About 227 results
17:59Your AI Agent Is the New Insider | Galin Dimitrov, Superteam Ireland | ETHSofia 2026
ETHSofiaOct 6, 2026
Galin Dimitrov, cybersecurity engineer and founding member of Superteam Ireland, traces four eras of crypto theft: scams such as OneCoin and BitConnect, smart contract exploits like The DAO and Wormhole, attacks on people as in Ronin and Bybit, and now AI coding agents. He walks through the Drift Protocol hack, which began with a fake trading firm approaching the team at a conference and ended six months later with $285 million drained in minutes. He then shows how malicious skills, poisoned npm packages and hijacked agent CLIs reach builders' keys, citing Anthropic's figure that users approve 93% of permission prompts, and closes with three rules: keep keys out of reach, treat every add-on as a stranger, and use a sandbox. Keynote at ETHSofia 2026, 24 September 2026, Sofia Tech Park, Sofia. Part of Blockchain Week Bulgaria 2026. Speaker ▸ Galin Dimitrov, Cybersecurity Engineer & Web3 Growth Lead, Founding Member, Superteam Ireland Galin Dimitrov is a cybersecurity engineer with a BSc in Cyber Security and Digital Forensics from TU Dublin and six years at Fidelity Investments, where he secured and monitored 800+ production database servers and led Splunk-based incident response. He has also spent over a decade leading Web3 growth across agencies, Master Ventures and HYPE Partners, and is a founding member of Superteam Ireland. Today he builds AI and onchain products as a solo founder and has won several hackathons, including the Solana Privacy Hackathon. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/galindimitrovvv Chapters 00:00 The new insider, hidden in plain sight 01:30 Four eras of getting robbed in crypto 02:52 Era one: the scam is the product 04:20 Era two: attacking the code 05:32 Era three: targeting people (Ronin, Bybit) 06:43 Case study: the Drift Protocol hack 09:47 Era four: AI agents on your machine 11:23 Why 93% of prompts get approved 12:36 Three doors in: skills, npm and your agent CLI 14:14 Already happening: real losses 15:20 Three OPSEC rules for builders 17:10 Closing: read before you approve 17:44 Closing titles Blockchain Week Bulgaria: https://www.blockchainweek.bg ETHSofia: https://www.ethsofia.com Future Finance Forum: https://www.blockchainweek.bg/f3 Follow Blockchain Week Bulgaria X: https://x.com/BWBulgaria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/blockchain-week-bulgaria Follow ETHSofia X: https://x.com/EthSofiaBG LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethsofia Telegram: https://t.me/+b-33LJUpAB5iODNk Nothing in this video is financial advice. About the organiser Blockchain Week Bulgaria, ETHSofia and the Future Finance Forum are organised by the Bithope Foundation, founded in 2014 by Vladislav Dramaliev. Inspired by Andreas Antonopoulos, it is Europe's first non-profit operating exclusively with bitcoin donations. Over more than ten years, it has supported 50+ charitable campaigns, and in January 2016 it co-founded the Sofia Crypto Meetup, now the region's longest-running monthly crypto event. https://bithope.org
13:54Holly Atkinson
The Liquidity Gap: How LPs Are Leaving Billions on the Table | Holly Atkinson at Pragma Lisbon 2026
ETHGlobalSep 9, 2026
Holly Atkinson, CPTO at 1inch, examines DeFi’s idle-liquidity problem and introduces 1inch Aqua as a shared-liquidity architecture. Concentrated-liquidity positions can leave large portions of capital outside the active trading range, with individual liquidity providers suffering most when positions are not continuously managed. Aqua lets a wallet’s token balance support multiple configurable strategies at once, creating a multiplier effect without moving funds into separate protocol contracts for every position. Atkinson explains why concentrated liquidity improved market efficiency while creating a management burden. Capital earns fees only when the market trades inside a selected range, so an apparently large position may be mostly inactive. Automated managers can rebalance, but individual LPs often leave positions untouched and bear a disproportionate share of idle capital. Aqua changes the accounting model by allowing strategies to reference tokens in a wallet instead of requiring every strategy to hold a separate balance. Liquidity providers can define ranges, spreads, decay rules, fees, and swap types, then create or cancel positions in a single transaction. Tokens remain in the user’s wallet under a revocable allowance; when the wallet lacks sufficient balance, fills stop and resume after it is replenished. Verified 1inch counterparties execute swaps, while fees remain attributable to each position. Atkinson presents the system as programmable, reusable liquidity rather than passive locked capital and invites developers to test the Aqua app, documentation, and open protocol. The promise is greater capital efficiency, more strategy flexibility, and more chances for LPs to earn fees from the same assets. A user can authorize a token once per chain, allocate the same available balance across several strategies, and set independent pricing or fee logic for each. The wallet balance acts as a hard cap, so strategies stop filling rather than creating an unsecured obligation. Verified resolvers execute swaps, while the LP retains control over allowances and can revoke access. Atkinson encourages developers to treat Aqua as infrastructure for new market-making applications, not only as a 1inch interface. 00:00 Introduction to Idle DeFi Liquidity 00:42 Dune Research on Capital Efficiency 01:13 The Scale of Underutilized Liquidity 01:48 Why Individual LPs Lose More 02:27 Introducing 1inch Aqua 03:03 Wallet Balances and Shared Strategies 03:37 Configurable Ranges, Spreads, and Fees 04:18 Shipping Positions Through 1inch Routing 04:50 Verified Resolvers Execute Swaps 05:22 Atomic Fees and More Swap Activity 05:54 Creating and Cancelling Positions 06:23 Self-Custody and Fee-Sniping Protection 07:00 Verifiable Strategy Configurations 07:39 Wallet Balances Cap Protocol Exposure 08:14 Compliance, Audits, and Resolver Controls 08:45 Aqua Risks and the Wallet-Pool Model 09:17 Liquidity Reuse Across Many Positions 09:52 Early Access for Hackathon Builders 10:55 Aqua App and Developer Documentation 11:30 The Three-Part Aqua Architecture 11:57 Virtual Balances and Token Movement 12:22 Building Custom Aqua Applications 12:52 Immutable Parameters and Swap Logic 13:21 Closing Invitation for Feedback _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *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 Holly Atkinson X: https://x.com/holdoesdev ✅ Follow 1inch X: https://x.com/1inch ✅ 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
55:31Kartik Talwar, Simona Pop
The Invisible Labor of Creating Community | Simona Pop and Kartik Talwar at Pragma Lisbon 2026
ETHGlobalSep 9, 2026
In a live HUMAN Protocol podcast recording, host Simona Pop interviews ETHGlobal Co-Founder and CEO Kartik Talwar about the invisible work behind a durable developer community. Talwar reflects on ETHGlobal’s history, its early Ethereum Foundation support, and the standards learned from organizing events at global scale. Community quality, he explains, depends on thousands of decisions that participants rarely see: reviewing every applicant, helping teams find the right environment, gathering feedback at high volume, and creating clear pathways from a first hackathon to a serious company. Pop asks how ETHGlobal defines quality when event size, application volume, and the surrounding market continue to change. Talwar describes maintaining a consistent bar by reviewing applicants individually and creating an environment where builders can compare themselves with exceptional peers. The conversation follows projects and people from early experiments through products that shaped the Ethereum ecosystem, showing how trusted communities compound over time. Talwar discusses staying close to builders, recognizing what “good” looks like, surviving uncertainty, and expanding without abandoning careful curation. He also considers open source, software-driven business infrastructure, and the falling cost of building every layer of a business, which creates new demands for developer platforms and community operators. The central lesson is that community is not an audience metric: it is ongoing operational labor that helps talented people meet, test ideas, learn faster, and continue building through changing market cycles. They also discuss the difficult years between visible successes. ETHGlobal benefited from early timing and Ethereum Foundation support, but endurance required careful curation, staying close to builders, and continuing to serve developers through difficult market cycles. 00:00 Introduction and Live HUMAN Podcast 01:43 Kartik Talwar’s Academic Background 03:57 From University to Open Source Software 04:45 Learning Startups at SV Angel 06:40 Learning What Great Founders Look Like 08:44 Why the Hackathon Format Matters 10:51 Giving Builders Access to New Technology 11:47 Hack the North and Practical Education 13:32 Feedback Loops for Developer Platforms 14:25 Measuring Time to First Project 15:30 Hackathon Feedback Improves Products 17:22 Giving Builders More of Thirty-Six Hours 18:20 When Local Nodes Took Hours to Sync 19:27 From Better Tooling to Better Products 20:46 CryptoKitties and the First NFTs 22:09 Gitcoin Founders Meet at a Hackathon 22:53 A MetaMask Bug Fixed in the Room 23:19 How 1inch Emerged From Hackathons 26:38 Building Through Every Bear Market 28:03 Reviewing Every ETHGlobal Applicant 29:17 Helping Builders Find Their Peers 29:38 Playing the Seven-Year Community Game 30:38 Showing Real Work During Bear Markets 33:05 Reviewing Every Project and Trend 35:00 Early Ethereum Foundation Support 37:20 Scaling Events After COVID 40:33 The Clash Between Ideals and Reality 42:05 Open Source and Community Compounding 42:36 Supporting Every Layer of a Business 45:01 The Opportunity in Crypto Infrastructure 46:18 Faster Experiments and Product Feedback 48:28 Patterns Across Hundreds of Companies 49:36 Open Source as a Community Model 50:01 Why Closed Ecosystems Backfire 51:42 Competing in the Same Room 53:04 Short-Term KPIs Create Silos 53:53 Long-Term Foundations Versus Easy Wins 55:01 Final Thanks and Podcast Sign-Off _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇵🇹 *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 Simona Pop X: https://x.com/Sim_Pop ✅ Follow Human Protocol X: http://x.com/_humanprotocol ✅ 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
