:48 Matching Blocks and Chain Boundaries 04:10 Crosschain Proxy Contract Architecture 05:23 Returning Call Results to Ethereum 06:25 Posting Return Values Before Execution 06:54 Keeping Crosschain Calls Atomic 07:51 Live Deposits, Calls, and Flash Loans 08:20 From Devnet to Gnosis Chain 09:09 Accessing Ethereum L1 Liquidity 09:40 Remote Swaps Without Separate Bridging 10:06 Converting an Existing Live Network 10:28 Sequencing, Data Availability, and ZK 11:28 Decentralization Tradeoffs for Gnosis 11:52 Two-Second Block Time Goals 12:21 Validators and Reorg Constraints 13:29 Atomic Composability Across More Chains 14:04 Proof Diversity and Failure Modes 14:25 Devnet Roadmap and Gnosis Proposal 15:20 Invitation to Join the Open Protocol 15:52 Closing the Composability Talk _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *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 Schommers X: https://x.com/filoozom ✅ Follow Gnosis X: https://x.com/gnosischain ✅ 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

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Elizabeth Peng, COO of Celo Corp (the merged entity of Celo Labs and the Celo Foundation), positions Celo as the number one blockchain for stablecoin payments, built since its Earth Day 2020 launch to create conditions of prosperity for all. She walks through Celo's journey of being EVM compatible L1 to becoming an Ethereum L2 while preserving full network state, and highlights its early differentiators that are now table stakes elsewhere: paying gas with multiple ERC-20 tokens including native USDC and USDT, ultra low gas fees, mobile first design, and multicurrency support. The chain has processed over 1.3 billion transactions, has 600,000 daily active users with verifiable phone numbers, $263 million in TVS, and just hit a peak $6.2 billion in monthly stablecoin trading volume. Liz details Celo's emerging markets product market fit, supporting 25+ stablecoins ranging from US dollar denominations to local currencies like Kenyan shilling, Nigerian Naira, Philippine peso, and Colombian peso. Celo is the number one chain for Tether's USDT with 5 million weekly active users (ahead of Tron's 3 million), and leads tokenized gold with 100,000+ XAUT holders, with over 90% of XAUT's growth coming from Celo. She previews USAT, Tether's new Genius Act compliant stablecoin issued by Anchorage, coming to Celo as the second chain after Ethereum. The Opera Mini Pay partnership has activated 15 million wallets across 60+ countries with 430 million lifetime transactions and 80 million more users coming online to redeem browser points onchain. Liz also covers the Self privacy protocol using biometric IDs and ZK proofs (recently acquired Linum, now led by former Uber AI head Burju Shaw), the Updown perps DEX targeting the $7.5 trillion FX market, and Celo's tokenomics overhaul driving record chain revenue of $18,000 in a single day. She closes with the regional DAO network spanning Latin America, Europe, Arabia, Africa, Thailand, Korea, Philippines, and India that keeps the ecosystem decentralized and accountable. 00:00 Introduction 00:31 Building the Future, Not Just Prototyping It 01:17 What Is Celo 01:38 Celo's Mission and Origins 01:59 Early Innovations: Multi Token Gas, Mobile First, Multicurrency 02:41 Partners: Tether, Circle, Opera 03:01 Network Stats: 1.3 Billion Transactions 03:27 $6.2 Billion in Monthly Stablecoin Volume 03:56 The Vision: Global Venmo for Crypto 04:00 25+ Stablecoins in Local Currencies 04:30 #1 Chain for USDT with 5 Million Weekly Active Users 05:32 Leading Tether Gold and Tokenized Commodities 06:21 USAT Coming to Celo Second After Ethereum 06:53 Mini Pay Gold Use Cases and Cashback 07:14 Opera Mini Pay: 15 Million Activated Wallets 07:59 Regional Road Shows and Opera Partnership Extension 08:49 Updown: Onchain FX Targeting $7.5 Trillion Opportunity 09:23 Self: Privacy Protocol with Biometric ZK Proofs 10:20 Google Cloud Partnership and Boosted Yields 10:49 Self Acquires Linum, Burju Shaw From Uber AI 11:23 Mind Share and Industry Recognition 12:17 Top 5 Chain for Agent Activity on ERC-7804 Registry 12:41 Industry Praise: Vitalik, Bankless, Super Chain 13:06 The L2 Migration Playbook 13:38 Record $18,000 Chain Revenue Day 14:04 Block Space Business Is Alive 14:04 Regional DAO Network Around the World 14:47 Full Ecosystem of 1,000+ Projects in 150+ Countries 15:24 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar sits down with Nemil Dalal, visiting partner at Y Combinator and former head of Coinbase's developer platform, to discuss the early days of USDC, the current state of crypto startups, and what YC is looking for from founders. Nemil walks through how he spent seven years at Coinbase leading USDC from launch in 2018, when many in crypto circles thought stablecoins were the wrong vision and Bitcoin should replace everything. He pushed against two early strategies that didn't fit Coinbase's positioning as a US based regulated company: chasing high yield Asian markets where Tether dominated, and selling to banks that only knew about Bitcoin and saw stablecoins as a beta dollar. The breakthrough insight was bootstrapping DeFi adoption through the USDC Bootstrap Fund, deploying capital into Uniswap, Aave (then EthLend), DyDx, and other early protocols. Nemil shares how YC funds about 100 crypto startups today and expects to 10x that in the next decade, since crypto is moving from a niche DGen product to something most Americans will use without realizing. He outlines what YC is excited about: stablecoins and the businesses built on top, tokenized assets including equities and debt, and AI plus crypto including X2X (which Nemil's team launched at Coinbase). He shares his controversial view that founders should launch fewer tokens, since most are incentive tokens that act like marketing schemes attracting mercenary users and worsening UX, while reserving tokens for L1s, L2s, and DeFi protocols where decentralization is genuinely core to the product. On regulation, he tells the story of Coshi spending three years suing the CFTC and winning, framing regulation as either go regulation forward and specialize per country, or follow the Binance playbook offshore first. He closes urging founders to combine crypto with AI thoughtfully and pointing to the rolling YC application deadline. 00:00 Introduction 00:08 Nemil's Background and Homecoming to Ethereum 01:08 Launching USDC at Coinbase in 2018 02:26 Why Stablecoins Were Controversial in Crypto Circles 02:41 Two Bad Early Strategies: Asia Yield and Banks 03:41 The Breakthrough: Bootstrapping DeFi 03:58 Maker DAO, Compound, and Early DeFi Signals 04:23 Launching the USDC Bootstrap Fund 05:10 Nemil's Role as Visiting Partner at Y Combinator 05:38 What YC Offers Founders 06:20 Funding 100+ Crypto Startups and 10x'ing the Pace 07:00 Why Bear Markets Are the Best Time to Build 07:32 Tourists vs Real Builders 07:50 Why ETH Global Hackathon Attendance Correlates Inversely with Price 08:46 What YC Is Looking to Fund in 2026 09:04 Stablecoins and Stablecoin Neo Banks 09:51 Tokenized Stocks, Debt, Equity, and Emerging Markets 10:12 X2X and the AI Plus Crypto Opportunity 10:50 Agentic Finance May Be Agnostic to Crypto vs Credit Cards 11:33 YC's Mindset: Make Something People Want 12:14 Where Is the Saturated Space in Crypto Startups 12:38 Common Patterns: Dev Tools, On Off Ramps, Wallets 13:08 Prediction Markets and Crypto as Core Stack 13:25 Should Founders Launch a Token 14:10 Incentive Tokens as a Marketing Scheme 14:48 Tokens Often Hurt User Experience 15:19 Where Tokens Genuinely Make Sense: L1s, L2s, DeFi 16:05 Solving Pain Points, Not Decentralizing for Its Own Sake 16:36 How Founders Should Think About Regulation 17:01 The Coshi Story: Suing the CFTC and Winning 17:39 Regulation Forward vs Binance Playbook 18:43 Onshore vs Offshore Based on Product Type 19:00 How to Apply to YC and Reach Nemil 19:35 The Magic of Crypto and AI Coming Together 20:33 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Tim Beiko

