ETHis: Ethereum For The Real World
Trust, Coordination, Ownership, Verification, & Settlement For Real-World Systems

The conf was held in parallel to the “Festival der Zukunft” (Festival for the Future), which happens every year at the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest science and technology museum.

This is a different setting to the usual Web3 conference circuit. Science, industry, and real-world systems interconnect in a massive building that houses the machines and technology that helped shape the modern world.

The conference website is superbly designed with replete information and an interactive programme that enables users to earmark talks they intend to attend.

Themes

The sessions were divided into thematic domains including:

• Real-World Productive Assets: Productive assets, credit, and infrastructure are moving on-chain as programmable ownership and settlement rails.

• ZK Privacy: Privacy-preserving proofs for identity, compliance, verifiable data, and institutional workflows without unnecessary data exposure.

• DePIN & Hardware: Physical networks, sensors, energy systems, robotics, and hardware connected to Ethereum-native coordination and settlement.

• DeFi & Stablecoins: Settlement, liquidity, treasury, and payments moving toward always-on rails that institutions and users can actually use.

• AI & XRisk: Defensive acceleration in practice: open, accountable, privacy-aware systems that protect agency as AI capability increases.

• Governance & DAOs: On-chain coordination for shared resources, protocol stewardship, public goods, and institutions that need credible decision-making.

First day: Expert Circles

The Thursday was devoted to Expert Circles, small groups of panelists gathered in a semicircle that enabled audience participation. The topics were:

• DePIN: From Experiment to Industrial Infrastructure

• Real-world Coordination and Network States

• The Lessons from Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

• Value Management and Venture Strategy

• Frontier of Public Goods and DeSci

• Applied Trust and Decentralized Applications

• Let’s Talk About Privacy Now!

A sprightly discussion in the “Real-world Coordination and Network States” circle included: Ashton Keys (Society Protocol), co-organizer Kris Millar (VDAO), Matteo Tambussi (Spaghetti ETH), co-organizer Una Wang (ETH Zurich), Nikoline Arns (Hubs Network), and Felix Fritsch (Commons Hub Austria).

The day finished with beer! 🍻 And spritzes, and other beverages, and a catered meal in the museum’s beer garden along the Isar River. It was high-signal networking.

The Expert Circles continued into Friday morning:

• Institution and Democracy

• Defi and Stablecoin

• State of DePIN

Second day: Main Programme

The Friday was packed with a roster of talks, panels, and a Lightning Talk track. These screenshots display the sessions, all of which were recorded.* Full descriptions can be viewed on the site.

Some sessions were held on the Dome Stage, a lofty hall where Festival der Zukunft projected an animation on the dome ceiling.

During the “Applied Trust and Decentralized Applications” panel, moderated by co-organizer Donny Lewis, AI definitions from a local LLM, derived from the discussion, were projected onto the dome.

(I was volunteering and spent the day in the Lightning Stage space, bartending and start/stopping the video, and totally enjoyed it!)

In one Lightning Talk Kris Millar from VDAO explained how “local communities and Ethereum-aligned infrastructure can build resilient, antifragile systems in the face of institutional, economic, and technological shocks”.

At the end of the day came a finale, a fireside chat between Vitalik Buterin on remote video and Amir Taaki live. It was a feisty, far-ranging session, a riveting exchange that went overtime, lasting an hour and 20 minutes.

The broadcast is viewable on X and a transcript is on Fileverse.

The conference concluded in the courtyard of the museum with drinks and food. It was summertime, with utterly pleasant weather that enlivened the convivial atmosphere.

Notes

*Sessions were recorded and the videos are currently being processed. They’ll soon be published on the ETHis website.