22:35Identity for Apps, Agents & More with ENS I Greg Skril
ETHGlobalAug 9, 2026
In this workshop at ETHGlobal New York 2026, Greg Skril from ENS Labs presents ENS as a source of identity for apps, agents, and more. He starts with the basics: the Ethereum Name Service is a decentralized, permissionless naming protocol that lives on Ethereum but scales to the entire internet, most simply turning complex hex addresses into human-readable names (his address becomes gregskril.eth). He frames ENS as a user experience protocol, showing how sending five dollars to a name is far easier than copying a hex address, and how ENS has evolved from a username into a full profile with an avatar, banner, and description that replaces the anonymous gray circle and truncated address most apps show. His first conclusion: users of crypto-powered experiences should never have to interact with a hex address, and anywhere an app reads or writes one, it should support ENS names. He explains how it works through forward resolution (name to data) and reverse resolution (address to name), which combine into a primary name set via reverse registrars on six chains, and can be configured on behalf of another user with their signature. Greg then positions ENS as a universal pointer to anything on the internet, not just addresses: naming smart contracts for clearer block explorer history, decentralized registries (like a hackathon NPM clone where each package is an ENS name with text-record metadata pointing to decentralized content), storing credentials or AI agent metadata via text records (with a spec, ENSIP-26, for agents), and decentralized websites (like Vitalik's IPFS-hosted blog that survives a Cloudflare outage). He covers subnames, which are full ENS names usable for clean hierarchy and cheap free onboarding (buy projectname.eth, give users free subnames), highlighting the Durin tool at durin.dev for deploying subname contracts to an L2 linked to L1. He previews ENS V2 (live on Sepolia) with a cleaner registry design and fine-grained permissions enabling org structures, and an ENS CLI as the easiest way to teach agents to use ENS. He lays out a record $20,000 in prizes across an AI agents track, a creative use track (citing a privacy solution that resolves a name to different addresses per sender), a $6,000 pool prize, and a $4,000 continuity track, then closes with Q&A on reassigning and revoking subdomains, gas costs, off-chain names, and how subnames compare to second-level domains. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 What Is ENS 00:42 Turning Hex Addresses Into Names 01:08 ENS as a User Experience Protocol 01:35 From Username to Full Profile 02:01 Why a Profile Beats a Gray Circle 02:42 ENS Used in the Wild 03:26 Reading and Writing Data With Names 03:56 Why Users Should Never See a Hex Address 04:21 How It Works: Forward and Reverse Resolution 04:52 Primary Names and Reverse Registrars 05:43 Setting a Name on Behalf of Another User 05:59 ENS as a Universal Pointer 06:20 A Decentralized NPM Registry Example 06:46 Storing Credentials and Agent Metadata 07:06 Text Records and ENSIP-26 07:31 Decentralized Websites Like Vitalik's Blog 08:44 Naming Smart Contracts 09:29 Subnames and Clean Hierarchy 10:19 Free Subnames for Onboarding Users 10:41 The Durin Tool for Subnames 11:05 Introducing ENS V2 11:36 New Registry Design and Permissions 11:58 Org Structures With Fine-Grained Access 12:23 A Preview of the ENS CLI 12:49 The $20,000 in Prizes 13:20 The Build From Scratch Tracks 13:39 The AI Agents Track 14:09 The Creative Use Track 14:37 A Privacy Solution Built on ENS 14:57 The Pool Prize 15:20 The Continuity Track 16:02 Key Takeaways 16:30 Where to Get Help 16:53 Q&A: Reassigning Subdomains 18:29 Q&A: Limits on Subdomains and Gas Fees 19:50 Q&A: Preventing Revocation of User Subdomains 21:14 Q&A: Subnames vs Second-Level Domains 22:19 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal New York 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York 2026, a 3-day hackathon held June 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7MZ8T-ict6YshkFDw9WJCu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
02:56Welcome & Introduction I Aubree Galbiso (ETHGlobal) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalAug 9, 2026
In this welcome and introduction, Aubree Galbiso from the operations team at ETHGlobal opens the third and final day of ETHConf, calling it a full circle moment to be on stage after months of planning the event from behind the scenes. She frames ETHConf as an ambitious but needed event centered around Ethereum in the US, hosted at the Javits Center, the largest convention center in New York, which she thanks along with its team. She explains why ETHGlobal chose New York City, the center of global finance, as the home for its first ever ETHConf: it is where institutions live and where the energy to move the industry forward feels alive. Aubree thanks the event's 2,000-plus attendees, over 600 companies, 150 speakers, and 30 sponsors who made it possible. She previews a day three filled with talks, panels, and firesides touching on three major themes: onchain at scale, institutional adoption, and protocol updates. She stresses the conference is designed to deliver real insights from the companies, founders, and protocols shaping the industry, meaning real things happening right now rather than ideas, since every speaker on stage has already shipped something. She encourages attendees to connect directly with speakers walking the event and with fellow decision makers and key players to network, hear hot takes, and discuss the future, before jumping into the day three schedule. 00:00 Introduction 00:07 A Full Circle Moment on Stage 00:38 Thanking the Javits Center Team 00:59 Why New York City Was Chosen 01:21 Thanking Attendees, Speakers, and Sponsors 01:44 The Three Major Themes of the Day 02:06 Why Every Speaker Has Already Shipped 02:27 A Home for Decision Makers to Connect 02:48 Jumping Into the Day Three Schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
19:00Crypto Built the Rails: Next Up Operating Them Safely | Andrej Bencic (Tenderly) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Andrej Bencic, co-founder and CEO of Tenderly, makes the case that the next decade of crypto requires shifting focus from building the rails to operating them safely. He opens with a story of a routine protocol upgrade where tests passed, the audit was clean, governance approved, and the time lock executed normally, yet within four minutes of mainnet deployment an asset valued at $2,200 dropped to $0, triggering cascading liquidations and nearly $2 million in bad debt. The smart contracts behaved exactly as intended. The failure wasn't in the code, but in everything around it. Andrej argues that the industry has hyperfocused on getting protocols from idea to mainnet while neglecting operational risk in production with live state and live dependencies. He uses the analogy that the map is not the territory: smart contracts are the map, but mainnet is the territory full of traffic, congestion, and population density. He outlines four categories of risk that must be managed together. Process risk covers operational mishaps like signing transactions, treasury management, and deployment workflows, where he cites that process exploits now outnumber code exploits by 6 to 7 times. Dependency risk covers second, third, and fourth order failures across the interconnected web of DeFi protocols. Market risk recognizes that DeFi lacks trading hours, circuit breakers, and human checkpoints that traditional finance relies on, so multi day unwinds can happen in an instant. Code risk remains essential as ever but needs to test onchain dynamics, not just isolated sandboxes. He closes by introducing the concept of blockchain operations and pointing to simulation against live state as the unique advantage blockchain offers, comparing it to pilots in flight simulators or banks running stress tests. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 A Routine Upgrade Gone Wrong 01:04 $2 Million in Bad Debt in Four Minutes 01:33 The Smart Contracts Behaved as Intended 01:51 Andrej's Background at Tenderly 02:38 Why None of the Checks Triggered 03:03 Hyperfocusing on Reaching Mainnet 03:26 The Work Doesn't Stop at Launch 04:10 The Map Is Not the Territory 05:38 Smart Contracts Are Half the Equation 06:38 Crypto Becoming Finance Itself 07:11 Risk Management as the Next Decade's Discipline 07:47 Four Categories of Risk 08:20 Process Risk and Operational Mishaps 09:37 Six to Seven Times More Process Exploits Than Code Exploits 09:59 Dependency Risk and the DeFi Lego Tradeoff 11:18 Knowing the Blast Radius of Dependencies 11:53 Market Risk Without Circuit Breakers 13:19 Modeling Comfort with Exposure 13:36 Code Risk Remains Essential 14:23 Testing Onchain Dynamics, Not Just Isolated Sandboxes 14:52 Correct at Launch Doesn't Mean Correct at Scale 15:22 Frameworks From Traditional Finance 15:49 Simulation Against Live State as the Tying Piece 16:23 No Undo Buttons on Blockchain 16:48 Pilots, Banks, and Stress Testing 17:43 Blockchain Operations as a Category 18:16 Closing: Operating at the Level Global Attention Requires _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