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Tim Beiko, who spent eight years on Ethereum core protocol R&D coordinating major network upgrades like EIP-1559 and The Merge, presents his thesis on how Ethereum can evolve from being "unreasonably sufficient" to becoming "reasonably necessary" infrastructure for the world. He explains that the question keeping him up at night for years was whether Ethereum could scale to planetary infrastructure without compromising its core properties, and with zero knowledge proofs and data availability sampling now in production, that question has been answered. The harder question now is what Ethereum should actually be used for. Tim argues that for Ethereum to truly succeed, it must provide things the world genuinely needs that cannot be obtained elsewhere, and those things must depend on Ethereum's unique properties of permissionlessness, immutability, censorship resistance, and decentralization. He contrasts two possible outcomes: The Pirate Bay as a cautionary tale of useful technology that became niche versus TSMC as the level of strategic importance to aim for. He identifies three core affordances that Ethereum uniquely provides: durable commitments across jurisdictions and time, canonical uniqueness through globally consistent state, and programmable trust as a dial rather than binary gate. He uses flash loans as a proof point of financial primitives impossible elsewhere, and suggests prediction markets becoming composable risk infrastructure as one possible frontier. He closes by announcing his focus is shifting from protocol work to finding the applications that deserve to run on Ethereum at planetary scale. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Background and Ethereum's Special Properties 00:54 Unreasonable Sufficiency: Simple Protocols, Complex Results 01:19 The New Question: What Should Ethereum Be Used For 02:24 Why Ethereum Must Provide What the World Needs 03:28 Cautionary Tale: The Pirate Bay vs Strategic Goal: TSMC 04:34 Why Apps Must Depend on Ethereum, Not Just Run on It 05:33 Why DeFi and L2s Are Foundations, Not Final Answers 06:55 The Bar for Reasonably Necessary Territory 07:49 Three Core Affordances Ethereum Uniquely Provides 08:32 Durable Commitments Across Time and Context 09:13 Canonical Uniqueness and Double Spend Prevention 10:04 Programmable Trust as a Dial, Not a Binary Gate 10:54 Settlement Physics and Flash Loans as Proof 12:18 Prediction Markets as Composable Risk Infrastructure 13:18 AI Agents and Onchain Trust at Machine Speed 13:52 The Foundation Is Already in Place 14:31 Tim's Next Chapter: From Protocol to Applications 15:08 Closing: Becoming Reasonably Necessary _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Alex Gluchowski

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Alex Gluchowski, co-founder of Matter Labs and zkSync, presents Prividium, a framework for private atomic delivery versus payment (DvP) on Ethereum. He frames DvP, a term from institutional finance meaning token swap settlement, as one of the most important and unsolved problems for institutions adopting blockchain. Alex walks through why each existing solution falls short: public chains like Ethereum have great properties but expose all positions and transactions, ruling them out for banks bound by secrecy rules. Private permissioned chains offer perfect privacy but are not interconnected, limiting their value since the whole point of blockchains is being the internet of value. External bridges connecting private chains become the de facto settlement layer with their own trust assumptions, losing the security of both origin and target chains. Mediated networks using operator attestation or fully homomorphic encryption still rely on contractual or threshold trust in operators. Alex introduces Prividium as a framework where institutions run their own cryptographically secured private chains on their own infrastructure with absolute physical data privacy, while settling on Ethereum as the credibly neutral settlement layer. Zero knowledge proofs guarantee that even a dishonest or compromised operator cannot finalize invalid transactions. He highlights the ability to deploy a smart contract once that virtually mirrors into all zones and enforces rules automatically without the issuer ever seeing the underlying data. He then walks through the technical flow of private atomic DvP: parties agree on a transaction, generate a cryptographic commitment hash, post it to a data availability layer and Ethereum settlement layer, lock assets on both sides, and use the canonical L2 state roots on Ethereum to verify execution and either release funds or revert atomically. He closes by noting the network is growing with the Kerry network consortium of five US regional banks plus participation from Deutsche Bank and other FMIs. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 What Is DvP and Why It Matters 00:48 The Tradeoffs in Existing Blockchain Solutions 01:07 Public Chains Are Too Public for Institutions 01:54 Private Chains Are Isolated and Disconnected 02:33 External Bridges Become the Settlement Layer 03:14 Mediated Networks and Their Trust Assumptions 03:35 Operator Attested and FHE Limitations 04:40 Introducing Prividium 05:09 Cryptographically Secured Private Chains on Ethereum 05:42 Permissioning, Roles, and OIDC Integration 06:16 Zero Knowledge Proofs Guarantee Execution Correctness 06:50 Rules That Apply Beyond Your Zone 07:30 The Old Way: Bilateral Agreements and Rulebooks 07:52 Virtual Mirrored Smart Contracts Enforce Rules Automatically 08:16 Why Private DvP Is the Hardest Cross Zone Example 08:51 Traditional Sequential DvP and Counterparty Risk 09:40 Atomic Swaps Collapse Settlement Risk 10:10 How Private Atomic DvP Works Step by Step 10:36 Cryptographic Commitments and Mutual Intent 11:17 Posting Commitments to DA and Settlement Layer 11:50 Locking Assets in Escrow Contracts 12:26 Reading L2 State Roots from Ethereum 12:55 Verifying Cross Chain Execution 13:25 Happy Path Release vs Revert Path 14:04 Multi Zone Chained Transactions 14:36 The Kerry Network and Growing Adoption 14:48 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Paul Henry Kajfasz, founder and CEO of Unlink, makes the case that public blockchains have created better financial rails but cannot become the world's money without solving privacy. He frames the opportunity: onchain rails moved roughly $9 trillion in real volume last year (about 5x PayPal's volume), proving these are fundamentally better rails than traditional finance with instant settlement, near free transactions, 24/7 global availability, and full programmability, translating to millions in saved fees or new revenue for companies. Yet when he asks the room how many people use blockchain in their daily lives, only one or two hands go up, and worldwide penetration sits below 1%. Something is wrong. Paul argues the root cause is that we built better rails but did not build better money. For 5,000 years from cowrie shells to cash to bank transfers, money has been private by default with selective disclosure to your bank or the taxman. Public blockchains broke this fundamental model by making every transaction leak all information. With AI, an internet connection, and a few tokens, anyone can know everything about a company's flows in an afternoon. He illustrates with a CFO running payroll onchain (employees seeing each other's salaries makes raises politically impossible), public treasuries, public B2B payments, and every trade being visible. He cites 72 physical attacks worldwide in 2025 including kidnappings and torture targeting people known to hold money onchain. He explains why privacy solutions have stayed niche: companies were forced to choose between non compliant cypherpunk mixers or new private L1s and L2s that break network effects, liquidity, and Lindy. The missing piece, and what Unlink is building, combines three things: privacy, compliance (AML, anti terrorism financing, KYC, KYB) as first class citizens, and integration through APIs, SDKs, and dashboards on the chains companies actually want to use like Ethereum and Solana. He closes by previewing partnerships with Monad, Euler, and others. 