Ethereum Community Conference Takes On Second Day Covering AI, Recovery Systems, Regulation and Crypto Universal Basic Income.

EthCC[7] the annual Ethereum Community Conference, brought another day of talks and side events to Brussels, here are the highlights.

– – EVENT HIGHLIGHTS – –

The day started with Yeho Hwang , Product Designer at MetaMask , spotlighting the role design plays in bridging the UX gap for Web2 users, beginning with analysing Web3’s core onboarding flow designs. 📈

“We all share a common mission, and we have been saying it for a long time, that is to onboard the next billion users to Web3. But how have we actually thought about crypto newcomers in this equation? I believe it will take a user from a mindset of curiosity to taking action to that curiosity and ultimately, have a sense of agency from onboarding to completing one task”. 🦜

Paul Brody , Principal Global Blockchain Leader at Ernst Young , spoke on the future of the Ethereum ecosystem as the space enters a regulation era. 🌍

“We are seeing global regulatory convergence – it’s not even, it’s not fast but it is happening. My belief is that if you can buy stablecoins and real-world assets, and they are well-regulated, then you have laid the foundation for a good DeFi ecosystem”. ☀️

“The single most important thing that has happened in recent years is MiCA, I met these policymakers from the European Commission who were involved in drafting and pushing the MiCA legislation. These people are in favour of public blockchains, they like and support Ethereum, and they want to see a rapidly growing and regulated market with full access across the European Union”.

Andrew O’Neill , Managing Director at SP Global Ratings , broke down the opportunities and risks for the traditional financial world when interacting with Ethereum. 🏆 “My message to institutional adopters and the Ethereum community is that as we build this new world we need to do so in a way that’s robust and risk-aware”. 👀

Chintan Turakhia , Senior Director of Engineer at Coinbase , shared their mission of addressing the most pressing challenge faced by the industry as a whole; simplifying user onboarding 🧑‍💻

“Our mission collectively is to bring more and more users onchain, and that’s why we created Coinbase wallet – onboarding users in 5 seconds flat”. ⛓️

He further discussed the important role of developers in creating more user-friendly platforms, “We are moving towards an L2 dominant world. Developers are the ones who should be building the consumers’ apps out there, which make the users go ‘wow’, instead of being confused by crypto jargon”.

Jeremy Allaire , Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Circle , discussed his vision of creating a future where every aspect of the financial system is created on an open infrastructure. 🏦

“What if you take what we think of as government obligation money and issue that as a fully reserved money on open networks which allows you to connect in a safe, transparent way, this is how internet infrastructure can transform an entire industry”.

“Market opportunity for stablecoin money is large, with over $100 Trillion in value for electronic money. In the market today, 95% of this value is privately issued and is bank risked. However, with the current infrastructure and regulatory trajectory, it’s not unreasonable to think we can get 10% of this value in the next 10-20 years, thereby creating a safer form of digital money, a superior form of storing value”. 💸

Mihai Grigore , Head of Research at Messari , discussed the key infrastructure developments across the Base Layer, Mid-Layer Infra, DeFi and Consumer sectors in Web3. On mid-layer infrastructure, Mihai highlights the pain point Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs) are facing to reach wider adoption. 🚦

“While there is a need for all this infrastructure, it is much harder to monetise a DePIN than monetising a base layer or a network. In the long term, will token incentives be enough to propel these networks or is another business model needed? This is the cornerstone question for DePINs and only time will tell”.

Illia Polosukhin , Co-Founder of Near Protocol , spoke on the need for a user-owned AI and Internet.

“The reality we are racing towards, with generative AI being the engine in the middle, is the fact that Web3 will not be successful if the corporate-owned Internet continues because you will have all your attention, time, data, and assets living on one centralised wall garden platform”. 🌷

“So we need a new internet that combines AIxWeb3 and brings the benefits of these two things. It’s not about bringing down centralised parties, it’s about evening the field where everyone can participate. Blockchain is not about having no centralised parties, it’s about having enough of them so people have options to switch but none of them have a dominated control over the whole system”. 🎯

Aliya Das Gupta , Senior Vice President at Sygnum Bank , explained the importance of protecting users from third-party risk 🔐 and introduced Sygnum’s new Web3 recovery solution.

“Sygnum Web3 Recovery is launching soon to address the innate fear that you could lose access to your funds. That’s one of the key risks in crypto. Self-custody requires a lot of security and not everyone is knowledgeable enough to handle their assets. This is where Sygnum comes in with our trusted solution.” 👌

Patrick Hansen , Senior Director, EU Strategy Policy of Circle , shared seven predictions for crypto in the EU for 2025/2026. 👀

• EUR stablecoins are likely to increase 5x in market cap
• USDC will become the leading stablecoin in overall liquidity and volume
• 3-4 dominating trading platforms will emerge
• Financial institutions will enter crypto en-masse (with 5+ banks launching stablecoins and crypto custody services)
• Many EU start-ups will be bought or vanish
• A few leading DeFi and L1 teams will move to the EU for its regulatory clarity
• 3+ fully regulated trading venues for tokenized securities will emerge and settle DVP with e-money tokens

“I think the European Union is years ahead than any other regulatory market”. 🇪🇺

Anna Stone , Executive Director of Good Dollar , unpacked the value crypto can bring to poverty alleviation and economic development through decentralized Universal Basic Income. 🧡

“It’s really critical that we remember in its heart and soul crypto is actually an innovation that enables us to create more free money and innovate on the money itself. For us, we are building with real purpose to democratize more economic access and opportunity around the globe. This isn’t just a potential narrative, this is something that is a reality of tools that exist today, that exist on the ground that people can begin to use to create more economic opportunity for themselves and their communities”. 🌍

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