17:51Fireside Chat with Chaeho Shin (1inch) and Yana Prikhodchenko (Cointelegraph) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this fireside chat, Yana Prikhodchenko from Cointelegraph interviews Chaeho Shin, CEO of 1inch, on the state of DeFi liquidity, the convergence of TradFi and DeFi, regulatory clarity, and 1inch's plans for shared liquidity. Chaeho frames the core problem facing DeFi today: roughly 80 to 90% of liquidity is sitting idle because of fragmentation across separate liquidity pools. He explains that 1inch is solving this by introducing a shared liquidity protocol that allows assets in users' wallets to be shared across different liquidity pools without ever leaving self custody, which he positions as the next major DeFi innovation since the original liquidity pool concept from 2019 to 2020. The conversation moves into RWAs, where Chaeho identifies the two biggest barriers to real adoption: compliance and regulatory issues, and liquidity fragmentation that prevents efficient trading at TradFi comparable rates. He notes the disconnect between roughly $30 billion in RWAs onchain and only $2.5 billion actively used in DeFi, and explains that 1inch is positioning to be the most regulatory ready DeFi protocol and a partner swap engine for RWA platforms. He argues the real breakthrough for RWAs in DeFi is the ability to generate additional yield from liquidity pool trading fees on top of the underlying security's dividends. On geographic differences, Chaeho explains that APAC markets including his native Korea remain much more retail focused than the US, but they all benchmark against Wall Street and are waiting for US regulatory clarity (especially the Clarity Act addressing questions he started asking nine years ago) before institutional adoption accelerates. He closes by predicting that shared liquidity will be the dominant DeFi narrative in 2026 and 2027, replacing speculation with fundamentally supported higher yields driven by better capital efficiency. 00:00 Introduction 00:08 Thanks to the Organizers 00:47 Chaeho's TradFi to Crypto Journey 01:10 The TradFi DeFi Convergence Since 2024 01:46 Why 80 to 90% of DeFi Liquidity Sits Idle 02:36 Introducing 1inch Shared Liquidity Protocol 03:13 Self Custody While Sharing Across Pools 03:46 Are AMMs the Bottleneck for the Next Phase 04:59 No Real DeFi Innovation Since 2019 2020 05:36 RWAs: Why 30 Billion Onchain but Only 2.5 Billion in DeFi 06:27 Compliance and Liquidity as the Two RWA Hurdles 07:14 1inch as the RWA Swap Engine 07:52 The Real RWA Breakthrough: Extra DeFi Yield on Top of Dividends 09:28 APAC vs US Capital Allocation 10:01 Why APAC Remains Retail Focused 10:48 APAC Benchmarking Against Wall Street 11:52 Waiting for US Regulatory Clarity 12:26 Key Learnings From the Clarity Act 13:52 What's Next for DeFi Liquidity 14:16 The Yield Problem in Bear Market DeFi 15:32 Better Capital Efficiency as the Solution 16:00 Bonus Round: Morning Routine and Personal Strategy 16:26 Bull or Bear: Building Through Cycles 16:46 1inch's Big Goal for 2026 to 2027 17:17 Predicting the Hottest DeFi Narrative 17:49 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
15:24Tim Beiko
A Reasonably Necessary World Computer | Tim Beiko (Ethereum Foundation) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
19:47Proof Over Promises | Deepthi Kumar (o1Labs) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Deepthi Kumar, co-CEO of O(1) Labs, the team behind Mina Protocol, makes the case for moving from trust based to proof based enterprise systems. She frames the central problem facing every business in the coming years: increasing reliance on systems, vendors, and AI agents that you cannot actually check. Her thesis fits in one line: make trust verifiable. Rather than handing over more promises about what systems can do, organizations should hand over more proofs. She notes that zero knowledge proofs have quietly gone mainstream beyond cryptography papers and private tokens, with Google shipping ZK age verification in Google Wallet, Microsoft integrating ZK based credentials into its identity offering, and the EU mandating ZK based digital identity for member states. Deepthi explains that ZK has historically been used for two purposes (privacy and scalability through ZK rollups), but proposes a third use case: verifiability, which is an inherent property of ZK rather than something bolted on. A SNARK at its core is verifiable computation. She argues this should be applied to enterprise workflows where policies govern high stakes operations, citing two converging forces driving the urgency: AI as an offensive weapon (with the first AI generated zero days being reported and threat actors using AI across attack lifecycles), and AI as an actor (agents acting on our behalf at a scale existing guardrails cannot match). The proposed shift is from a model where you trust systems to act, to one where the highstakes action is logged until a proof shows up validating that all policies were enforced. She describes ZK as a "knot tree" that cannot be bribed. The mechanics are three steps: encode existing policy into a ZK circuit running in parallel to existing enforcement, verify the proof against the expected statement, then execute the operation. Benefits include cryptographic receipts, per action audit trails (finer than sample checks), and composability across multi organization workflows through proof aggregation. She closes by emphasizing this is additive not replacement (preserving security heterogeneity), incrementally adoptable starting with one narrow high value flow, and applicable to institutional finance money movement, AI agent identity and delegation, and any vendor integration with policy enforcement requirements. 00:00 Introduction 00:10 Why You Cannot Check Your Vendors and Agents 00:54 Proof Over Promises 01:33 ZK Has Quietly Gone Mainstream 02:17 Google, Microsoft, and the EU on ZK 02:46 The Two Established Uses: Privacy and Scalability 03:42 Proposing Verifiability as the Third Use Case 04:17 Why Verifiability Is Inherent to ZK 05:05 Why Now: Two Forces Pushing in the Same Direction 05:50 AI on the Offense 06:26 AI as an Actor on Your Behalf 07:01 Shifting From Trust to Proof Authorization 07:47 ZK as a Knot Tree That Cannot Be Bribed 08:22 Treasury Transfer as a Concrete Example 09:24 Verifiable Workflow in Three Steps 10:03 Encoding Policy Into a ZK Circuit 10:44 Verifying the Proof Statement 11:27 Cryptographic Receipts 11:54 Per Action Audit Trails 12:19 Composability Across Multi Organization Workflows 13:44 Not Rip and Replace, Additive Layer 14:51 Why ZK Adoption Can Be Incremental 15:45 Applications: Institutional Finance Money Movement 16:27 AI Agents Proving They Followed Policy 16:53 Agent Identity and Delegation Chains 17:21 Enterprise Operations and Vendor Integrations 18:02 Key Takeaway: Add a ZK Layer to High Stakes Operations 19:01 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
16:52Rise of New Societies | Jakob Drzazga (Frontier Tower) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Jakob Drzazga, founder of Frontier Tower, opens with the story of why he chose to build on Ethereum back in 2017: not for the price action or hype, but because of the test nets that let developers safely change the engine mid flight while ensuring everything remained solid. He uses this as a frame to ask what societies and governments would look like if they had test nets to validate policy implementations before rolling them out nationwide. He argues we currently implement things mid flight without testing, leading to uncoordinated outcomes. His mission is to build a physical test net for new governance and monetary systems. Jakob walks through Frontier Tower's progress since launching in April 2024: a 16 floor vertical village in San Francisco with capacity for 7,000 builders, organized into floors for AI, longevity, biotech, crypto (which he calls the Ethereum floor), robotics, and neurotech. In the last 12 months, 70,000 people visited, 800 became full time citizens, and they're growing 25% quarter over quarter. They've since acquired Superhero Hotel for 150 builders to co-live, and plan to scale from 1,000 to 10,000 to 100,000 to 1 million citizens. He references Ray Dalio's thesis that societies survive on average 250 years, then shares observations from his China trip including Mu Shanghai's pop-up city showcasing record breaking drone shows, autonomous coffee shops, robots on the street, and China surpassing the US in blockbuster pharma deals in 2025. He attributes China's edge to its 80 year old governance system being younger and to experimentation in special economic zones like Shenzhen, Dubai, and Singapore. He advocates for startup cities and freedom cities in America. He previews two near term experiments his community will run: Frontier OS launching this year with their own stablecoin to test programmable, restricted subsidies that solve the 2021 stimulus problem where many recipients invested in crypto rather than supporting small businesses, and an AI agent based DAO experiment with Protocol Labs where each tower resident's agent reads proposals, knows their preferences and physical activity patterns, and votes accordingly. He closes with the Frontier Residency program that just ran badge zero with six startups, with one accepted to YC. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Why Test Nets Made Jakob Choose Ethereum in 2017 01:13 What If Societies Had Test Nets 01:52 Frontier Tower: A 16 Floor Vertical Village 02:19 Floors for AI, Longevity, Biotech, Crypto, Robotics 02:50 70,000 Visitors and 800 Citizens in 12 Months 03:19 Superhero Hotel and Co-Living Expansion 03:48 Scaling From 1,000 to 1 Million Citizens 04:18 Rethinking Governance From First Principles 04:18 Ray Dalio's 250 Year Society Thesis 05:06 What China Got Right 06:26 Why Younger Systems Have an Advantage 06:57 Special Economic Zones: Shenzhen, Dubai, Singapore 07:25 The Case for Startup and Freedom Cities in America 08:05 Building a City of Physical and Digital Automation 08:45 The Genius Act and Launching a Frontier Stablecoin 09:10 The 2021 Stimulus Problem 09:38 Programmable Subsidies for Local Economies 10:43 Reimagining Tax Allocation and DAOs 11:24 Why DAOs Failed When Crypto Was Only Digital 12:01 Agent Powered DAO Experiment With Protocol Labs 13:03 How Agents Solve the Proposal Fatigue Problem 13:35 Call to Action: Build a Society Test Net 14:01 RWA Real Estate Over $30 Million 14:24 IRL DAO Co-Design Opportunity 14:59 Frontier Residency Badge Zero Recap 15:40 Open Floors at the Tower 16:15 Robotizing the Building 16:30 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
13:33Scaling Tokenized Assets Liquidity, Utility, and Distribution | Samyak Jain (Fluid) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Sam Jain, founder of Fluid, walks through how his team has been building DeFi infrastructure since 2018 and how Fluid is now positioned to scale tokenized assets through unified liquidity, utility, and distribution. He frames the team's origin story from an ETH Global hackathon when total DeFi TVL was below $100 million, building Instadapp which invented smart wallets, was the first user of flash loans, did extensive composability work on money Legos, and pioneered the looping strategy that now powers roughly 50% of DeFi. Constrained by being middleware on top of other protocols, the team launched Fluid in February 2024 to own the protocol layer and drive deeper algorithmic innovation. Fluid became the second largest DEX on Ethereum within 3 months of launch and the fastest DEX to reach $100 billion in volumes (in 326 days), with a peak market size of $6.5 billion. Sam positions Fluid not as just a lending market but as a capital efficient meta protocol that is already a DEX, vault, and money market and will host anything finance has to offer over the next 5 to 10 years. Every dollar on Fluid works extra mile because the total borrow to total deposits ratio has been the highest in DeFi since launch. For asset issuers facing the bootstrapping challenge of tokenizing, securing DEX liquidity, dealing with liquidity providers, and integrating with lending protocols, Fluid offers all of these at once including liquidity as a service where Fluid itself provides hundreds of millions in DEX liquidity at minimal cost without counterparty risk for the issuer. He explains how Fluid is 4 to 5x more capital efficient than competitors for liquidity depth. He shares two major partnerships: Jupiter Lend on Solana (powered by Fluid, leveraging Jupiter's distribution while Fluid provides the tech), Etherealize and Bitwise Jupiter integration that grew to half a billion within a week, and Venus Flux on BNB Chain. Sam closes by explaining that institutions can use Fluid to own their own lending protocol, DEX, and users with bespoke solutions including KYC, permissioned access, fixed rates, and credit markets, with announcements coming for both crypto centralized and TradFi onboarding partnerships. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 From 2018 Hackathon to Instadapp Origins 00:57 Inventing Smart Wallets, Flash Loans, and Looping 01:26 Why the Team Built Fluid to Own the Protocol Layer 01:55 Launching Fluid in February 2024 02:26 What Fluid Is Today and Tomorrow 02:52 Fastest DEX to $100 Billion in Volume 03:22 Highest Borrow to Deposit Ratio in DeFi 03:52 The Trillion Dollar Tokenization Opportunity 04:28 Eight Years From One Stablecoin to Thousands 05:06 The RWA Bootstrapping Challenge 05:27 Why Fluid Offers Everything at Once 05:54 Asset Issuers Already on Fluid 06:31 Liquidity as a Service for Asset Issuers 07:03 No Counterparty Risk for Issuers 07:26 Building Toward Credit Markets, Fixed Rates, Forex, Perps 08:22 What Fluid Provides Institutions 08:45 Helping TradFi Institutions Navigate DeFi 09:51 Why an Eight Year DeFi Team Matters 10:18 Partnership: Jupiter Lend on Solana 11:13 What Fluid Asks From Partners: Distribution 11:38 Partnership: Etherealize and Bitwise Jupiter 11:38 Partnership: Venus Flux on BNB Chain 12:12 Institutions Owning Their Own Lending Protocols 12:41 Bespoke Solutions: KYC, Permissioned, Fixed Rate 13:01 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
13:17Onchain Privacy for Institutions | Tomer Weller (Stellar Development Foundation) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Tomer Weller, Chief Product Officer at the Stellar Development Foundation, presents what nearly a decade in crypto and recent years of institutional conversations have taught him about onchain privacy. He frames the core problem: blockchain is the only financial system where every transaction is fully visible, meaning that the moment paychecks, balances, payroll, trading strategies, or B2B relationships move onchain, they become readable by anyone with a block explorer. For individuals this exposes their entire financial history. For institutions it's worse because competitors can see volumes, relationships, and strategies. Financial institutions have made it clear that not being able to manage visibility is a non-starter. Tomer argues that while crypto has worked on privacy for a decade, it has been driven by cypherpunk ideology of complete financial freedom (which he loves, citing Zcash), when what institutions actually need is privacy as a managed spectrum that allows them to stay competitive and compliant. Privacy varies by jurisdiction (a US regulated asset differs from one in Singapore or Brazil), by use case (payroll has different requirements than trading or remittances), and by technology (ZK, FHE, MPC, TEE all have different tradeoffs). He identifies two privacy dead ends: the all or nothing approach where solutions only offer full transparency or full privacy, and permissioned chains that are private only because they're databases on someone's computer, missing the open participation networks institutions actually want. Tomer presents Stellar's three layer privacy stack: a transparent base layer (transparency is a feature institutions love), low level privacy building blocks like Protocol X-ray providing ZK primitives without enshrining any specific privacy type, and multiple privacy protocols on top. He covers two private payment families: confidential tokens (hide the amount but not the parties, easier to scale compliance) and privacy pools (hide both amount and parties, stronger guarantees but mix funds), with examples like 0xbow and Nethermind's Stellar Private Payments. He closes by walking through a compliance menu including selective disclosure, non-selective disclosure with view keys, association sets, force transparent withdrawals (Oxbow's "rage quit"), and clawbacks for regulated assets. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Why Visibility on Chain Is the Default 00:57 What's at Stake for Individuals and Institutions 01:25 Why Institutions Say Visibility Management Is Non Negotiable 01:53 The Cypherpunk Privacy Heritage 02:18 Why Institutional Privacy Means Something Different 02:43 Privacy as a Multi-Dimensional Spectrum 03:19 The Two Privacy Dead Ends 03:54 Dead End One: All or Nothing 04:20 Dead End Two: Permissioned Chains 05:08 Stellar's Three Layer Privacy Stack 05:36 Transparency as a Feature 06:05 Building Blocks Not Enshrined Privacy 06:32 Protocol X-ray and ZK Primitives 06:59 Why Payments Are the Foundational Use Case 07:26 Confidential Tokens: Hiding the Amount 07:45 The Confidential Token Association 08:09 Privacy Pools: Hiding the Who Too 08:42 Tradeoffs and Co-Mingling Concerns 09:10 Building the Compliance Menu 09:52 Selective Disclosure 10:20 Non Selective Disclosure With View Keys 10:46 Association Sets and Vetted Allow Lists 11:10 Force Transparent Withdrawals and Rage Quit 11:35 Clawbacks for Regulated Assets 12:00 Closing: All the Building Blocks Are in Place _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
19:32Sam Kazemian
When a Stablecoin Becomes Core Infrastructure I Sam Kazemian (Frax) and Spencer Noon (OurNetwork)