00:00 Introduction 00:08 Better Rails But Not Better Money 00:40 $9 Trillion Moved Onchain, 5x PayPal 01:22 Why Onchain Rails Are Fundamentally Better 02:27 Why Aren't Companies Rushing In 02:49 Show of Hands: Daily Blockchain Usage 03:34 Less Than 1% of Humanity Uses These Rails 04:11 The Missing Piece: Better Money 04:38 5,000 Years of Money Being Private by Default 05:05 How Public Blockchains Broke the Model 05:30 AI Makes Every Transaction Readable 06:18 The CFO Payroll Problem 07:13 72 Physical Attacks in 2025 07:57 Why Adoption Stalls 08:25 What Companies Actually Need 09:04 Why Privacy Stayed Niche 09:26 The Rock and Hard Place: Mixers vs New Chains 10:12 Losing Network Effects and Lindy 10:37 The Three Missing Pieces 10:59 Compliance as a First Class Citizen 11:24 Integrating with the Chains Companies Already Want 11:50 Unlink and the Vision Ahead 12:18 Closing: Bringing Trillions Onchain _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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, William Mougayar from TRUSTSHIFT, who has been in the blockchain space for 14 years, presents a new framework for valuing Ethereum comprehensively as public goods infrastructure rather than just another crypto token. He opens by addressing a vexing problem: crypto valuations are not driven by fundamentals but by external factors like Middle East wars, inflation, US dollar strength, Nvidia earnings, and liquidity availability. His thesis is that misvaluation persists because there is no one size fits all, and Ethereum specifically requires a different framework than DeFi protocols (which use TVL, fees, treasury), revenue chains like Tempo and Solana (which use discounted cash flow), or Bitcoin (which positions as digital gold). William argues a critical mistake people make is trying to separate ETH the asset from Ethereum the platform. The reality is four E's: Ethereum the platform, ETH the asset, the Ethereum Foundation, and the ecosystem, all working synergistically. He draws an extended analogy to the early internet, recalling his 1995 internet book Opening Digital Markets when eyeballs were the primary metric. Just as internet valuation evolved over decades, Ethereum is still early in its valuation maturity. Applying internet valuation methodology, he breaks Ethereum value into three buckets: captured value (fees), economic flow (ETH as a currency, like digital oil), and the trust surplus (the unpriced value users would have paid minus what they actually pay), estimated at $50 to $150 per user across 20 to 30 million meaningful users, plus systemic value from fraud reduction, less counterparty risk, and settlement efficiencies. The math lands Ethereum's fair value at minimum $1 trillion, implying an ETH price around $8,000, roughly four times current levels. He highlights that Ethereum already settles $3 trillion in stablecoin transfers per month without being the fastest chain, proving valuation is about economic settlement not TPS. He closes by arguing Ethereum's value should be measured like the US dollar's role in oil and trade, not by short term revenue, since just as no one values the internet by packet fees, no one should value Ethereum purely by transaction fees. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Reframing How to Value Ethereum 01:13 Why Crypto Valuations Are Not Driven by Fundamentals 02:29 Segmenting the Crypto Space 02:57 Why DeFi Is the Most Advanced in Quantifying Fundamentals 03:21 Revenue Chains: Tempo and Solana 03:49 Bitcoin as a Special Snowflake 04:09 Why Separating ETH from Ethereum Is Wrong 04:48 The Four E's of Ethereum 05:18 The Internet Analogy: From Eyeballs to Platforms 06:45 Structural Similarities Between Ethereum and the Internet 07:41 Why More Value Is Created at the Application Layer 08:20 Why Tether Overtaking ETH Wouldn't Be Bad 09:10 The Three Buckets of Internet Value 10:04 Search and Email Consumer Surplus 11:07 Three Properties of Public Goods 12:01 Applying the Framework to Ethereum 12:27 ETH as Digital Oil 12:49 Estimating the Trust Surplus per User 13:28 Systemic Value: Settlement, Fraud Reduction, Counterparty Risk 14:00 The Math: $1 Trillion Valuation, $8,000 ETH 14:38 Why the Internet Was Also Doubted Before 2000 15:26 Why Markets Continue to Mispric Ethereum 15:48 Why L2 L1 Relationships Aren't Value Extractive 15:48 Ethereum Settles $3 Trillion in Stablecoins Monthly 16:23 The Paradigm Shift: Flow Based vs Fee Based 16:45 Why ETH Is Like the US Dollar 17:33 You Don't Value the Internet by Packet Fees 17:53 Closing: It's All About Trust _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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, Philipp Zentner, founder of LI.FI, tackles Ethereum's multi chain fragmentation and how a single API can solve it. He opens by celebrating that finance is finally coming on chain after 10 years of building smart contract and distributed ledger technology, citing around $31 billion in RWAs and $400 billion including stablecoins. But the core problem is that all this value is spread across dozens of chains, and it grows more complex as banks like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton build their own permissioned systems. He notes 95% of stablecoin movement happens on Ethereum L2s with 30% on Base, all representing the same dollar, and warns that as more countries adopt frameworks like the Genius Act and MiCA, the world could see thousands of stablecoins, making fragmentation exponentially worse. Philipp explains the cost of this fragmentation tax. Builders must bet on one ecosystem while mercenary liquidity rotates between hyped chains, leaving projects stranded, and they burn time on user onboarding instead of product. Users pay with time, money, and dust, often distrusting bridges so much that liquidity sits stuck in silos, leading to the verdict that crypto is not ready. Institutions will not deploy billions across 40 islands and will pick or build their own chains to retain customer relationships, so fragmentation must be solved from the user's perspective. Drawing the internet analogy where you type an address without caring about DNS or data centers, he argues the future is multi chain and outcome oriented, shifting to intent based flows where users simply express what they want. He positions this as critical for the next wave of AI agent users communicating in natural language. He describes how LI.FI spent five years aggregating bridges, DEXs, and trading venues into one modular system serving over 1,200 partners (including MetaMask, Phantom, Binance, Coinbase, Circle, and Fireblocks) and now serving TradFi with compliance and custom liquidity. He introduces Composer, an on-chain virtual machine expressing a TypeScript domain specific language that compiles end to end user journeys into byte code executed atomically, abstracting away chains, gas tokens, and wrapping. Having processed over $80 billion across 90 million transactions, he closes by urging the industry to stop reinventing the wheel and build on LI.FI's marketplace to stop paying the fragmentation tax. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Finance Is Coming On Chain 00:36 RWAs and Stablecoins by the Numbers 01:00 Why Fragmentation Is the Big Problem 01:19 Being Grateful for the Progress 01:44 95% of Stablecoin Movement on L2s 02:05 Hundreds of Stablecoins and Counting 02:31 The Cost of Fragmentation for Builders 02:55 Mercenary Liquidity and Capital Rotation 03:17 Time Lost on User Onboarding 03:38 How Users Pay With Time, Money, and Dust 04:16 Why Whales Keep Liquidity Stuck on L1 04:39 Jumper and the Dust Problem 04:57 Why Institutions Will Pick Their Own Chain 05:34 The Internet Analogy: Outcome Oriented 06:00 Why It Will Be Multi-Chain 06:24 Intent Based Flows for the Next Wave 06:51 What LI.FI Has Built Over Five Years 07:20 Abstracting Away Complex Systems 07:54 Serving TradFi With a Modular System 08:20 Why We Need to Talk to the Chain 08:46 Introducing Composer 09:14 Typing User Journeys in TypeScript 09:51 Seamless Journeys for Vaults and Cards 10:20 Infrastructure That Scales: $80 Billion Processed 10:44 The 1,200 Partners Using LI.FI 11:06 Back to the Fragmentation Tax 11:33 Why the Tax Grows Exponentially 11:57 Stop Reinventing the Wheel 12:17 Why Edge Cases and Data Matter 12:36 Focus on Building Great Applications 13:03 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Steven Goldfeder

