Eylon
TLDR: Epic conference. The ecosystem is maturing on many fronts, I'm bullish on a lot of thing things (esp the people). That being said but there are critical problems in Ethereum (e.g. Homestaking) Also, kimonos 💃 🔥
Big giant clap and thank you to the the entire Devcon team, Skylar, Adam and the rest of the crew I didn't even get to see in the flesh. The venue was incredible, Thailand was amazing, and the hospitality, food, and people were super welcoming. Must mention the dangerous side of choosing leverage on your life on the back of scooters across the city at 80Km with no Helmet.
The Collider Kimonos finally showed up on the last day of the Conference. Managed to hand them out to some lucky (and cool) people who are (hopefully going to wear them). Top schwag showoff goes to Emilie from ChainSecurity with this absolute banger in the beaches of Thailand.
In general everyone around the conference were extremely bullish -- from the Trump administration which will undoubtedly be better for the space, to Ethereum actually scaling across the L2 ecosystem with novels dApps every day and the upcoming EVM UX abstraction, or simply ETH going up massively during the conference.
It's not about expected policy benefits - it's just about not having someone actively trying to kill the industry. Beyond the obvious number go up, I've had several discussions centered around the upcoming regulatory landscape shifts and the hopeful acceptance of tokens that are actually being allowed to, you know, make money. Really interesting conversations on novel tokenomics models and value capture mechanisms.
That being said, this is actually a double edge sword — If tokens can actually accrue and distribute value, we're gonna have to start valuing protocols and networks... based on actual value. Wild concept, right? The means the Industry has to grow up -- Revenue, cashflows, fees, and real business models will become critical design goals and principles. RIP to the days of fugazi tokenomics and low float high FDV nonsense. It's simple -- generate value or go to zero.
We are lucky to have some really incredible humans in the space -- people who actually imagine a better future for the world through what we are collectively building here. I've had countless mindblowing conversations with frens who taught me new things or inspired me about what they are building, their takes on certain topics, or their unique journeys and experiences from using crypto or building in the space
Two notable people I kinda want to mention
Anthony Sassano - legit 10/10 person. He's wholesome and genuine IRL just like he is on the Daily Gwei and other podcasts. Last time I saw him was Dappcon 2019 and we had quite a banter with Udi Wertheimer. To those who haven't met or hung around with him -- we're lucky to have such true and honest educators who really want to push the industry forward as whole.
Dima Butrin - besides making me feel like I should probably hit the gym more (seriously he looks early 30s), Dima is just incredible to talk to. Has this zen master vibe like he knows all the secrets of the universe, but spends most of his time asking YOU questions. Super humble, crazy smart, and probably rocked the kimono better than anyone else. We're all extremely lucky he's still very tuned into the frequency and vibes of Ethereum and still there as a sounding board for many in our space. I've got a lot to learn from him both as a human and as a dad.
Overall it's incredible how pretty much every single conversation you have is interesting. Honest note -- The conversation is usually more interesting before the other side learns I'm a VC which (naturally I guess?) changes the vibe a bit. Lots of great people from all over the world, different takes, perspectives, and cultures. Friends starting new projects and protocols, investors raising new funds, and all of them with super interesting interesting angles and value propositions. Amazing to still see hunger to build and do in the space, even amongst OGs.
Whether its the Socket Protocol demo (Seriously go watch this), Or the new Safenet Transaction processor. We are solving the 'chain abstraction' problem. By next year, moving funds between contracts across the EVM multiverse is going to smoother UX than moving within contracts on the same chain right now.
The knowledge of the circumstances... never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits. -- F. Hayek, the use of knowledge in society
Polymarket, the first real crypto dapp to go mainstream, effectively paved a new way to aggregate dispersed information bits. These Information markets, with financial skin in the game, are the best truth seeking mechanism humanity has (potentially) developed. Combine this with general trends around the gamification of finance. Products like Robinhood that simplified complex financial activities for millions of users that generate billions in value. This is a recipe for a 100x better decision mechanisms that pave the way to dramatic changes in governance structures (first in crypto then outside) and financial markets (through any day x time xasset option markets).
Two notable (Portfolio companies) building in this space
Butter are researching Conditional Funding Market (CFM) pilot with Uniswap. Allowing Uniswap to leverage prediction markets to estimate the probability that a funding decision will produce a desired effect before the funding decision is made.
Limitless has cracked the formula for recurring and habit forming prediction markets. With simple and User-Friendly Interface, Daily Markets which allow users to receive immediate (daily) feedback, and Community-Driven Growth which creates consistent organic demand for new categories and markets.