† Kudos to ALL the conference organizers: Donny Lewis, Josef Köhl, Kris Millar, Raphael Spannocchi, Una Wang 🙌

‡ Thanks to the sponsors: Anode, Etched, Fileldgr, Society Protocol, Solar Punk, Swarm, Tradvest, Viridis 👍

Devconnect took place from November 17-22. It was the largest Ethereum Foundation event ever. Some stats:

• 14,000+ attendees

• From 130+ countries

• A World’s Fair-style campus

• With 8 themed districts:
  DeFi, Privacy, L2s, Decentralized Social, Hardware & Wallets, AI, Gaming, and Art

• 80+ application exhibitors

• 40+ deep-dive events

• and 15 Community Hubs

The location was a complex named “La Rural”. It reminded me of the rural ETH Denver fairgrounds, which usually host rodeos, with arenas and expansive exhibit spaces. The weather was warm, with many of the booths in the open air.

The keynote was delivered by Vitalik, in the flesh, sporting dark glasses for the summer season. I really appreciate the optimism in the Ethereum ecosystem. That spirit derives from its founder.

Regen Hub

One of the community hubs was the Regen Hub. The core coordination and program was done by Regens Unite, which has organized activities at 19 Ethereum events since 2022. Local production was by NetX State. The crew’s expertise was evident; the hub was astutely orchestrated.

“The Regen Hub is for builders, makers, activists and anyone interested in exploring how Ethereum and Web3 can support regenerative, community-driven solutions to social and environmental issues.”

Activities were grouped into daily themes:

• Mon: 🌅 Arriving & Grounding Together

• Tue: 🍄 Mycelial Structures & Mechanism Design

• Wed: ✨ Community is Immunity

• Thu: 🌿 Bioregional Commons Coordination

• Fri: 🐝 Regenerative Finances: From ReFi to RealFi

• Sat: 👁 Radical Imagination and Desirable Futures

An extensive list of sister organizations participated, doing talks, staging events, and mounting exhibits: Greenpill Network, especially neighboring Greenpill Brazil plus the Dev Guild, ReFi DAO, Agroforest DAO, Mujeres en Crypto, Fork Forest, Commons Hub Brussels, Funding the Commons, ReHuman, Gardens, CofiBlocks, Rifai Sicilia, PhiEconomy, and many more. See the full roster on the Regens Unite calendar.

On Friday I did a talk about Green Goods, an app developed by the Greenpill Dev Guild:

“Green Goods: Creating Hyper-local Hubs of Regenerative Actions
An exploration of how hyper-local hubs empower regenerative initiatives and collective impact at the community scale”

Green Goods is an app for community gardens that makes grassroots impact visible, verifiable, and fundable.

At the end of the week we were told that, of the 15 various hubs at Devconnect, the Regen Hub was the busiest. Go gang!

Regen Haus, Regen Village

One of the guys from AgroForest DAO, Diogo, organized a Regen Haus where, depending on the day, a number of people stayed. In tandem he facilitated a Regen Village:

“We invite builders, dreamers, and grounded doers to join the Regen Village — a living microeconomy where food, culture, and coordination flow as commons.
This is your Call to Commoning:
to weave your value into a collective story,
to reclaim the act of living, learning, and exchanging as a commons,
to build local economies that root Ethereum in the soil of everyday life.”

In order to participate you had to bring something. People brought wine, cheese, bread, olive oil, honey. Your contribution became: “vouchers — seeds you plant in our Community Pool. In return, you receive $VILLA tokens, your key to our dinners, workshops, and the shared treasury that funds what comes next.”

Pacha Mama Closing Ceremony

At the end of the conference week on Sunday there was a “Pacha Mama Closing Ceremony: Walk to Las Yungas Garden”:

‘“To close the Regen Hub @ Devconnect BA 2025, we invite you to our Pacha Mama Closing Ceremony: an immersive experience to connect with the real Buenos Aires. ​We will meet the Women that created the "Las Yungas Community Garden" in Barrio Rodrigo Bueno. They lead this space since the Pandemics and are a living example of community resilience and regeneration.”’

‘Pacha Mama’ means Earth Mother. Here are some photos from the ancestral ritual.