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Amanda Cassatt from Serotonin sits down with Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain Labs, to discuss Arbitrum's origins, the evolving role of L2s, and how institutions are reshaping the Ethereum ecosystem. Steven traces Arbitrum back to a fall 2014 Princeton class project led by his co-founder Ed, nearly a year before Ethereum went live, when it was a purely academic pursuit around scaling the theorized concept of smart contracts. Years later, when platforms hit real scaling issues, he and co-founders Ed and Harry took the vision out of the ivory tower. On Vitalik's comment that the rollup centric roadmap no longer makes sense and that an L2 which doesn't fully decentralize is just a vampiric L1 with a bridge, Steven welcomes Ethereum ending its neutral stance toward chains that latched onto the brand without being secured by it, noting Arbitrum was built from day one with proofs connecting it to Ethereum. Steven identifies two major shifts. First, Arbitrum built its own identity, evolving from Ethereum users wanting a cheaper path to majority Arbitrum first users drawn by deep liquidity, apps like GMX, and 250 millisecond block times, making it a top five blockchain by economic activity. Second, L2s now have a purpose independent from scaling: institutions want their own chains for branding, compliance, and privacy, choosing between their own L1 (Stripe's Tempo, Circle's Arc) or an Ethereum L2 (Robin Hood on Arbitrum, Coinbase's Base). He argues Ethereum is the only L1 that can cater to them through the L2 model. He uses Robin Hood's landlord versus tenant framing, explains why fading into invisible infrastructure is best for global adoption (the cat video on AWS versus GCP analogy), and notes the Arbitrum DAO still collects 10% of Robin Hood chain revenue. He covers solving fragmentation through smart routing addresses and ZeroDev chain abstraction, his view that AI agents are closer to a Sybil attack than a solution, his bullishness on non financial use cases like prediction markets and USDA's AI hardware lending, and how Offchain connects institutions to Ethereum while the Foundation stays focused on CROPS. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 From Aspiring Professor to Founding Arbitrum 01:01 The Fall 2014 Princeton Class Project 01:43 Taking Arbitrum Out of the Ivory Tower 02:12 Is Vitalik Right About the Rollup Centric Roadmap 02:41 Why Ethereum Ended Its Neutral Brand Stance 03:09 How Arbitrum Was Built Connected to Ethereum 03:30 Two Core Things That Have Changed 03:48 From Ethereum First to Arbitrum First Users 04:23 Arbitrum as a Top Five Blockchain 04:44 Why L2s Have a Purpose Independent of Scaling 05:26 Institutions Choosing L1 vs L2 05:54 Why Ethereum Is the Only L1 That Can Fight 06:30 Offchain's Role in Scaling the Layer 1 07:11 Is the Case for L2s Now Institutional Onboarding 07:45 Why Institutions Want Their Own Branded Chains 08:15 Owning the Chain to Collect Fee Revenue 08:40 The Landlord vs Tenant Strip Mall Analogy 09:29 What Is Arbitrum in the Landlord Metaphor 10:06 The Risks and Rewards of Invisible Infrastructure 10:46 Fueling Robin Hood's International Expansion 11:28 The Cat Video on AWS Analogy 11:48 Why the DAO Still Benefits in Dollars and Cents 12:13 Fragmentation Across L2s and L3s 12:45 Smart Routing Addresses and Chain Abstraction 13:52 Why Taking a Step Back Enables Going Forward 14:39 Will AI Agents Solve Fragmentation 15:32 Why Agents Add Usage Rather Than Solve It 16:03 Smart Wallets With Policies for Agents 16:48 Will Users Know They're Using Arbitrum in 10 Years 17:11 Why Escape Hatches Matter Even If Unused 18:11 Blockchain Gaming as an Example 18:58 Getting the Benefits Without Engaging the Details 19:17 Why the Right to Self Sovereignty Always Matters 20:01 Bullish on Non Financial Use Cases 20:34 Why Arbitrum Has Been Finance Focused From the Start 21:08 Prediction Markets and USDA AI Hardware Lending 21:49 What the Programmable Economy Really Means 22:16 How Arbitrum's Mission Fits Ethereum's Values 22:44 Believing in CROPS and Decentralization 23:30 Offchain as the Business Conduit for Institutions 24:06 A Harmonious Ecosystem With the Ethereum Foundation 24:27 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, Vlad Novakovski, founder and CEO of Lighter, digs under the hood of how his high performance trading platform operates at scale on top of Ethereum. Coming from a TradFi background, Vlad frames Lighter as part of the broader story of TradFi and DeFi merging. Lighter is used to trade primarily perps but also spot assets, and has been operating for a year and a half. The core concept is that every execution is verifiable by proof. Since finance has a relatively small number of primitives (order books, limit and market orders, cancels, liquidations, funding) compared to a general purpose computer, Lighter built a custom L2 for finance that runs at NASDAQ like throughput while keeping everything verifiable. Every order and cancel is signed and processed by a currently centralized sequencer, but because all activity is proven with zero knowledge proofs, it matters less whether the sequencer is centralized since anything it does must follow the rules encoded in the ZK circuits. Vlad explains that a prover cluster of over 10,000 to 15,000 machines generates proofs behind the real time trading, aggregating up to 800,000 actions into a single proof posted on Ethereum L1. The rules are public and compiled into a succinct verifier, so first in first out ordering, liquidation logic, and market fairness are guaranteed, and if even one transaction in a batch of 500,000 is matched incorrectly, the code on Ethereum rejects the whole batch. He shares metrics including a peak 24 hour period of 811 million transactions, average TPS above 6,000 with spikes toward 20,000, latency below 200 milliseconds (the lowest of any decentralized exchange), 14,000 to 15,000 daily active users, $140 billion in volume over three months, and $7.5 million in revenue. He highlights Lighter's non custodial design with an escape hatch letting users recover assets through Ethereum even if Lighter stops working, the ability to customize rules for permissioned assets and tokenized stocks with dividends and splits, and independent verification of Lighter's full history by L2Beat. He emphasizes that the custom ZK circuits keep proving costs around 10 to 20% of revenue, echoes Vitalik's point that the most efficient L2 needs the most secure L1 underneath, and closes by inviting developers to build on LighterVM, being developed with the Axiom team. 00:00 Introduction 00:41 TradFi and DeFi Merging at ETHConf 01:05 What Lighter Is: Perps and Spot Trading 01:29 Focusing on the Infrastructure Side 02:11 Why Finance Has Few Primitives 02:32 Building a Custom L2 for Finance 03:05 Why Security and Verifiability Matter 03:33 How Signed Orders and the Sequencer Work 04:13 The Prover Cluster of 15,000 Machines 04:38 Aggregating Proofs and Posting to Ethereum L1 05:12 Public Rules: First In First Out 05:45 Why Fair Liquidation Rules Matter 06:19 Peak Stats: 811 Million Transactions in a Day 06:51 Thousands of Provers on Mixed Infrastructure 07:15 Why It Doesn't Matter Who Generates the Proof 07:53 Non-Custodial Design and the Escape Hatch 08:57 Extending Rules to Asset Administration 09:30 Custom Rules for Permissioned and Tokenized Assets 10:02 Fairness Proven by Math Block by Block 10:21 A Permanent Record on Ethereum 10:21 L2Beat Independently Verifies Lighter's History 10:55 Daily Active Users and TPS Metrics 11:21 Sub 200 Millisecond Latency 11:45 The Most Efficient L2 Needs the Most Secure L1 11:45 Economics: $140 Billion Volume, $7.5M Revenue 12:18 Why Custom Circuits Keep Proving Costs Low 12:38 Strong Margins and Low Cost Structure 13:14 The Magic of Proving Finance With Math 13:40 LighterVM and Composability With Axiom 13:40 Closing and Call to Developers _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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 Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, just days after the SEC approved their S-4 filing, clearing the path for Securitize to go public through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners II. Carlos explains that after 8 years building the company and landing major partnerships with BlackRock, Apollo, and VanEck, the successful Circle IPO signaled that if there's investor demand for tokenized dollars (stablecoins), there should be demand for tokenizing everything else too. The SPAC merger gets shareholder approval June 29th and Securitize begins trading on the NYSE around July 2nd under the ticker SCC ("sexy"), with roughly half a billion dollars in cash from the trust and PIPE for acquisitions and expansion. Beyond capital, going public gives the credibility large financial institutions need to work with Securitize. Carlos explains why Ethereum has emerged as the leading blockchain for tokenization: Securitize has been an EVM shop since 2017 when Ethereum was the only credible option, they now have around 30% of assets on Ethereum making it their largest chain, and BlackRock specifically chose Ethereum for BUIDL. Gas fees aren't a problem for their use cases, and Ethereum wins on decentralization, security, ecosystem, and liquidity. On permissioning, Carlos explains they use permissionless infrastructure but issue permissioned assets by whitelisting KYC'd wallets in smart contracts, allowing peer to peer transfers to still happen decentrally. He distinguishes between real privacy (layers on top of Ethereum transactions) versus "database privacy" that just restricts access. On DeFi composability, Securitize built vault technology that lets permissioned assets serve as collateral in permissionless lending protocols (integrated with Aave Horizon, Euler, and others) while controlling liquidation. He addresses the Citi $5.5 trillion RWA projection by 2030, arguing tokenized equities and ETFs are the asset class that will move the needle since only 2-3% of that $150 trillion market moving onchain would nearly get there. He announces Securitize partnerships with the NYSE for 24/7 equity trading with instant settlement and Computershare for onchain equity movement. Carlos strongly criticizes competitors offering derivative wrappers instead of actual equity, praising Superstate, Centrifuge, and Bullish for doing it correctly. He points to BlackRock's BUIDL being the only cash product that pays daily dividends (making it the best performing) as proof that tokenization creates net new utility. He closes by predicting traditional and onchain markets will coexist and consolidate, with Ethereum remaining the multi-purpose leader. 00:00 Introduction 00:07 The SEC Approved Securitize's S-4 00:40 Why Securitize Decided to Go Public 01:28 Why a SPAC With Cantor 01:51 What the S-4 Filing Involves 02:17 The Path to Listing on the NYSE 02:35 The New Ticker: SEC 02:59 What Going Public Enables for Securitize 03:43 Why Ethereum Leads for Tokenization 05:12 Why Gas Fees Are Not a Problem Here 05:28 Why BlackRock Chose Ethereum First 05:48 Permissioned Assets on Permissionless Rails 06:51 Two Types of Privacy 08:01 Making RWAs Composable With DeFi 08:46 Integrations With Aave, Euler, and Horizon 09:05 Trading RWAs via Uniswap X 10:02 What It Takes to Reach $5 Trillion by 2030 10:35 Why Tokenized Equities and ETFs Matter 11:27 Partnerships With NYSE and Computershare 11:44 The Right Way to Do Tokenized Equities 12:31 Why Most Are Just Derivatives 13:44 Why the Token Must Be the Real Share 14:36 What Still Needs Solving: Utility 15:22 The BlackRock BUIDL Example 15:44 Why Tokenized BUIDL Pays Daily Dividends 17:06 Where the Demand Comes From Today 18:15 Are Institutions Waiting on Regulation 18:55 Why There Is Already Clarity 19:45 The Dial-Up Internet Analogy 20:37 When Blockchains Become Invisible 21:14 Financial Markets in Five Years 21:51 A New Parallel Market on Blockchain Rails 22:30 Securitize as the Conduit for TradFi 22:52 Where Ethereum Sits in That Future 23:56 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Jan Gorzny

