[ETHDenver DAY 2 WRAP-UP]: Day 2 Alpha 🔥 The Future of Finance, Memecoins, DeFi, and TradFi 🔮

Howdy! 🤠 Time is flying at ETHDenver! We’re already halfway through, and Day 2 did not disappoint. 🥳 After a busy day one, attendees returned refreshed and ready to dive deep into the action!

ETHDenver Regenerate Superheroes: SporkMan, Whale Pool, and Captain Ethereum.

For a round-up of the most newsworthy takeaways from the day, scroll down! And don’t forget, you can catch live-streamed talks here. 

– – EVENT HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE – –

Chen Fang COO of BitGo discussed the future of institutional crypto: “If there was one thing that we do to introduce better market structures — so that these large traditional finance companies trust crypto and trust digital assets — is to separate the roles and responsibilities between an exchange and a custodian, to protect the customers and stop putting billions of client funds on ledgers and losing it.”

Chen Fang from BitGo.

During his talk, Matt Lockyer from NEAR Protocol & Proximity Labs, discussed multi-chain AI agents: “If we look at the state of agents there is a lot of hype in the Web2 space, as well as in Web3. But are there truly autonomous agents? I believe that the age of AI slop is ending and the age of AI execution is beginning.”

Matt Lockyer, NEAR Protocol & Proximity Labs.

Joe Lubin, Co-Founder of Ethereum and Founder of Consensys in a fireside with Brady Dale, of Axios, said: “In order to do powerful things people need to get together into groups. Intelligence needs to get together into groups. Collective action has evolved from families to the companies of today. Consensys itself is evolving to become a network state. Ethereum is a network state.”

Brady Dale, Axios & Joe Lubin, Consensys & Ethereum.

Arthur Breitman from Tezos discussed whether there are too many Layer 2s, rollup designs, AI agents, and meme coins. Arthur shared insightful comments for Ethereum developers, advising, “So my advice to the Ethereum ecosystem: Align on a canonical Ethereum rollup and draw from the best optimistic designs. Don’t wait for ZK.” He also shared his thoughts on AI agents, stating, “People are making a big deal about using AI agents. It’s fun, but people are trying to make it a new paradigm—they are way too overhyped compared to what we’re building.” Finally, he wrapped up the talk with a take on meme coin hype, saying, “A lot of coins are meme coins by definition. They are fun, but don’t pretend that they are more than that.”

Arthur Breitman from Tezos.

Luca Prosperi from M^0 Foundation and Sonya Kim from Steakhouse Financial discussed whether Tether causes systemic risk for the DeFi Ecosystem with the panel being moderated by Phil Fogel from Cork Protocol. Sonya shared a comment on Tether’s evolution “I think Tether has had an interesting journey, if we’re talking about Tether in 2025, it paints a very different picture, if you look at the composition of reserves it’s about 80% cash. I think the credit profile or some of the risks that we were wary of have diminished and they are one of the most profitable institutions in the world. So from a capitalization perspective, Tether looks quite good today. Tether to my mind has been stress tested and has the focus on many people’s nervousness so perhaps there’s less risk now.”

Luca Prosperi from M^0 Foundation and Sonya Kim from Steakhouse Financial, Phil Fogel from Cork Protocol.

Chris Cordle from Offchain Labs discussed fast and simple smart contracts in Zig, he discussed that “The idea behind Arbitrum stylus is that it uses a simple zero dependency, smart contact framework. The goal is to make it easy, learnable, and testable.”

Chris Cordle from Offchain Labs.

Ayesha Kiani COO at MNNC Group and Faculty at NYU Tandon; Kirk Hutchinson Governance Lead at Morpho Labs, Charles d’Haussy CEO of dYdX Foundation, Dion Chu CEO of Term Labs, and Alexandre Elkrief Co-Founder and Co-CEO of August Digital, discussed the state of DeFi Lending today. Hutchinson wrapped up the discussion: “The question that I would encourage you all to think about is: What are the interesting asset classes that could be tokenized? In general, that is things which are more fungible, like not your house but ETFs, 99% of the world’s assets are not there yet, but they’re coming soon.”

Kirk Hutchinson from Morpho Labs, Charles d’Haussy from dYdX Foundation, Dion Chu of Term Labs, and Alexandre Elkrief of August Digital and Upshift.

Bowen Wang from NEAR explain the process of sharded blockchain to sharded smart contracts, “How does sharding actually work? In NEAR, global contract code can be executed across shards, while the data is stored in the smart contract account rather than the user account. This approach enables true scalability, making sharding a comprehensive solution for blockchain scaling—and we’re building it at NEAR.”

Bowen Wang, NEAR Protocol.

Caitlin Long from Custodia Bank discussed regulatory challenges for crypto banking, the impact of U.S. administration changes on crypto policies, and the future of stablecoin legislation and TradFi-crypto integration with the panel being moderated by Brady Dale from Axios. When Caitlin was asked what stablecoin bill she would write, she said, “We learn a lot in the Silvergate situation, the best consumer protection is so the bank can hold onto cash, so you can redeem your cash instantly with your stablecoin.”

Brady Dale, Axios, and Caitlin Long, Custodia Bank.

 – What’s on tomorrow –

• Associate Director & Head of Growth at YAP Global, Debra Nita, will be moderating a fireside chat with Jonathan King from Coinbase Ventures on evolving funding models for onchain startups and the future of Web3 investment.

• A panel featuring Phil Girard, Coinbase, Armani Ferrante, Backpack Exchange, 0xloth, Morpho, Bryan Pellegrino, LayerZero Labs, and moderated by Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk, will break down how exchanges are scaling onchain, diving into the evolution of decentralized finance and the future of exchange infrastructure.

• JingXiong H, Solv Protocol, will explore expanding the boundaries of BTC finance through Real-World Assets (RWA), diving into the integration of traditional assets with blockchain technology.