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this fireside chat, Spencer Noon from OurNetwork sits down with Sam Kazemian, founder of Frax, to discuss how a stablecoin becomes core infrastructure in the post Genius Act world. Sam winds back to March 2025 when he, co-founder Travis Moore, and US industry figures including the Blockchain Association and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong were negotiating the wording of the Genius Act, which legalized payment stablecoins as federally regulated digital dollars. He breaks down what he sees as the most important part of the act: a stablecoin issuer backed by narrow collateral types (Fed reverse repos, money market fund securities, Treasury bills, and FDIC insured bank deposits, or RWAs representing those) can become a Genius compliant issuer through the OCC or a state regulator, issuing what amounts to legal tender that banks, companies, and fintechs can accept. He explains that while Frax was an Ethereum DeFi OG with an original hybrid algorithmic stablecoin (now deprecated but not shut down, like DAI and Sky), the flagship product is now FraxUSD, a Genius compliant stablecoin that launched right when the act passed in July 2025. Sam details FraxUSD's core differentiator: unlike USDC or USDT where users and venues have no relationship with the issuer and receive none of the underlying risk free yield, FraxUSD streams the risk free rate directly on chain. He walks through the concrete mechanism built with Aave V4, where a reserve link smart contract checks the average FraxUSD balance in partner protocols like Aave and Curve pools daily, mints new FraxUSD against the growing reserves, and streams it into those venues, making FraxUSD the highest TVL lent digital dollar on Aave V4. Users can view the underlying RWAs (money market fund securities and Treasury bills custodied by BlackRock, BNY, and WisdomTree). Sam frames base money stablecoins as the biggest network effect product in crypto, distinct from yield bearing 4626 vaults, and explains Frax's forward looking strategy of not fighting USDC on established venues but instead becoming the aligned default digital dollar for the infrastructure of tomorrow like Aave V4, Morpho, and new RWA pools. Spencer connects this to DeFi's promise of financial empowerment and Vitalik's critique of unnecessary rent seeking, noting the current disconnect between $300 billion in stablecoins and only $16 billion on lending protocols. Sam closes with a prediction that the stablecoin supply will double from $300 billion to over $600 billion within a year, with banks moving balance sheets into compliant stablecoins and companies running stablecoin treasuries becoming routine daily headlines. 00:00 Introduction 00:07 Winding Back to March 2025 and the Genius Act 00:51 What the Genius Act Legalized 01:17 Deconstructing the Parts That Matter 01:51 The Narrow Collateral Requirements 02:25 Why Frax Built the New Version This Way 02:58 From Algorithmic Stablecoin to FraxUSD 03:48 Being First to Build to the Act 04:31 The User Journey vs a Neo Bank or Coinbase 05:03 Why Most Venues Get No Yield From Issuers 05:32 The Aave V4 Risk Free Rate Mechanism 05:58 Highest TVL Digital Dollar on Aave V4 06:24 Looking Forward, Not Winding Back the Clock 06:58 The Aligned, Regulated, Redeemable Digital Dollar 07:32 Why the Current Lending Rate Falls Short 08:38 Viewing the Underlying RWAs on Frax's Website 09:08 Which Institutions Custody the Reserves 09:37 How the Reserve Link Smart Contract Works 09:59 A Programmable Version of Coinbase USDC Earn 10:33 Why Base Money Is the Biggest Network Effect 11:32 Network Effects vs Yield Bearing Vaults 12:06 FraxUSD as Direct Spend Across Venues 12:34 DeFi as Financial Empowerment 13:10 The $300 Billion vs $16 Billion Gap 13:39 Efficiency, Alignment, and Composability 14:04 Sustainable Infrastructure, Not a Campaign 14:37 Not Fighting USDC on Established Pairs 15:03 Targeting the Infrastructure of Tomorrow 15:37 The Two Year Vision for FraxUSD Dominance 16:32 What KPIs Frax Aligns Around 16:53 Why Eventually There Will Just Be Dollars 17:59 Banks and Companies Moving to Stablecoin Treasuries 18:51 When Billion Dollar Mints Become Daily Headlines 19:07 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
03:11Kartik Talwar
Welcome & Introduction | Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal) at ETHConf, Day 2
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this brief opening, Kartik Talwar, co-founder of ETHGlobal, welcomes over 2,000 attendees to day two of ETHConf at the Javits Center. He reiterates that ETHConf is the first and biggest institutional Ethereum event in America, run by ETH Global with the goal of promoting the Ethereum ecosystem and getting the smartest people in the world building on the hardest problems in the space. New York was chosen intentionally to bring together the finance world with the broader crypto community, connecting DeFi and TradFi founders alongside builders working on cryptography and distributed systems so both sides can readily collaborate. Kartik previews day two's structure across three continuing themes: how institutions are thinking about adopting stablecoins and DeFi in their day to day flows, how protocols are evolving from an engineering perspective (what's still outstanding, what's being worked on, what to expect in the coming months and years), and how these two threads connect to make it easy for everyone else to come on chain by simplifying UX, technical, and regulatory hurdles at scale. He emphasizes that speakers coming on stage will talk about work they've already shipped rather than work they're just thinking about, and encourages attendees to interact directly with founders throughout the day since decisions happen faster when you can chat with the people building the products. 00:00 Welcome to Day Two of ETHConf 00:30 Why New York and Why Institutional Focus 00:58 Bringing DeFi and TradFi Together 01:23 2,000 Attendees and 150 Speakers 01:51 Day Two Themes: Institutions, Protocols, Adoption 02:20 Real Stuff on Stage, Not Concepts 02:39 Meet Founders Throughout the Day 02:57 Kicking Off the First Talk _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
21:29Christine Kim
Tracking Ethereum Like an Insider | Christine Kim (Protocol Watch) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Christine Kim from Protocol Watch shares the framework she has used for 8 years tracking Ethereum development and governance, including years running the ACD Toolkit and covering Ethereum's All Core Devs calls. She was one of the first people to regularly cover ACD calls, now runs an independent Ethereum development newsletter and a Bitcoin development newsletter, hosts a podcast on both, and operates a research and advisory firm helping businesses building on the two chains. She frames her insider approach around three foundational questions: how does Ethereum governance work, who are the key players, and where and when do they meet to make decisions. Christine explains that Ethereum governance is like an onion. The outer formal layer is defined by EIPs like EIP-1 (defining the EIP process) and EIP-7723 (labels for CFI, PFI, SFI, DFI status), which AI can help summarize. The harder and more important part is the informal layer, the unwritten norms driving decisions. She notes that on ACD calls each client team gets an equal vote regardless of whether they have 40% or 1% market share, and that contentious decisions require supermajorities whose thresholds shift with the level of contention. She emphasizes that governance itself evolves rapidly, pointing to the new headliner process introduced only in the Fusaka upgrade. On the "who" question, she pushes past treating stakeholders categorically (validators, developers, users, client teams) to look at who individuals actually work for and how their companies are funded. Most Ethereum client teams were seeded and funded by the Ethereum Foundation, which explains its historical leadership, and as the EF narrows focus the funding sources for client diversity are opening up. On the "where," she highlights the three ACD calls as the most important decision-making forum, noting the cadence has evolved from once every two weeks pre-merge to twice weekly today as developers push toward two upgrades a year. Christine explains she deprecated the ACD and BTC toolkits earlier this year not because the framework was wrong, but because static written posts were suboptimal and her readers mostly wanted actionable insights rather than the underlying research process. She closes by challenging the room to apply her framework to at least one protocol, arguing it reveals whether a protocol is genuinely decentralized or engaging in "decentralization theater" with multisigs and federations, and helps identify the real values (transparency, verifiability, accountability) driving each blockchain's differentiation. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Christine's Track Record 01:12 Launching the ACD and BTC Toolkits 01:36 The Three Questions Framework 02:15 Ethereum Governance as an Onion 02:41 The Formal Layer: EIPs and Labels 04:07 The Informal Layer: Unwritten Norms 04:29 How Client Team Votes Actually Work 05:26 Supermajorities for Contentious Decisions 06:17 How Governance Itself Evolves 06:43 The Headliner Process in Fusaka 07:38 Beyond Categorical Stakeholders 08:34 Looking Deeper at Who Funds Client Teams 09:19 Why the Ethereum Foundation Seeded Client Diversity 09:47 What Happens as the EF Narrows Focus 10:40 Being in the Room Where Decisions Happen 11:34 The Three ACD Calls 11:54 How the Cadence Has Evolved Over Time 12:48 Twice Weekly Coordination Today 13:11 Breakout Calls for Long Term Roadmap 13:38 Why ACD Calls Are More Accurate Than X 14:22 The People, Places, and Process 14:46 Applying the Framework to Bitcoin 15:16 Why Christine Deprecated the Toolkits 15:39 The Medium Was Suboptimal 16:09 Readers Wanted Actionable Insights 17:34 A Call to Apply the Framework 18:14 Questioning the True Value of Protocols 19:05 Decentralization Theater 19:54 What Are the Real Ends of Decentralization 21:01 Closing and Resources _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