ETHGlobal · Jul 9, 2026

In this talk, Jan Gorzny from Zircuit discusses how to bring institutional adoption from Wall Street onto Ethereum, focusing not on ZK but on the barriers institutions and their users face and how crypto-native solutions can overcome them. He motivates the case by cataloging the pain points of TradFi: it is good but not great, with poor settlement efficiency, a lack of transparency (you rarely know who you are dealing with at a bank), and costs and difficulty that scale as you become the institution itself, since it is an old industry not optimized for the last 20 to 30 years of technology, with heavily siloed money. On chain solves much of this: fast and improving settlement, 24/7 trading regardless of bank hours, strong transparency (a double-edged sword given weak default privacy), programmable money enabling automated trading and looping, and composability across asset classes. He argues the value proposition is real, and while early banking-the-unbanked adoption was slow, RWAs and stablecoins have blown up, with FX and other services now being piloted on chain. Jan walks through the barriers. First, regulatory uncertainty: unclear asset classifications, cross-border complications, and technical risks like recurring smart contract exploits (worsened by a bad first quarter) where you cannot simply patch decentralized code, so institutions avoid it not from misunderstanding but because their lawyers will not sign off. Second, infrastructure and chain fragmentation, with around 131 rollups as of last October creating hard choices about which chain, oracle, and bridge to use and forcing new, modular, redundant DApp designs rather than the cookie-cutter patterns of 2022. Third, permissionlessness as a genuine trade-off, where censorship resistance and transparency clash with the whitelisting and controls institutions need. He surveys emerging solutions: permissioned DeFi with KYC and whitelisting, RWA token standards like ERC-3643 and ERC-1400, ZK-based KYC that validates a passport without revealing it, customizable L2s, and safer bridge standards like OFTs and CCIP. He advises builders to design for modularity, understand their trust model, and engage regulators early, and notes users now face far more complex due diligence and unpredictable yield, arguing uncertainty is risk. He closes on his preference for predictable DeFi and Zircuit's product targeting 8 to 11% yield on USDC and USDT with no management fees or minimums, built to work with Wall Street and institutional partners. 00:00 Introduction 00:33 The Barriers Wall Street Faces On Chain 00:52 The Pain Points of Traditional Finance 01:20 Why Costs Scale for Institutions 01:45 Why Money Is So Siloed 02:13 How On Chain Solves These Problems 02:34 Transparency and Programmable Money 03:11 Why the Value Proposition Is Real 03:32 From Banking the Unbanked to Real Adoption 03:44 How RWAs and Stablecoins Blew Up 04:06 Piloting Other TradFi Services On Chain 04:38 Why We Have Only Scratched the Surface 04:56 Why Builders Must Start Agile 05:14 The First Barrier: Regulatory Uncertainty 05:40 Unclear Classifications and Cross-Border Issues 06:02 Why You Cannot Just Fix Exploited Code 06:26 Why Lawyers Will Not Sign Off 06:50 The Second Barrier: Infrastructure and Fragmentation 07:22 Choosing Among 131 Rollups 07:41 Standards, Oracles, and Bridges 08:07 Why the Cookie-Cutter DApp Era Is Over 08:28 Why New DApps Need Redundancy 09:08 The Third Barrier: Permissionlessness 09:30 Choosing Which Permissionlessness Matters 09:59 Emerging Solutions: Permissioned DeFi 10:13 RWA Token Standards Like ERC-3643 and 1400 10:28 ZK-Based KYC With a Passport Scan 10:44 Building Your Own Customizable L2 10:59 How Bridges Have Come a Long Way 11:17 Tokens Built With Legal Barriers in Mind 11:37 What This Means for Builders 11:56 What This Means for Users 12:28 Why Uncertainty Is Risk 12:47 The Case for Predictable DeFi 12:59 Zircuit's Product for Wall Street 13:13 Targeting 8 to 11% Yield With No Fees 13:54 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, Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale (the world's largest digital assets focused fund manager), lays out how his team thinks about investing for the tokenization vision and why Ethereum is well positioned to capture it. He notes Grayscale's history of Ethereum firsts (one of the first ETH investment products and ETFs, the first to stake tokens in its Ethereum ETF, and the first to pay out staking rewards), and pushes back on the current despair over ETH's price. He defines tokenization as extending public blockchain's peer-to-peer digital finance into capital markets: instead of a security trade routing through broker, exchange, clearing house, custodian, and transfer agent, a tokenized trade settles cash for asset in a single peer-to-peer smart contract transaction, removing intermediaries and gaining efficiencies. Zach shows tokenized assets have grown from near zero to the $20 to $30 billion range and diversified across tokenized treasuries (the largest category), public fixed income, equities, private credit and equity, commodities like gold, and real estate. Yet this is only about one basis point of global equity and bond market cap, making tokenization a 10-to-30-year mega trend still at its very beginning. He frames a spectrum of network architectures: institution-centric designs like Canton (mirroring today's financial system, lower near-term onboarding friction, near-term success), open architecture networks like Ethereum (bigger onboarding frictions and unfinished privacy and identity solutions, but general purpose, global, and more long-term upside), and hybrids like Avalanche and Ethereum L2s. He argues Ethereum has the right architecture and leads on tokenized assets, stablecoin supply and transactions, and DeFi TVL, while Canton, Solana, and BNB lead on certain niche measures. On value accrual, he presents data showing bigger blockchains mean higher token value, using hard-to-game transaction fees and TVL, with Ethereum, BNB, Solana, and Tron standing apart and evidence of a nonlinear network-effect premium for the largest networks (Ethereum dominant on assets). He closes predicting the Clarity Act will pass and accelerate tokenization, framing it as a rising tide that lifts all boats where Ethereum is the biggest boat and the anchor asset no sensible institutional portfolio built around tokenization should skip, though diversifying into smaller boats can make sense too. 00:00 Introduction 00:31 Who Grayscale Is 00:59 Grayscale's History of Ethereum Firsts 01:52 Why the Price Despair Is Surprising 02:15 How Grayscale Thinks About Tokenization 02:39 What Is Tokenization 02:59 Peer-to-Peer Finance on Public Blockchains 03:24 Applying Peer-to-Peer to Capital Markets 03:54 Removing the Chain of Intermediaries 04:24 Where Tokenization Is Today 04:46 The Diverse Set of Tokenized Assets 05:06 Tokenized Commodities and Gold 05:40 Why This Is Only One Basis Point 06:06 Why Tokenization Is a 30-Year Mega Trend 06:32 Comparing Network Architectures 06:58 Institution-Centric Networks Like Canton 07:49 Open Architecture Networks Like Ethereum 08:14 The Onboarding Frictions vs Long-Term Upside 08:32 Why Ethereum Is a Global Project 08:58 Hybrid Architectures in the Middle 09:20 Why Ethereum Has the Right Architecture 09:45 Ethereum in the Leadership Position 10:02 Where Other Networks Lead 10:52 What This Means for the Price 11:18 Why Bigger Blockchains Mean Higher Value 11:51 Two Ways to Measure Finance 12:11 Why Fees Are the Best Metric 12:54 The Four Transaction Leaders 13:15 Evidence of a Nonlinear Value Premium 13:40 Measuring by Assets and TVL 14:02 Why Ethereum Dominates on Assets 14:25 Why Bigger May Get More Valuable Faster 14:46 No Need to Despair 15:11 Why the Clarity Act Will Accelerate This 15:47 A Rising Tide That Lifts All Boats 16:11 Why Ethereum Is the Biggest Boat 16:37 The Anchor Asset for Tokenization 16:59 Why Diversifying Into Smaller Boats Helps 17:18 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this talk, Adrienne Youngman, head of marketing and comms at Gnosis, presents the practical implications of the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) and frames it within Gnosis's broader mission of restoring digital ownership. She traces how Web3's original promise of self-custody and permissionless systems has been eroded by L2 fragmentation, custodial super apps, and permissioned infrastructure — and argues that EEZ can "unfork" Ethereum by enabling cross-chain calls within a single transaction, unified liquidity pools, and global collateral visibility. Adrienne gives concrete UX improvements: eliminating bridging friction, enabling CowSwap to route trades across all chains as one pool, letting Aave see collateral across multiple chains, and allowing Safe configurations to reflect everywhere from a single change. She highlights new capabilities like private identity verification across chains without data leaving private domains, and institutional use cases where private blockchains interact with the Ethereum ecosystem. She closes by showcasing Gnosis's product suite — Gnosis Pay for self-custodial fintech infrastructure, their consumer app with Visa card and IBAN integration, and the Circles protocol for fair-distribution peer-to-peer money based on trust graphs and social consensus. 00:00 Introduction 00:38 Gnosis: More Than Safe 01:23 Gnosis's Building Legacy: AMMs, Prediction Markets, Cow Protocol 02:21 Gnosis Pay, Consumer App, VPN, and EEZ 02:46 GM The Man, We're Forking You 03:06 Ownership and Power: Why It Matters 04:30 Ownership Through Cultural and Class Lenses 05:17 Losing Ownership in Digital Lives 06:37 Web3's Original Promise and How We Broke It 07:43 L2 Fragmentation and Custodial Drift 08:13 EEZ in Practice: No More Bridging 08:41 Unified Liquidity Pools Across Chains 09:08 Composable Finance: Stake, Borrow, Use in One Transaction 09:32 Global Collateral and Safe Configuration Sync 10:25 New Possibilities: Private Identity Across Chains 11:25 Institutional Use Cases with Private Blockchains 11:57 CTA: Join the EEZ Alliance 12:20 Gnosis Pay: Self-Custodial Fintech Infrastructure 13:19 Circles Protocol: Fair-Distribution Peer-to-Peer Money 14:51 Closing: Bank on Gnosis _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Gnosis X: https://x.com/gnosischain ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this talk, Misha Putiatin, co-founder of Symbiotic, lays out the four critical problems that must be solved to bring trillions of dollars of traditional finance on-chain in a composable, DeFi-native way rather than as simple database receipts. He argues that after 18 years of building infrastructure, blockchains are no longer bandwidth-bound, but the industry lacks the financial primitives needed for institutional adoption: private credit, smart contract risk coverage, standardized reporting, and RWA liquidity. Misha details Symbiotic's role as a collateral market platform addressing each problem: partnering with Cap Protocol for private credit and financial guarantees (already at $220M+ in delegations), working with Nexus Mutual on second-loss coverage for DeFi and RWA protocols, helping Hive build on-chain reporting with real-time liquidation triggers and automated audits, and building an instant liquidity solution that pools redemption flow across all tokenized platforms to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of illiquid RWAs with 90-100 day redemption windows. He emphasizes that the "native way" — composable, liquidatable, self-custodied assets with DeFi rails — is the only path that truly leverages what crypto has built, with instant liquidity and Nexus coverage both launching early Q2. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 18 Years of Building Infrastructure 02:26 Traditional Finance Is Finally Interested 03:43 Why Institutions Matter: They Have the Money 04:44 Two Options: Database Receipts vs DeFi-Native Composability 06:30 Symbiotic's Four-Problem Framework 06:59 Problem 1: Private Credit and Financial Guarantees 08:48 Problem 2: Smart Contract Risk Coverage with Nexus Mutual 10:42 Capital Efficiency and the Insurance Gap 12:12 Problem 3: Standardized On-Chain Reporting with Hive 13:22 Actionable Reporting: Liquidation Triggers and Automated Audits 14:03 Problem 4: RWA Liquidity — The Biggest Blocker 15:37 Current Solutions: Half-Yield Buffers and Platform Funds 17:00 Symbiotic's Approach: Pooled Cross-Platform Liquidity 18:01 Launch Timeline: Instant Liquidity and Nexus in Q2 18:41 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Misha Putiatin X: https://x.com/Psalom ✅ Follow Symbiotic X: https://x.com/Symbioticfi ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar interviews Andrej Bencic, founder of Tenderly, about the evolution of Ethereum developer tools over the past eight years and how AI is reshaping smart contract development. Andrej describes how the multi-chain world has fundamentally changed development — teams now need to test across multiple forked mainnets with bridges, manage indexing across chains, and handle inconsistencies when chains go down. He contrasts today's production-grade stack (Foundry, account abstraction, staging environments) with the 2018 era of Truffle and Ganache. The conversation explores three distinct developer personas Tenderly serves: newcomers focused on smart contract integration and DeFi composability, OG teams like Aave pushing protocol frontiers, and institutional players held back by risk aversion. Andrej details how Tenderly's simulation technology helps manage operational risk post-deployment — from transaction simulation in Gnosis Safe to treasury management. He highlights their MCP integration that gives AI agents a sandboxed fork of mainnet to debug transactions (processing 50MB of data per transaction) and test workflows in a parallel universe before committing to production, calling it a critical safety net against the inevitability of AI-driven development. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 What Is Tenderly and Eight Years of Developer Tooling 01:43 How Multi-Chain Development Has Changed Everything 04:09 Cross-Chain Testing: Forking Multiple Mainnets 05:08 The Modern Developer Stack vs 2018 06:45 Production-Grade Development: CI/CD and Staging 08:17 AI Skills and Delegating Ethereum Context 09:04 Three Developer Personas: Newcomers, OGs, and Institutions 11:36 Institutional Risk Aversion as the Main Bottleneck 12:40 Managing Operational Risk Post-Deployment 14:16 Transaction Simulation and Avoiding Blind Signing 15:12 AI Agents and Smart Contract Development 16:02 Sandboxed Fork Environments for AI Workflows 17:33 Tenderly's MCP: Debugging and Testing for AI 18:40 AI Processes 50MB of Transaction Data Better Than Humans 19:22 Advice for New Smart Contract Developers 21:25 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Andrej Bencic X: https://x.com/bendzi ✅ Follow Tenderly X: https://x.com/TenderlyApp ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

