DappCon 2025 wasn't just another tech conference. It felt… different. Electric, even. No more boring whitepapers or months of discussions over TPS. This year, something shifted. Web3 isn’t all about the tech these days, fam. It's a whole vibe.

Is Web3 The Great Meme Awakening?

Let's be real. Beyond buzzwords and tech jargon For too long, Web3 has been stuck in a cycle of intimidating lingo and intricate technicalities. Yet only a handful have really cracked the code. DappCon 2025 felt like a jailbreak. The air crackled with a palpable and intoxicating new energy. We are building more than protocols—we’re building a rich culture.

Think about it. Use the internet the way it was meant to be used — for more than just cat videos and targeted ads. I’ll be the first to concede, cat videos are awesome! It was envisioned as a liberating hub for community connection, creativity, and agency. Somewhere along the way, it became hijacked. Big Tech became our landlords, and we became their tenants.

Web3, at least in principle, is a revolt against that. It's a chance to reclaim the internet, to build a digital world that's truly decentralized, permissionless, and ours. The key to unlocking that potential is so much more than better code. It's a better culture.

That's where the memes come in. Memes aren't just silly jokes. They're the building blocks of online culture. They’re how we’ve like to travel, how we enrich each other’s lives, and how we communicate our values. Web3 is ripe for meme-ification.

Absolutely. This is the Way Take decentralized governance and community-led decision-making, which are both key tenets of the open world concept. You bet. Wen blockchain? That’s because the initial (and sometimes funny) hype waves that come with any new technology always follow the same pattern. Of course.

DappCon 2025 got this. The tech was only half the story. The memes, the art, and the shared jokes and language really do cement this community together. It was about recognizing that Web3 isn't just about building a better internet. It's about building a better world.

Can Community Currencies Rewrite Reality?

Paul Boes and Martin Köppelmann’s deep dive into Circles 2.0 was absolutely eye-opening. Forget your grandma’s loyalty points—Circles is focused on changing how our economies work, starting at the grassroots level. Trust graphs, local issuance, reciprocity... it sounds complex (and it is), but the underlying idea is simple: build economies based on trust and community, not just cold, hard capital.

This isn't just about creating alternative currencies. It's about creating alternative values. Imagine if we refocused our economies more on sustainability, social impact, human connection, and less on growth and profit at all costs. Circles and other community currency projects are beginning to explore that question.

It's not just theoretical. These new smart systems are out there being beta tested on the streets and wires right now. They’re being used to support locally-owned businesses, fund community wealth building projects that redress historic harms and empower marginalized communities. They’re very much a radical experiment in economic democracy, and they hold the potential to go much deeper than that and rewrite the rules of the game.

It’s a compelling vision, and it’s an idea that’s filling the sails of an ever increasing army of believers. People are tired of the old system. They’re done with the injustice, the profiteering and the climate devastation. To do it they are looking for alternatives and Web3 can provide an answer.

AI Agents: Friend or Foe, Seriously?

The promise of autonomous agents and AI in Web3 is deeply exciting and equally terrifying. Marcos Montero from Google recently announced the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol. With this historic declaration, we can look forward to a new dawn of distributed automation. In the contrary vein, Gabriel Fior’s autonomous bots trading on prediction markets are an ongoing reality. For example, by using risk assessment models to co-sign wallets, they are illustrating novel creative use cases. Yikes, isn’t that Skynet in the making?

The potential is undeniable. AI agents can automate knowledge work, optimize resource allocation, and even assist us in governing decentralized digital-native organizations more efficiently. The risks are equally real. The moral hazard occurs when these agents get too powerful. If so, how do we make sure they’re aligned with our values? How do we make sure they’re not weaponized?

We’s not a query to all which important questions. DappCon 2025 was a critical space for addressing them accordingly. It’s clearly not sufficient to only invent the technology, we must develop the ethics alongside it. Together, we must make sure that AI in Web3 is amplifying our potential as a species instead of chaining us.

I’m not advocating that we need to all freak out and run for the mountains. You can never go wrong with being at least a bit emergency prepared! We do have to understand the risks that could arise and we have to be vigilant in trying to prevent those risks.

Explore NFTs. Participate in DAOs. Learn about community currencies. And most importantly, spread the word. Web3 is more than a technology platform—it’s a grassroots movement. It's a chance to build a better future, and it's up to us to make it happen.

Let’s create this future together, in just twelve memes. As per the motto of crypto entrepreneurs everywhere “We’re all gonna make it, brah!

Explore NFTs. Participate in DAOs. Learn about community currencies. And most importantly, spread the word. Web3 isn't just a technology; it's a movement. It's a chance to build a better future, and it's up to us to make it happen.

Let's build this future together, one meme at a time. After all "We're all gonna make it, brah!"