Source: PortaldoBitcoin Original Title: 5 Insights from Devconnect 2025, the largest Ethereum event Original Link:

Devconnect 2025: Five Key Insights

Invincible

The first and most important insight is simple and direct:

“Cryptography is becoming invincible because it is becoming invisible.”

Camila Russo made this point at the DeFi Day Del Sur conference on November 19. Camila is an important voice in the crypto space, having worked at the well-known crypto news platform The Defiant and written investigative reports on the history of Ethereum.

This idea suggests that by abstracting the complexity of the crypto universe, adoption can be accelerated and billions of people can be facilitated in their migration to blockchain.

Nowadays, we use the internet and credit card payments without understanding how they work. As long as the technical complexity is sufficiently abstracted, users only need to enjoy the results. This will happen on the blockchain in the coming years, with more and more transactions being settled on-chain, while end users remain oblivious.

We have seen many applications reach a level of abstraction similar to traditional networks, such as digital fixed-income tokens, which are registered and settled on-chain but traded through platforms, providing the same experience as traditional networks. Another example is a certain DEX that offers trading tools very similar to those on traditional network platforms.

We firmly believe that the path of abstraction is the most powerful way to expand adoption, prioritizing projects that have implemented or include user experience improvements in their roadmap.

2 – AI agents will revolutionize the financial markets

One of the largest exhibition halls at the event is dedicated to showcasing artificial intelligence and its applications in cryptocurrency, including several projects such as ElizaOS, 0G, and Virtuals.

In addition, we also observed the application of AI agent payment and identity technology, which we believe is a precursor to the emergence of agents that can solve real-world problems. This “killer agent” has the potential to create a more powerful trend than traditional web “killer applications” like email or Excel.

3 – Argentina's Crypto Ecosystem – When Crypto Truly Solves Problems

Similar to Brazil, Argentinians have a natural curiosity about cryptocurrency, but there is an additional factor driving market adoption: Argentina has been in a complicated financial situation for the past few decades, with high inflation of the peso and increasing default risks.

This, along with the restrictions on obtaining US dollars, has led to a surge in cryptocurrency adoption in recent years, becoming a convenient, fast, and easy way to acquire stablecoins and, in turn, obtain US dollars without the limitations imposed by local authorities.

There has been a movement encouraging businesses to accept crypto assets as payment, as well as decentralized identity systems, and even dedicated workspaces and shared offices for the Web3 community, accelerating connections and expanding the potential of the ecosystem.

In this regard, Argentina is ahead of us, but we can take this as a lesson and inspiration to continue advancing the development of the Web3 community in Brazil.

4 – DeFi Will Dominate the Financial Market

We are seeing more and more traditional finance (large banks and asset management companies) entering the crypto space. This became clear last year as multiple Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs were launched on U.S. exchanges, as well as similar products on exchanges around the world.

This year we witnessed explosive growth in DAT Company holding Bitcoin and other digital assets, led by Michael Saylor's strategy. More than 350 entities (including public companies, private companies, and governments) have held millions of units of major crypto assets and plan to continue accumulating more.

In this wave, we are also seeing more and more companies productizing DeFi, whether as end products (such as stablecoin yields) or as infrastructure (such as digital fixed income tokenization).

We believe that the use of DeFi will become increasingly common, and we will witness explosive growth in DeFi adoption (in abstract form), ultimately being used in a decentralized manner by billions of people worldwide.

5 – ZkVM is the future of Ethereum

For our tech-savvy readers, this is the final insight. At the opening ceremony, Vitalik discussed the history of Ethereum, but also touched on specific topics related to the roadmap concerning network scalability and decentralization. Let's explore:

In short, zero-knowledge proof is a technique that allows for the creation of an encrypted (computational) proof of certain information, which can be used to provide scalability or privacy for networks or applications.

This can be used as a private digital identity, or it can be used to package transactions in a compact way without revealing the addresses involved.

Now, Vitalik and others suggest that the virtual machine itself (i.e., the “computer” within Ethereum) should natively support this technology. It has the potential to allow the entire network nodes to run on mobile phones at a relatively fast speed, almost representing the decentralized “holy grail.”

How many of these theories will actually translate into practice? It's hard to say, but technology is growing at an accelerated pace. Three years ago we didn't have zero-knowledge proof rollups, and today there are already dozens.

The zkVM may arrive earlier than planned or it may be delayed, but there is no doubt that if it meets all expectations, it will be revolutionary in terms of scalability and privacy, representing an unprecedented leap in the history of public blockchains.