Kartik Talwar, Jordi Baylina

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar interviews Jordi Baylina from the Gnosis team about the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a new protocol for synchronous cross-chain communication between Ethereum rollups. Jordi explains that EEZ enables smart contracts on different chains to call each other as if they were on the same chain — not just token transfers but any arbitrary contract call including voting, NFT operations, and more. This is made possible by breakthroughs in real-time ZK proving, where a full Ethereum block can now be proved with just 12 GPUs, down from 128 six months prior. Jordi walks through the technical architecture: when a cross-chain call happens, an execution table is stored on L1, zero-knowledge proved, and resolved within Ethereum's 12-second block time. Transactions between L2s are effectively free, limited only by GPU hardware. EEZ is permissionless — anyone can create a rollup, even non-EVM chains, as long as they support the call interface. Built by a nonprofit association with no token and no monetization, the project currently has a working internal DevNet with plans to open it publicly soon. Jordi flags block builder centralization as his primary concern, noting that validators must choose responsibly to preserve Ethereum's decentralization values. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Welcome and What Is the Ethereum Economic Zone 01:12 Synchronous Cross-Chain Calls: The Core Idea 02:04 What Changed: Real-Time ZK Proving Breakthroughs 03:16 From 128 GPUs to 12: Engineering Progress 04:39 Two Years of Latency Reduction Work 06:14 How EEZ Differs from Bridges and Other Solutions 07:14 Nonprofit Structure: No Token, No Monetization 08:20 Connecting L1 to L2 and L2 to L2 09:25 Any Call Data Works: Not Just Token Transfers 09:59 Permissionless Rollup Creation and Non-EVM Support 11:45 How Real-Time Proving Works in Practice 14:39 Scaling: One Proof for All Instructions 15:37 Free Transactions Between L2s 16:38 Does EEZ Help or Fragment Ethereum 18:06 Concerns: Block Builder Centralization 19:35 Validator Responsibility and Decentralization 21:02 Project Status: DevNet Live, Public Access Soon 22:16 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Jordi Baylina X: https://x.com/jbaylina ✅ Follow ZisK X: https://x.com/ziskvm ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

Stani Kulechov, Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar interviews Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, about the vision behind Aave V4 and the future of DeFi as infrastructure for global credit. Stani explains that V4 introduces a modular hub-and-spoke architecture where liquidity is stored in central hubs that allocate credit lines to customizable spokes — enabling anyone to build new lending models (native Bitcoin collateral, debt trading, fixed lending) while tapping into Aave's existing liquidity pool rather than bootstrapping from scratch. Stani outlines three waves of new collateral entering DeFi: tokenized real-world assets, yield-bearing stablecoins, and data-backed credit facilities for consumers, businesses, and institutions. He discusses the Aave App's fintech-like mobile experience that fully abstracts away wallets, gas, and networks, and reflects on why Ethereum remains the strongest chain for DeFi due to tooling, security community, and liquidity network effects. Looking ahead, he frames the institutional transition as a decade-long journey of replacing financial backend infrastructure dating back to the 1970s, with DeFi serving as the efficient capital allocation layer for all future credit. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Welcome and Aave V4 Context 00:40 Why V4 Took Two Years to Build 02:10 DeFi as a Backbone for All Future Credit 03:43 V4 Architecture: Hub-and-Spoke Model 04:48 Custom Spokes: Bitcoin Collateral, Debt Trading, Fixed Lending 05:59 Unified Liquidity Access for New DeFi Projects 07:31 New Collateral Types: RWAs, Yield Stablecoins, and Data 08:32 Risk Premiums and Collateral-Based Pricing 09:45 Institutional Requirements and Permissionless Infrastructure 11:11 BlackRock on Ethereum: A Turning Point 12:04 Aave App: Fintech-Like Mobile DeFi Experience 13:35 Building DeFi for Everyone 14:19 Staying Motivated Through Market Cycles 15:35 Why Now Is the Best Time to Build 16:57 Why DeFi Stays on Ethereum 18:36 Five-Year Prediction: A Decade-Long Institutional Transition 20:41 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Stani Kulechov X: https://x.com/StaniKulechov ✅ Follow Aave X: https://x.com/Aave ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