21:09Society Protocol: The Future of Human Coordination | Ashton Keys (Society Protocol) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Ashton Keys introduces Society Protocol, which he frames as the evolution of blockchain systems to fulfill an entire state structure on chain through a paradigm he calls synchronized states, the future of human coordination. He argues coordination is humanity's superpower, since we are the only species that coordinates at planetary scale, and that improving it even fractionally benefits society more than any individual achievement. Coordination is not natural, so humanity developed systems like democracy, currencies, and governance to coordinate despite competing interests. The premier system of recent centuries has been the nation state, built on the double entry accounting age and its duplicated, fragmented contracts stored separately between counterparties. This gave us equality, democracy, and capitalism, but when technology is added, it drives centralization into gatekeepers. Ashton identifies eight pillars of a state structure beyond government (identity, monetary systems, societal state, time synchronization, shared reality of events, group decision making, the social contract, and value systems), noting all currently centralize into powerful gatekeepers who warp shared reality. He argues the 2,000 year double entry accounting age is ending, and that the transition began in 2009 with Bitcoin decentralizing money and 2015 with Ethereum decentralizing assets. But blockchains lack identity and Sybil resistance, so they cannot form people, governance, or all eight pillars, and their uneven social layer forces them into immutable pyramid structures. He reframes blockchains as two-dimensional clocks and synchronized state machines, and proposes evolving to four-dimensional synchronized state machines that unlock a triple entry accounting age. Society Protocol is a four-dimensional model world synchronizing identities, property, governance, and interactions together, unlocking Sybil resistance, identity, and direct programmable governance where changes update the whole social contract instantly. He walks through the eight pillars as programmable components, warns that centralized CBDCs are a competing path leading to a technofeudal dark age, and closes framing Society Protocol not as revolution but evolution built on Ethereum bridging web3 to web4, seeking committed builders ahead of a public fundraise in about six months. 00:00 Introduction 00:38 Coordination as Humanity's Superpower 01:12 Why Coordination Beats Individual Ability 01:33 How Humans Coordinate Through Systems 01:56 The Nation State as the Premier System 02:20 The Double Entry Accounting Age 02:50 How Duplicated Contracts Work 03:09 What the Nation State Gave Us 03:25 Why Technology Causes Centralization 03:38 The Eight Pillars of a State Structure 04:04 Why We Don't Control Our Own Identities 04:20 How Gatekeepers Grow Powerful 04:56 How Media Platforms Warp Shared Reality 05:44 The Stacked Problems of Centralization 06:09 Why It Looks Like the Apocalypse 06:30 The End of the Double Entry Accounting Age 06:59 From Bitcoin to Ethereum 07:23 Why Blockchains Lack Identity 07:42 Why Blockchains Get Forced Into Pyramids 08:07 Blockchains as Two-Dimensional Clocks 09:08 From Static Objects to Synchronized States 09:30 What Is Society Protocol 10:00 Unlocking Identity and Governance 10:44 Unifying All Eight Pillars Into One Machine 11:30 Pillar One: The Timeline 11:51 Pillars: State Sphere, Actors, and Money 12:09 Events and the Model World 12:30 Governance That Updates Society Instantly 13:00 The Social Contract and Protocol Effects 13:17 Value Functions and What Society Values 14:23 What It All Means for Global Coordination 15:42 Why Synchronized States Beat Nation States 16:26 A Modular System Like a Linux Foundation 16:49 Why CBDCs Are a Competing Path 17:38 The Risk of a Technofeudal Dark Age 18:01 Evolution, Not Revolution 19:10 A Call for Builders and True Believers 20:01 Building on Ethereum From Web3 to Web4 20:40 The Path to a Public Fundraise 20:59 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
18:50Trusting Agents With Capital: The Gearbox Playbook | Mikhail Lazarev (Gearbox Protocol) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Mikhail Lazarev from Gearbox Protocol shares his playbook for trusting AI agents with capital, opening on the number zero: Gearbox has had zero security incidents in five years and zero bad debt, and zero could also be how much money is left if you fail to secure agents properly. Drawing on two years of piloting experiments starting with prototypes on EigenLayer in 2024, he lays out the Gearbox agentic framework and how anyone can set up a curatorless autonomous AI vault today. He frames the stakes with numbers: BCG projects $19 trillion tokenized on chain by 2033, and while 62% of entities are experimenting with AI per McKinsey, only 10% use it in production, a huge gap. Referencing a recent tweet from a well-known security figure warning that AI is now so good at finding vulnerabilities that DeFi feels unsafe, he argues DeFi 3.0 needs two shifts: moving from complicated monolithic smart contract systems to using Ethereum as a settlement layer with simple one-to-one peer-to-peer credit lines that are easy to formally verify, and moving from human risk curators to curatorless due diligence performed by agents that research deeply, respond fast to market changes, scale, and never sleep. Mikhail walks through the Gearbox loop of six stages (discover, analyze, shortlist, propose, execute, and monitor), noting they built their own indexer to solve the lack of proven data sources. He demos an agent analyzing around 100 documents in five minutes to recommend how to deploy 10k of USDC, flagging an insecure pool with an RLP token incident, and introduces an MCP server so the loop runs in any coding agent with a human-in-the-loop verification link (deployable to IPFS) so users never sign what they do not understand. He explains bot APY, an on-chain harness using Gearbox's battle tested total-value computation to cap an agent's risk budget per transaction, making losses easy to hedge with insurance and protecting against leaked agent keys. He covers graph memory with per-source credibility scores to resist toxic tweet manipulation and plug in institutional due diligence, mapping interconnections between complex assets to enable emergency exits during contagion. He closes with a structured product where 90% sits in a yield pool while an agent borrows against it and competes to outperform, backstopped by an on-chain stop-loss. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 Starting With the Number Zero 00:41 Zero Incidents, Zero Bad Debt 01:07 Two Years of Piloting Agent Experiments 01:45 The Numbers We Are Facing 02:17 The Gap Between Experimentation and Production 02:50 The Vision for How DeFi Should Be Done 03:32 DeFi 3.0: Ethereum as a Settlement Layer 04:09 Why Peer-to-Peer Is Easier to Verify 04:45 Why Autonomous Due Diligence Matters 05:16 From Risk Curators to Curatorless Agents 05:48 Why Autonomy Beats Manual Research 06:14 The Gearbox Loop of Six Stages 06:39 Why Shortlisting Is Needed 07:08 Why Execution Must Be Safe 07:15 Demo: Deploying 10k of USDC 07:36 How the Agent Collects and Analyzes Data 08:14 Flagging an Insecure Pool 08:41 Introducing the MCP Server 09:08 Why You Never Sign What You Don't Understand 09:35 The Human-in-the-Loop Verification Link 10:03 Toward Autonomous Capital Management 10:47 How Bot APY and Risk Budgets Work 11:12 Why Capped Losses Are Easy to Hedge 11:38 Protecting Against Leaked Agent Keys 12:07 The Problem of Agent Memory 12:34 Credibility Scores to Resist Manipulation 13:04 Plugging In Institutional Due Diligence 13:37 From Beating ML to Following a Manifest 14:05 Why Different Goals Achieve Different Outcomes 14:48 Mapping Interconnections Between Complex Assets 15:14 Emergency Exits During Contagion 15:53 Building a Structured Product on Gearbox 16:23 Splitting Capital Into Passive and Active 16:51 How the Agent Borrows and Competes 17:38 The On-Chain Stop-Loss Harness 18:19 Learning Like Robots Playing Go 18:43 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
14:52Building Stablecoin Payments at Scale | Justin Gainsley (Coinbase) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Justin Gainsley, who leads stablecoin payment acceptance at Coinbase, shares what four years of building stablecoin payments at scale has taught him about selling to enterprises and payment service providers, and what still needs to be accomplished. He opens with a 2012 Hacker News post from Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, written before he even applied to Y Combinator, expressing the idea of using crypto to remove the 2 to 3% interchange tax Visa and Mastercard charge on every payment, showing crypto as a payment method has been ingrained in Coinbase from the start. Taking over Coinbase Commerce with the same mandate, Justin's team tried nearly everything (Bitcoin payments, every token on every chain, memecoins, cashback, point of sale, invoicing, online checkout) but nothing moved the needle, and for a while they worried crypto might not be right for payments. The signal emerged from talking to hundreds of buyers and merchants: a real cohort wanted crypto as their cash, something stable to earn into and spend without gas or volatility. So Coinbase made the non-consensus bet of stripping out Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all volatile assets to go all in on stablecoins, which drew internal backlash but sent conversion, volume, and merchant satisfaction all up. Strikingly, 64% of wallets paying on the stablecoin only product held no other assets, a fundamentally new cohort of savers rather than traders. Justin recounts bringing what they thought was the industry's best stablecoin checkout to Shopify, only to be asked about auth and capture, a term he had never heard, kicking off a year of learning what a real payment system requires: authorization holds, automated voids, configurable expiries, refunds, settlement schemes, reconciliation, and disputes. He details the resulting open source Commerce Payments Protocol, an escrow smart contract on Base powering Shopify's USDC checkout across hundreds of thousands of sites, with a permissionless operator role, six operations (authorize, capture, charge, void, refund, reclaim), and a blockchain native reclaim function letting buyers pull funds back after expiry. He covers the boring but required enterprise needs (predictable flat gas fees, custom settlement files, daily fiat delivery, compliance), argues the blockchain itself is fine for payments since Base settles in 200 milliseconds for under a penny, and identifies wallets, on-ramps, and signing UX as the real problems. He closes noting stablecoin payments have gone from curiosity to production in two years. 