After DappCon 2025, as is usual for events of this type, the dust has settled. No more moonshot promises, no more lambo dreams. This year felt different. It felt…real. For too long, Web3 has been drowning in its own hype. A cacophony of jargon-laden hype has obscured the substantial obstacles standing in the way of its widespread adoption. The conversations in Berlin signaled a significant shift: a pragmatic pivot towards solving the actual problems. Were you there? I hope you were.

Scalability's Struggle. Is It Over?

Let's be honest: blockchain transaction speeds have been a joke. Now imagine trying to run a global financial system on that same dial-up modem. The conversations about Ethereum scaling at DappCon were an important kite. Lead author Toni Wahrstätter explained both EIP-7886 and EIP-7928. His insights provided us with an exciting picture of a future where Ethereum can really take the load. Even with these improvements, the question remains: are these solutions enough?

The concern about scalability isn’t only about how fast it is to validate things. Additionally, high and unpredictable gas fees price out everyday users and limit innovation. Unless we’re able to jump an enormous chasm of drastically reduced transaction costs, Web3 will stay a playground for the high-flying wealthy. This is not merely a technical challenge, but an economic and social one.

Making the case for stateless, trustless Ethereum clients is an awesome read, but with it come new complications. Or are we just shifting the burden of disasters from one country to another? The beauty of the blockchain was its stateful nature, what's the point of a decentralized database if it doesn't remember anything?

AI Agents. Blessing or Curse?

The emergence of autonomous agents, AI in general, was the big theme and honestly, the most terrifying. Google’s Marcos Montero recently introduced the Agent Development Kit (ADK) and the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) Protocol. While this is truly an exciting announcement, one can’t help but raise some important issues concerning control and responsibility.

Who should be held responsible when an autonomous AI agent makes an objectively bad decision? What occurs when those same agents begin to compete with each other in unforeseen, new and surprising ways themselves? We are not ready for this.

Gabriel Fior’s demonstration of autonomous bots speculating on prediction markets, it’s fascinating, but disturbing. Now, picture these same agents being advanced enough to distort financial markets and take advantage of strategic vulnerabilities. It's a recipe for disaster. The potential for misuse is enormous. We simply must take an incredible amount of care in how we create and release these technologies to the public. This isn’t simply a grab bag of building innovative tools—this is about building a future that we really want to live in.

This, to me, is the unexpected connection. AI agents — which are all the rage these days, just as algorithmic trading was in traditional finance — are … This increase comes with obvious dangers, including flash crashes and opportunities for market manipulation. Are we really doomed to make the same errors of TradFi in Web3?

Governance. Who Gets to Decide?

These conversations about governance, representation, culture, and the social layer of Web3 were maybe the most crucial in all. Until the technology is applied for real world uses and its value is realized, it remains only potential. Ethereum core devs Ann Brody and Paul Dylan-Ennis recently discussed the role of Ethereum’s organizational culture. Their research highlights the importance of building strong communities and ethical frameworks to direct the course of Web3 towards a better future for all.

Kelvin Santos and Robin Hanson’s concept of leveraging prediction markets for governance (Futarchy) is a riveting, out-of-the-box concept. The wisdom of the crowd, used to untangle the web and go deeper? Sounds great in theory. Now, what if I told you that the crowd is easily manipulated? What happens when the incentives are misaligned?

To watch Joe Lubin, Vitalik Buterin and Robin Hanson debate the merits and futures of onchain democracy is truly jaw-dropping. It's also terrifying. Are you prepared for a future in which all governance is transacted on-chain? Can we trust the process?

Gnosis’ Circles 2.0 is the latest and one of the most audacious experiments in community currencies. Paul Boes' technical deep dive and Martin Köppelmann's keynote painted a compelling picture of a more equitable and decentralized economic system. The question remains — can Circles actually scale beyond these small communities? Can it stand up, in the end, to capital’s centralizing, manipulative prerogatives?

The truth is, we don't know. We’re early Web3 adoption days still and the road ahead is bumpy. DappCon 2025 gave me hope. Now, the community is finally facing the tough questions. Unlike many so-called metaverse initiatives, they are moving beyond the hype and building something truly meaningful. What the future of Web3 looks like Sure, it’s about scalability, but more importantly, it’s about meaning. It’s not just about where power is located, but where it should be located. It's about trust, not just technology. It's about us, not just code.

And that, my friends, is why DappCon 2025 mattered.