Kartik Talwar

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this fireside chat, Kartik Talwar interviews Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer of Chainlink, about Chainlink's evolution from a data oracle provider to a comprehensive infrastructure platform for institutional DeFi. Johann recounts joining the space in 2016-17, realizing the biggest gap was connecting real-world data to Ethereum, and living through DeFi Summer 2020 when Chainlink scaled from 20 oracle networks to over 1,000 price feeds — at one point representing 50% of all Ethereum transaction fees to keep DeFi protocols solvent during extreme congestion. The conversation explores how DeFi use cases built in 2020 (derivatives, prediction markets, tokenized equities) are only now reaching mass adoption as the world catches up. Johann details Chainlink's expansion into cross-chain infrastructure, on-chain compliance (automated KYC bridging with partners like DTCC and Apex), and opt-in privacy through their runtime environment. He frames two distinct adoption paths: institutions in developed markets seeking efficiency gains of 50-90% over legacy systems, and emerging markets where people use crypto to escape failing fiat currencies. His current focus is bridging tokenized assets into DeFi for real distribution and adoption. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Johann Eid's Journey into Crypto and Chainlink 02:16 DeFi Summer 2020: From 20 to 1,000+ Oracle Networks 04:17 Chainlink as 50% of Ethereum Gas During Congestion 06:54 Building a Bulletproof Transaction Manager 07:44 How DeFi Has Evolved Since 2020 08:36 Use Cases Built in 2020 Only Now Getting Adoption 09:49 Real-World Demand: Weekend Trading and Tokenized Gold 10:28 Prediction Markets Replacing Legacy Media Trust 10:58 Chainlink Beyond Oracles: Cross-Chain, Compliance, Privacy 12:24 On-Chain Compliance: Automating KYC with DTCC and Apex 14:04 Privacy as the Missing Piece for Institutional DeFi 15:04 Decentralization as a Killer Use Case in a Mistrustful World 17:05 Why Institutions Are Coming On-Chain Now 18:42 Distribution and Efficiency: Two Drivers of Adoption 20:14 Two Speeds of Adoption: West vs East 21:41 What's Next: Bridging Tokenized Assets into DeFi 23:11 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇫🇷 *Pragma Cannes 2026* Pragma Cannes 2026 was held on April 2nd at the JW Marriott Hotel in Cannes, France and was an in-person summit for builders and leaders in the web3 ecosystem. Watch the full Pragma Cannes 2026 YouTube Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5OnsJ95gz7HoI1tLUj3kZr 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 Johann Eid X: https://x.com/EidJohann ✅ Follow Chainlink X: https://x.com/Chainlink ✅ Follow Kartik Talwar X: https://x.com/TheRealKartik ✅ 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

ETHGlobal · May 9, 2026

In this workshop, Greg Skril from ENS Labs introduces the Ethereum Name Service for Open Agents hackathon participants and explores how ENS serves as identity infrastructure for apps, AI agents, and beyond. He covers ENS's core function — turning hex addresses into human-readable names — and demonstrates how a name like greg.eth becomes a full Web3 portable profile with avatars, multi-chain addresses, social accounts, and arbitrary text records. Greg emphasizes that ENS is fundamentally a user experience protocol: anywhere an app reads or writes a hex address, it should use an ENS name instead. Greg dives into how ENS works through forward and reverse resolution combining to form primary names across chains, then walks through agent-specific use cases: subname namespaces (agent.work.eth, travel.agent.work.eth), ENSIP-25 verification with the ERC-7804 agent registry, and storing agent metadata in text records. He introduces interoperable chain names through "on.eth" (the only two-character ENS name), allowing addresses like vitalik@base.on.eth for cross-chain resolution. He also covers building decentralized websites with Omnipin and IPFS, naming smart contracts, and using Durin for issuing subdomains on any EVM chain. The hackathon offers two tracks with three winners each ($500/$750/$1,250): best ENS integration for AI agents and most creative use of ENS. 00:00 Introduction 00:39 What Is ENS 01:33 ENS as a User Experience Protocol 02:21 ENS Profiles and Portable Identity 03:42 Connect Wallet UX With and Without ENS 04:58 Examples in the Wild: Snapshot and Matcha 05:24 ENS for Transaction History and Sending Assets 07:11 Users Should Never See Hex Addresses 07:41 How ENS Works: Forward and Reverse Resolution 09:04 Primary Names and Reverse Registrars 09:56 Using ENS for AI Agents 10:29 Agent Namespaces and Subname Hierarchies 11:51 Agent Metadata in Text Records 12:15 ENSIP-25: Verification with ERC-7804 Registry 13:23 Names for Chains: Interoperable Names with on.eth 14:51 Decentralized Websites with Omnipin and IPFS 16:37 Naming Smart Contracts and Smart Accounts 17:32 Subnames for Onboarding Users 18:00 Durin: Issuing Subdomains on Any EVM Chain 18:53 Custom Text Records as Decentralized Storage 19:24 Building Blocks for Different App Types 21:46 ENS Improves Existing Apps 22:39 Hackathon Prize Tracks 23:30 Q&A: Encrypted Data and Fluid Key Privacy 25:26 Q&A: Killer Use Cases and Verification 27:19 Q&A: Custom Metadata and Text Records 28:36 Q&A: CCIP Read and Decentralized Websites 31:16 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🤖 *Open Agents 2026* This workshop is part of Open Agents 2026, an online hackathon held from April 24 to May 6. This async hackathon brings together the world’s most talented Web3 developers, designers, and product builders to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full Open Agents 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh6vpKqgVU7bEKyYK0tWfYEQ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Greg Skril* X: https://x.com/gregskril ✅ *Follow ENS* X: https://x.com/ensdomains ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Simon Emanuel Schmid

ETHGlobal · Nov 9, 2025

ENS (Ethereum Name Service) provides a decentralized, human-readable naming system for blockchain addresses and digital identities, functioning as a Web3 counterpart to DNS. Simon Emanuel Schmid introduced ENS’s role in turning unreadable hex addresses into user-friendly names, which can map to multiple chain addresses, profiles, and even imported DNS domains. He detailed forward and reverse resolution—the former mapping names to addresses, the latter linking addresses back to names—and explained how both complete a “primary name.” A new L2 Primary Name feature enables setting mainnet identities configured on L2s like Base. The talk emphasized using ENS in hackathon projects to simplify UX, manage decentralized identities, and integrate the Universal Resolver and CCIP-Read for on-chain/off-chain lookups. Nischal Sharma demonstrated how naming smart contracts enhances trust and prevents spoofing by labeling verified contracts on-chain using ENS—transforming hex addresses like “0x…” into recognizable names such as router.uniswap.eth. His tool, Enscribe, makes naming simple via a UI and supports L2 primary names. Harpreet Singh followed with a deep dive on subnames, explaining L1 (fully on-chain), L2 (cheap and NFT-backed), and off-chain (centralized) subnames. He covered EIP-3668 (CCIP-Read) powering these subnames and tools like Namespace SDK, which enables token-gating, whitelisting, and reserved ENS names on Base and Optimism. The session closed with an invitation to use the Notion hacker pack and build innovative ENS-powered identity integrations. 00:02 Intro & ENS Hackathon Prizes 01:53 What is ENS & how it works 03:39 Forward vs Reverse Resolution 04:33 L2 Primary Names & Cross-Chain Addresses 05:22 ENS Profiles & Multi-Chain Identity 07:03 Universal Resolver & CCIP-Read 09:06 Building with ENS & Hackathon Resources 09:29 Smart Contract Naming (Nischal Sharma) 11:21 Forward & Reverse Resolution in Contracts 12:52 Enscribe UI & L2 Naming 14:45 Subnames Overview (Harpreet Singh) 15:53 L1, L2 & Off-Chain Subnames 17:32 EIP-3668 & CCIP-Read Flow 18:31 Namespace SDK & L2 Subname Issuance 20:03 Wrap-up & Developer Resources _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇮🇳 *ETHGlobal New Delhi* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New Delhi, a 3-day hackathon held September 19-21 at the India International Convention & Expo Centre, 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 Delhi 2025 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7zCFW3hBqatZ18rQaYeEJL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ENS* X: https://x.com/ensdomains ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.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 · Nov 9, 2025