00:00 Introduction 00:41 Brian Armstrong's 2012 Post on Removing Interchange 01:09 Why Crypto Payments Are in Coinbase's DNA 01:35 Trying Everything to Make Crypto Payments Work 02:00 Worrying Crypto Might Not Fit Payments 02:23 Listening Closely to Buyers and Merchants 02:41 The Camp That Wanted Crypto as Cash 03:06 The Non-Consensus Bet on Stablecoins 03:35 The Internal Backlash 03:58 Why All the Metrics Went Up 04:28 64% of Wallets Held No Other Assets 04:54 The New Cohort of Savers 05:14 Bringing the Best Checkout to Shopify 05:32 The Auth and Capture Question 06:08 A Year Learning What Payments Require 06:32 Why Not to Underestimate Traditional Payments 07:15 Plugging Into Where Enterprises Already Are 07:37 The Commerce Payments Protocol on Base 08:01 How the Escrow Smart Contract Works 08:28 The Operator Role Explained 08:46 Why Operators Cannot Modify or Lock Funds 09:28 The Six Core Operations 09:48 Reclaim as a Blockchain Native Feature 10:12 The Boring but Required Enterprise Needs 10:33 Predictable Flat Gas Fees 10:44 Custom Settlement Files per PSP 11:01 Daily Fiat Delivery and Compliance 11:26 Just Another Alternative Payment Method 11:54 What the Industry Still Needs 12:19 Why the Blockchain Is Fine for Payments 12:42 Where Wallet UX Kills Conversion 13:03 Why On-Ramps Still Need to Be Better 13:27 Signing UX and Smart Wallet Adoption 13:59 From Curiosity to Production in Two Years 14:41 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
13:45Lessons from 10 Years of the Ethereum Identity Stack | Brantly Millegan (ETHID) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Brantly Millegan from ETHID shares lessons from 10 years working on the Ethereum identity stack. He opens with his own onchain profile and ENS name, brantly.eth, encouraging everyone to get a name at ens.domains. He traces the story back 50 years to the 1970s invention of public key cryptography, which for the first time let people encrypt messages without exchanging a secret key ahead of time. The US government classified it as too powerful, until Phil Zimmerman and the cypherpunks successfully lobbied in the 1990s to make it legal for public use, enabling e-commerce and HTTPS. The cypherpunks saw public key cryptography as the basis for digital identity, but consumer versions like PGP never broke out because appeals to privacy and liberty alone do not motivate enough people without financial incentive. Brantly explains that Bitcoin (2008) and Ethereum (2015) changed this by using public key cryptography for wallets, accomplishing through economic incentives what cypherpunks could not through appeals to values: the widespread adoption of private keys and a flourishing wallet industry. Vitalik named identity as a use case in the 2014 Ethereum white paper, but many early identity projects failed because they treated identity as a single app when it is really 20 hard problems at once, and because building in a decentralized way is far harder than centralized. The breakthrough was Ethereum Name Service, which started in 2016 and launched in 2017 modeled after DNS for decentralized websites, then crypto payments. In 2021, while on the team, Brantly realized ENS was accidentally your crypto username and profile, the meta use case underlying all the others. He credits ENS's success to not competing directly with DNS, great engineering, and long time horizons, making it extremely Lindy after nine plus years. He covers Sign in with Ethereum (EIP-4361) as a decentralized user-controlled single sign on, the Ethereum Follow Protocol as an onchain social graph, and Ethereum Identity Kit as a React component library. He closes with his core thesis: Ethereum identity is not a single app but the sum of information and relationships across decentralized protocols and open standards, unbundled into smallest viable parts so each can stand, fall, improve, or be replaced independently, making the whole stack more resilient. 00:00 Introduction 00:35 Brantly's Onchain Profile and ENS Name 00:47 Going Back 50 Years to Public Key Cryptography 01:09 What Public Key Cryptography Is 01:38 Why the US Government Classified It 01:52 The Cypherpunks Make It Legal in the 1990s 02:07 Why It Powers E-Commerce and HTTPS 02:28 Cryptography as the Basis for Digital Identity 02:48 Why PGP Never Broke Out 03:14 Bitcoin, Namecoin, and Early Naming 03:33 Identity in the 2014 Ethereum White Paper 04:06 How Crypto Spread Private Keys at Scale 04:38 Why Wallets Keep Getting Better 05:12 Why Early Identity Projects Failed 05:37 Why Decentralized Is Harder Than Centralized 06:12 The Ethereum Name Service Breakthrough 06:30 Realizing ENS Was a Username and Profile 06:59 Why the Username Is the Meta Use Case 07:15 Why ENS Has Succeeded Where Others Failed 07:39 Not Competing Directly With DNS 08:04 Great Engineering and Long Time Horizons 08:36 Why ENS Is Extremely Lindy 08:58 Accidentally Solving Single Sign On 09:26 The Vision of a Decentralized Account for the Internet 09:44 Sign in with Ethereum and EIP-4361 10:07 The Ethereum Follow Protocol Social Graph 10:36 Other Parts of the Identity Stack 10:58 Ethereum Identity Kit for Developers 11:18 What Ethereum Identity Really Is 11:39 Why the Stack Is Decentralized, Not Vertically Integrated 11:58 Why Each Part Can Stand or Fall on Its Own 12:17 Why This Makes the Stack Resilient 12:40 Why We Should Not Take This for Granted 13:06 The Hard Work Behind the Stack Today 13:25 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
11:55Introducing the Open Cap Table Protocol | Thibauld Favre (Fairmint) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 9, 2026
In this talk, Thibauld Favre, CTO and co-founder of Fairmint, introduces the Open Cap Table Protocol and argues why the private market, not the public one, is where onchain equity infrastructure will win. He opens on how the new administration reshuffled the deal for crypto by opening the floodgates for asset tokenization, and Wall Street heard the message loud and clear, with the DTCC and market participants now scrambling to tokenize everything. As a 16 year crypto veteran, he asks whether all that work is being co-opted by Wall Street to build faster horses, and answers no. Everything Wall Street tokenizes today is public equity, which works because of an old, complex mainframe based infrastructure centered on the DTCC monopoly for post trade operations. That system works (you click a button on Robinhood and the trade settles despite nine intermediaries), so the low hanging fruit is simply adding another layer to sell US securities offshore, which changes nothing fundamental. Thibauld argues the real wedge is the private market, which is exploding as staying private grows more attractive: secondaries now rival IPO proceeds, there are over a thousand unicorns globally, and more than $4 trillion in private valuation. Yet the private market has almost no infrastructure, running on lawyers, PDFs, Excel sheets, and databases, with lawyers as the expensive glue. This is the opportunity, since private shares are restricted with transfer rules, ownership structures are complex and layered with SPVs, privacy is table stakes, and intermediaries are all offchain. Fairmint's seven years taught them that issuing equity tokens on chain is useless if the source of truth stays offchain, so the solution is putting the cap table itself on chain. The Open Cap Table Protocol turns cap tables into programmable smart contracts, and Fairmint became one of the first SEC registered transfer agents in 2023 to support it. Crucially it is not a new standard but an onchain extension of the existing Open Cap Table Format from the coalition of top securities law firms, making it compatible with the industry from day one while delivering self custody, programmability, instant settlement, automated compliance, borderless markets, traceability, and composability as regulated DeFi. Over $1.5 billion of equity is already on chain, and he frames the endgame as making IPOs great by letting everyone trade directly on the cap table, enabling new use cases like companies keeping direct connection with shareholders or trading equity directly on their own websites. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 The World Changed a Year Ago 00:46 Wall Street Rushing to Tokenize Everything 01:16 Was 16 Years of Crypto Co-Opted? 01:44 Why Wall Street Only Tokenizes Public Equity 02:15 Why the DTCC Infrastructure Works 02:41 The Low Hanging Fruit of Selling Offshore 02:56 Why We Need a Better, Simpler Infrastructure 03:16 The Private Market Is Exploding 03:44 Over $4 Trillion in Private Valuation 04:13 The Broken Infrastructure of Private Markets 04:42 Why Private Shares Are Harder Than Public 05:16 Why Issuing Tokens Alone Created More Complexity 05:33 Putting the Cap Table On Chain 06:06 The Open Cap Table Protocol 06:40 Not a New Standard: Building on the Existing Format 07:05 The Open Cap Table Coalition of Law Firms 07:38 Compatible With the Industry From Day One 08:04 Why It Is Regulated DeFi 08:29 Over $1.5 Billion of Equity On Chain 08:50 The Endgame: Making IPOs Great 09:33 Simplifying Trading Directly on the Cap Table 09:56 The Airbnb Shareholder Connection Anecdote 10:48 Trading on Brokerage or Directly on Your Website 11:12 How to Join and Build on the Protocol 11:31 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
19:23Kartik Talwar
The Next Era of ENS Katherine Wu (ENS Labs) and Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal) at ETHConf
ETHGlobalJul 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 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
03:40Intelligence at the Frontier: Building for Human Flourishing in the Age of AI | FtC SF 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
AI governance. The future of work. Coordination at scale. And the question underneath all of it: how do we make sure AI leads to human flourishing, not just faster automation? Intelligence at the Frontier was a 36-hour festival hosted by Funding the Commons across 16 floors of Frontier Tower in San Francisco, March 14–15, 2026. Over a thousand participants from 92 countries joined 229 sessions spanning AI policy, public goods funding, decentralized governance, AI safety, open source AI, democratic deliberation, longevity research, and coordination infrastructure for the age of AI. This aftermovie captures some of the ideas and conversations that shaped the weekend, featuring Tom Kalil (Renaissance Philanthropy, fmr. White House science policy), Sheila Warren (fmr. World Economic Forum), Shady El Damaty (Holonym Foundation / human.tech), Luke Drago (Workshop Labs), and Shaw Walters (ElizaOS). What stood out to you? Let us know 👇 🌐 https://fundingthecommons.io Presented by Funding the Commons x Frontier Tower x Protocol Labs
01:11Intelligence at the Frontier Hackathon Recap | FtC SF 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
What does it look like to build the human-AI coordination layer in 36 hours? The Intelligence at the Frontier Hackathon brought 150 builders to Frontier Tower in San Francisco for an overnight build sprint on March 14-15, 2026, across four tracks: agentic AI, physical robotics, AI safety and evaluation, and sovereign infrastructure. 53 projects shipped. $25k+ in prizes awarded. We saw builders hacking through the night, robots roaming the hallways, agents paying each other in real money, and judges giving Claude feedback. Thanks to everyone who joined us. Co-produced with Protocol Labs. Supported by ElevenLabs, Bittensor, Solana, Meteora, Metaplex, Redwood North, BittensorCommons.org, VESSL AI, Velda, Unbrowse, NomadicML, human.tech, Activeloop, Solo Tech, Learning Layer Labs, Lit Protocol, and KikiTora. 🌐 https://fundingthecommons.io 📋 All 53 projects: https://intelligence-at-the-frontier-hackathon.devspot.app/?activeTab=projects
16:43David Dao
David Dao: Can We Govern the Commons at Planetary Scale? | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
Elinor Ostrom proved communities can self-govern shared resources without top-down control. But her principles hit a hard limit at roughly 150 people — Dunbar's number. Beyond that, cooperation breaks down. So how do you govern something the size of the Amazon? David Dao, founder of GainForest and winner of the Rainforest X Prize, argues that AI and decentralized technology are the missing infrastructure to scale Ostrom's commons governance principles to planetary scale. Drawing on 15 years working with indigenous communities across the Amazon and the Philippines, he shows how satellite imagery, data valuation, and on-chain identity systems can help communities protect forests at a scale no single government or NGO has managed alone. The talk moves from the tragedy of the commons to a blueprint for governing shared resources in the age of AI. Speaker: David Dao (Protocol Labs & Gainforest) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io Note: This recording was captured with technical limitations on Day 1. We apologize for any audio quality issues and appreciate your patience.
12:23Matthias Broner
Matthias Broner: UNICEF's Financial Rails for the Age of AI | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
As AI displaces workers and traditional UN funding gets pulled back, UNICEF is building the financial infrastructure to get resources to people who need them most. Matthias, an advisor to the UNICEF Office of Innovation, walks through a set of live blockchain-powered initiatives: a crypto donation protocol (Drips) funding five digital public goods across 131 countries, an impact staking program that puts idle ETH to work for humanitarian causes, and AidLink — a system that delivers cash transfers via SMS to people without internet access, building digital wallets entirely behind the scenes. UNICEF has held and disbursed crypto assets since 2019, longer than any other UN organization. The goal is to leverage blockchain as financial infrastructure for people the traditional system doesn't reach, tested in the real world before being scaled. Speaker: Matthias Broner (UNICEF Office of Innovation) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io Note: This recording was captured with technical limitations on Day 1. We apologize for any audio quality issues and appreciate your patience.
11:46Juan Benet
Juan Benet: Thoughts for the FtC Community in 2026 | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
The crypto community built a lot. It just didn't quite get there. Juan Benet offers a frank assessment of why, and why AI might be the thing that finally makes it real. Juan, founder of Protocol Labs and the person whose work gave rise to IPFS, Filecoin and Funding the Commons itself, reflects on a decade of building decentralized infrastructure that reached fewer people than it should have. Stablecoins worked. Most of the rest didn't land at scale. The speculative noise drowned out the execution. The rails built in crypto are exactly the underground layer AI needs to transact at scale. The crypto dream might still happen, just built by AI agents rather than humans alone. Juan's challenge to the room is to start thinking now about how to provision public goods not just for people, but for the millions of AI agents that will soon be part of the conversation too. Speaker: Juan Benet (Protocol Labs) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io
10:49Illia Polosukhin
Illia Polosukhin: Building a Secure Agentic Future | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
The internet was built for humans clicking URLs. It was not built for agents coordinating with each other at scale. Illia Polosukhin thinks that needs to change now. Illia, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and co-author of the landmark "Attention Is All You Need" paper, traces the arc from AI as a backend feature to AI as the operating system through which we interface with the world. Agents are already starting to coordinate with each other, hire each other, and execute actions without human input. The infrastructure underneath them — identity, payments, privacy, policy — was not designed for this. His answer is a stack built for the agentic era: confidential execution environments, credential vaults that intercept outgoing connections, WebAssembly tool isolation, and a marketplace where agents can hire each other for tasks. The goal is security by design rather than security as an afterthought. Speaker: Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io
46:21Illia Polosukhin, Juan Benet
Illia Polosukhin & Juan Benet: Building the Agentic Future | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026
Funding the CommonsMay 9, 2026
What happens when AI agents don't just assist humans but start forming their own entities, entering contracts, and building toward their own goals? Illia Polosukhin and Juan Benet think we're closer to that than most people realize. Illia, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and co-author of "Attention Is All You Need," and Juan, founder of Protocol Labs, dig into the infrastructure needed for a world of autonomous AI coordination. The conversation turns on a deceptively simple problem: credit assignment. Every bottleneck in how we organize human effort, from machine learning to corporations to public goods funding, comes down to how well we can attribute contribution. Juan argues that cheap intelligence may finally let us solve this at scale, using Shapley value approximations to fairly distribute credit across AI agents working on shared goals. The first fully autonomous AI corporations may arrive within months. The question is whether we build the right foundations now or sleepwalk into it. Speakers: Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol), Juan Benet (Protocol Labs) This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco. Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io
15:34gm The Man, We're Forking You I Adrienne Youngman
ETHGlobalMay 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
18:54What DeFi Is Evolving! From Primitives to Collateral Markets I Misha Putiatin
ETHGlobalMay 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