Finding Roots

It was rewarding to wrap up a stimulating and inspiring conference week with a visit to a local, regenerative, on-the-ground collective. It was like zooming in, getting closer and closer, until we found ourselves meshing with like-minded locals in the real Buenos Aires.

This season the funding is happening at Giveth: https://giveth.io/qf

The theme of Expo ‘25 is “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”. The good news is, regeneration is ascendant. Many countries are focusing on the environment and sustainability. It was gratifying to see so much research and investment in a positive-sum future.

Every day the Expo is packed with visitors and, even with reservations, the popular pavilions have long waiting lines. One can spend a whole day there but only manage to visit a few.

Pavilions

A favorite pavilion was Germany, which explains how it’s creating circular cities that circulate both resources and the economy. The pavilion is ambitious and the content inspiring.

The pavilion exterior, where you wait in line, is lined with trees borrowed from Ryokukou Gardens, a local nursery. The trees will be returned after the Expo.

Spain, which is surrounded by sea on three sides, is showcasing ocean conservation.

One aspect is seaweed research for energy, nutrition, cosmetics, and medicinal purposes.

The Dutch pavilion has cool architecture that’s completely circular. Its exhibition addresses five themes: climate, food, health, tech, and culture.

Smaller countries tend to have smaller pavilions. Cambodia focused on rice cultivation. Egypt showed a 360° CGI projection of its ancient past and a verdant future.

The UN pavilion has the theme “United for a Better Future”.

“How can we protect the world? Check the SDGs!”

“null² (Nurunuru)” is one of the Signature Pavilions at the Expo. Created by Yoichi Ochiai, it explores the future of nature when it merges with the digital world, looking at how humans might change as a result.

Cycling Innovation

This is actually the second World’s Fair held in Osaka. The first was Expo ’70, a tremendously successful event that showcased a number of innovations that are in common use today, such as the first mobile phone, maglev trains, and conveyor belt sushi!

One of the other inventions at Expo ‘70 was a “human washing machine”, created by Sanyo Electric Co. (now Panasonic Corp.). One of the visitors was Yasuaki Aoyama, then a curious fourth-grader. He never forgot the experience and went on to become the CEO of Science Co., a company specializing in hygiene appliances.

Science Co. reimagined the machine and created a bathing pod that blends innovative ultra-fine bubble technology with biometric sensors that track the bather’s physical and emotional state, promising to cleanse not only the body but also the mind.

Exhibited in the Osaka Healthcare Pavilion, the cockpit-shaped pod partially fills with fizzing warm water as the user reclines in the central seat. A wash takes 15 minutes, including drying.

The “Grand Ring” forms the circular spine of the Expo city. Built from wood, utilizing Japanese carpentry principles, it covers an area of 61,035 square meters (656,980 sq ft), making it the largest wooden architectural structure on earth according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Designed by Sou Fujimoto, the Grand Ring is a brilliant piece of architecture. It circumscribes an urban space, connects all the pavilions, provides a 2025 meter long elevated pathway named the Skywalk, and shelters visitors from the elements. After the Expo it will be dismantled and used for other purposes. The form of the Grand Ring is a circle, a symbol of unity, embodying the circular intent for the future.

The Expo has a theatrical goodbye. A drone show graced the exit.

Expo ‘25 runs until October 13th, 2025.

Previously we were on Substack for eight years. Originally we had a Wix website and used its built-in blog when starting up.

In the interim we also experimented with Blogger and Medium. Later we tried Mirror, which was promising with its Web3 basis but wasn’t really mature. We decided to wait it out and now people from Mirror are founders of Paragraph. That’s an endorsement, so we’re making the jump.

For the time being the Substack blog will remain as an archive at chaineresearch.substack.com. It contains a journal of our activities going back to October 2017. Later we might import it.

There is also a sub-blog, ClimateDataPool (climatedatapool.substack.com) which chronicled our participation in the Apollo Hackathon in 2020.

The title of this post is a verb, in the imperative, as we’re beginning a new sequence. Time to hit ‘return’.

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