On one hand I'm jaded from AI agent startups, I've heard at least a dozen startups with near identical pitches from agent deployment infrastructure to agents inference infrastructure. On the other hand there's an interesting focus on mainstream applications with (abstracted) crypto payment rails. Fund your agent with USDC and let him roam the internet for you. Another interesting vertical is AI agents as a key marketing vertical, what started with lilmiquela on instagram a few years ago continued with Truth Terminal, Lumy, and more.
At any rate -- Because both the AI and crypto spaces are moving so rapidly, is very difficult to discern what ideas are potentially interesting, viable, or will have a long time time horizon.
Encryption day - one of the best side events. Anyone you talk to is a gigabrain who literally blows your mind what what they are building and enabling. All at the forefront of math and encryption that go way above my head. My key takeaways is that FHE (Fully homomorphic Encryption) is close to production with testnets and alpha versions that work. This means confidential smart contracts like private DeFi apps on FHE L2s, or privacy everywhere for existing smart contracts via a FHE co-processor.
This is the future of privacy.
I'm generally bullish on Asia -- Asian startups, Asian founders, Asian led thinking on how to build massively scalable products. I've met numerous founders from India, Thailand, Singapore, Korea, all Talented, Hungry, and hardworking builders who are dreaming big. I believe we are going to see a lot of innovation coming out of Asia in the upcoming years. Also 'Western' Projects are understanding the marketing potential that could come out of Asia. There is lots of hiring is happening now on that front -- Localization, Marketing, BD, etc.
There is healthy consolidation happening in the space. There are (finally!!) several Crypto Investment Banks, There are M&As being planned and structured as we speak, and governance practices that are finally moving away from Kumbaya everybody vote on everything nonesense towards viable structures that can govern and grow decentralized protocols. We are now taking valuable practices from traditional corporate governance and applying our values and principles: Open systems, transparency, and utilizing mechanisms instead of politically motivated humans.
KIDS! KIDS! KIDS! Love seeing more families at conferences. The industry is maturing with more kid-friendly events. Imagine our Kids experiencing this globetrotter lifestyle of traveling to cities around the world for work and fun with friends. More conferences should follow Devcon and ETHDenver in providing daycare options, activities, and parents + kids based events.
Make crypto conferences kid friends friendly... err again?
Ethereum node decentralization is probably facing an existential crisis, beyond the roadmap and shipping velocity fiasco there's a fundamental home-staking disincentive that will force Ethereum to choose its degree of decentralization.
The problem
Currently home staking/validation is economically disadvantaged compared to any Liquid staking provider due to LSTs DeFi composability. I cannot take my personal staked ETH and borrow against it in AAVE.
This pain is going to grow significantly as Eigenlayer/Symbiotic mature and allow Ethereum stakers more validation services that generate more yield on top of their staking capital.
Ethereum home validation setups can’t realistically handle such service proliferation, whether its hardware requirements, personal ISP bandwidth limitations, or just general limitation of running a whole operation at home. The natural flow of this will trend towards professional staking services. Likely in Datacenters or at least in dedicated operations.
This means that one of the fundamental values propositions of of Ethereum Proof of Stake -- home staking is going to highly economically disadvantaged. Effectively being caught between Bitcoin’s "Anyone can run a full node" and Solana’s all Nodes will run in datacenters. Trying to do both while getting none.
In this bull market we are going to experience some of the worst hacks in crypto history. Most founders / CTOs don't really take security seriously. Practically zero crypto companies have CISOs and the approach remains around pre-deployment optimizations. Yes Audits are great, but shipping bugless code is impossible. You could let this slide in web2 where security through obscurity is a core tenet and hacks and breaches amounted to data theft which had to be manually sold on the dark web.
Web3 is different. Everything is open source, hacks mean immediate financial 'gratification', and our development processes result in immutable code. We must figure out how to run post deployment smart contract security services that actually stop transactions in a decentralized way. There are several protocols building around this space.
After a week in Bangkok, I'm walking away both hyped and weary. Hyped because we're finally building things that matter - actual value creation, consumer dapps, working infrastructure, and governance that doesn't suck. Weary because of some of the challenges ahead (security, decentralization) which could be existential with current Ethereum leadership structures..
But seeing kids running around DevCon, watching builders from across Asia showing up with fresh ideas, and feeling the shift from "wen moon" to "how do we make this last and people are willing to pay for" - makes me bullish. The space is growing up, and for once, that might actually be a good thing.
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