Talip Akalın introduces Citrea, an EVM-compatible ZK rollup that brings full smart-contract functionality to Bitcoin without changing L1. He frames Bitcoin’s limitations (Script’s low expressivity, fee spikes, slow upgrades) and the risks of today’s BTC bridges (multisig/“honest majority” custody). Citrea’s architecture: a sequencer produces L2 blocks, validity proofs (RISC-Zero ZKVM) attest to state, and data is published on Bitcoin, letting users treat Bitcoin as the single source of truth. BTC is the native gas/asset on Citrea, so existing Solidity apps (DEXs, lending, etc.) can be “forked” to work with real BTC rather than wrapped derivatives. The bridge design (“Clementine”) uses BitVM-based challenge games plus ZK proofs to kick out malicious signers, shifting the assumption from “honest majority” to “at least one honest participant,” a stronger trust model than typical multisig bridges. For the hackathon, Citrea offers two tracks—Open Innovation (any novel app using BTC on Citrea) and DeFi (fork/improve core money apps). Beyond the weekend, the Citrea Origins builder program provides mentorship, go-to-market, fundraising, and hiring support; early teams include wallets, a BTC-backed stablecoin, a native DEX, money markets, prediction markets, and offline SMS Bitcoin payments. The aim: catalyze a BTC-centric alternative economy (“hyperbitcoinization”) by making Bitcoin practical for rich onchain applications. 00:02 – Intro, talk scope & hackathon focus 02:04 – Why Bitcoin matters beyond price; limitations in practice 03:51 – Script vs Solidity; fees, capacity, and upgrade constraints 05:28 – Using other layers: wrapped BTC & bridge risks 07:55 – The bridge problem (multisig custody, exploits) 08:19 – What is Citrea: EVM rollup secured by Bitcoin + ZK proofs 09:12 – BTC as native asset; build DeFi/apps with real BTC 09:46 – Why Citrea’s bridge is different: BitVM + ZK challenges 10:39 – Trust model shift: “one honest party” vs “honest majority” 12:47 – Testnet, funding, partners, readiness 13:53 – Hackathon tracks: Open Innovation & DeFi 15:01 – Vision: hyperbitcoinization & BTC-centric economy 16:33 – Citrea Origins: builder community & support 18:37 – Hacker houses, testimonials, call to join _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇮🇳 *ETHGlobal New Delhi* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New Delhi, a 3-day hackathon held September 19-21 at the India International Convention & Expo Centre, 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 Delhi 2025 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7zCFW3hBqatZ18rQaYeEJL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Citrea* X: https://x.com/citrea_xyz ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.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 · Nov 9, 2025

Angela Ocando and Dayitva Goel (Uniswap Foundation) introduce Uniswap v4, highlighting a major architectural shift to a singleton pool contract with flash accounting and a continuous fee spectrum. The headline feature is Hooks—external smart contracts that can run before/after swaps, liquidity adds/removals, donations, fee updates, etc., letting developers program custom pool behavior (risk controls, pricing, access rules) while keeping gas costs low. Compared to v3’s multi-contract routing, v4’s singleton reduces on-chain hops and enables more seamless, gas-efficient trading and liquidity operations. They then walk through problem statements to inspire hackathon builds: TVAP execution and stable-to-stable efficiency for large trades; Pendle-style time-decay AMMs; World ID/KYC-gated pools; lottery/no-loss pools; smart borrow via re-hypothecation of out-of-range liquidity; and RWA issuance hooks with compliance checks. The session closes with a live demo of the v4 Hook Template (Foundry): scaffolding a basic hook, tests, deploying mock tokens, initializing a v4 pool (currency0/1, fee, tick spacing, hook address), adding liquidity, and performing a swap—showing how to flip specific hook callbacks on/off and verify they trigger correctly. 00:02 – Introduction and overview of Hooks in Uniswap v4 01:00 – About the Uniswap Foundation and its mission 01:31 – How the Uniswap protocol works and its evolution 02:21 – Key upgrades from v3 to v4 and ERC-20 support 02:48 – Continuous fee spectrum, singleton architecture, and flash accounting 04:18 – Gas efficiency and improved trading experience 04:48 – How Hooks work and their role in customizing liquidity behavior 06:14 – Hackathon problem statements and innovation ideas 06:31 – Stablecoin efficiency for large-scale swaps 07:07 – Time-Weighted Average Price (TVAP) execution hook 07:45 – Pendle-style AMM with time-decaying assets 08:09 – World ID verified pools and KYC-based access 08:41 – Lottery pools with social reward systems 09:17 – Smart borrowing and liquidity re-hypothecation 09:36 – Real-world asset issuance and compliance hooks 09:56 – L2 hooks for small and medium trade optimization 10:30 – Developer resources and hacker toolkit overview 11:26 – Using the V4 Hook Template for development 13:33 – Forking and deploying your first hook contract 14:54 – Creating mock tokens and setting parameters 15:15 – Deploying a pool and adding liquidity 16:32 – Performing and verifying swaps 17:20 – Closing remarks and developer invitation _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇮🇳 *ETHGlobal New Delhi* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New Delhi, a 3-day hackathon held September 19-21 at the India International Convention & Expo Centre, 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 Delhi 2025 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7zCFW3hBqatZ18rQaYeEJL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Uniswap* X: https://x.com/UniswapFND ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.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

Base · Oct 9, 2025

On the first Friday of each month we get together with Jesse Pollak and core Base builders from around the world for Base Builder Friday. Last Friday was the last one of 2024, here's the video :) Things Jesse talked about: ↳ Top of mind ↳ Reflections from Base's world tour ↳ AI agents on Base ↳ Q & A Happy holidays ❄️ 🎅

Radina Talanova

ETHSofia · Oct 9, 2025

Radina's talk provides an in-depth overview of Ethereum's progress in scaling through Layer 2 solutions. It explores the current state of L2 ecosystems, their growth, challenges, and how L2BEAT tracks and assesses their risks and trust assumptions for greater transparency. Radina Talanova manages product development at L2BEAT, a research and analytics company focused on L2 scaling solutions. Over the past 4 years, she has been actively building in the blockchain space, working on a diverse range of projects, including infrastructure, tools, dApps, and DAOs. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Purpose of L2Beat 00:52 Scalability Trilemma and the Role of L2s 03:19 Current Metrics and Ecosystem Overview 05:50 Roadmap and Challenges with L2 Adoption 09:48 State Validation and Proof Systems 13:39 Trilemma of Fraud Proof Systems 16:04 Risks and Security Concerns 19:59 Data Availability and Interoperability Challenges 24:23 Future Prospects 25:12 Conclusion This video was recorded during the ETHSofia Conference and Hackathon - October 17-19, 2024. ETHSofia is THE crypto tech conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, bringing together enthusiasts, developers, researchers, and academia focused on Ethereum and other L1 chains. The conference is supported by the Ethereum Foundation and made possible by the generous contributions of industry leaders. For more information, please visit: https://www.ethsofia.com/ 🌍Join the community: X (Twitter): https://x.com/ETHSofiaBG Telegram: https://t.me/+_i70pgfFHjBkMjZk LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia/ #L2Beat #RadinaTalanova #Layer2s #L2s #ETHSofia

ETHGlobal · Oct 9, 2025

What if you could build EVM-compatible smart contracts secured by Bitcoin? In this groundbreaking talk at Pragma Singapore 2024, Daniel Fogg, CEO of Rootstock Labs, and Sascha Gutzeit, founder of the Rootstock Collective, unveil how Rootstock is unlocking DeFi and smart contracts on Bitcoin through full EVM compatibility and merge-mined security. Learn how Rootstock is addressing the Bitcoin Builder’s Dilemma—where miners benefit but developers don’t—and how the launch of the Rootstock Collective DAO and the BitVMX bridge framework aim to transform Bitcoin into a scalable platform for DeFi, NFTs, and more. This talk breaks down the evolving Bitcoin L2 landscape, Rootstock’s architecture and ecosystem growth, and the exciting developer opportunities for Ethereum builders to easily deploy on Bitcoin. 00:00 Intro: Bringing EVM to Bitcoin 00:42 Rootstock’s History and Vision 02:08 Scaling Bitcoin for Global Utility 03:09 Key Innovations Behind Bitcoin L2 Growth 04:12 Overview of Bitcoin L2 Ecosystem 05:15 What Makes Rootstock Unique 06:19 Merge Mining: Securing Rootstock with Bitcoin 07:24 Rootstock Developer Ecosystem and Uptime 08:17 Ethereum Dev Tools Available on Rootstock 08:47 Dapps and DeFi Protocols on Rootstock 09:17 BitVMX and the Future of Bitcoin Bridges 10:13 Institutional-Grade Lending on Rootstock 10:42 The Bitcoin Builder’s Dilemma 11:45 Unlocking Value Beyond Bitcoin Miners 12:18 Launching the Rootstock Collective DAO 13:37 Decentralized Governance and Economic Incentives 15:27 Fair Value Capture for Builders and Stakers 16:40 Builder Incentives and Staking Rewards 17:26 Ethereum Developers: Expand to Bitcoin via Rootstock 18:04 Join the Rootstock Collective _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇸🇬 *Pragma Singapore* Pragma Singapore 2024 was a special gathering of founders and builders that took place September 19, 2024 at the Fullerton Hotel in Singapore. Pragma Singapore 2024 was an opportunity discuss the future of web3 and reflect on the past. Watch the full Pragma Singapore playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh6z0saYJnVdgXWfz-vaoEYx&si=uavhkhF5Kc8XBoLv 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 Daniel Fogg* X: https://x.com/danielfogg ✅ *Follow Rootstock Labs* X: https://x.com/RootstockLabs ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _