Exploring “Existential Value”: Ethereum Devconnect Conference Reveals Ecosystem Coming-of-Age Ceremony

Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher

The Ethereum Devconnect developer conference was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Monday. Vitalik Buterin's keynote address elevated the discussion from a technical practice framework to exploring the value of Ethereum across the entire crypto industry. Ethereum Foundation co-executive directors Tomasz Stanczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang focused on Ethereum's role during the transition period, emphasizing reliable operation, community collaboration, and continuous innovation. Former core researcher and current Etherealize co-founder Danny Ryan highlighted Ethereum's crucial role in both decentralization and institutional applications from an institutional perspective.

Moving towards the Fusaka phase, the Foundation states it will achieve uninterrupted upgrades.

In his speech, Tomasz Stanczak reviewed Ethereum's development trajectory over the past decade, noting that this period successfully established a solid foundation for consensus mechanisms, diverse clients, and privacy-related tools. However, he also warned that future challenges will lie in strengthening user privacy, maintaining decentralization, and enhancing personalized self-control, requiring the broad participation of more contributors. Stanczak specifically described the diverse participants in the Ethereum ecosystem, believing that these decentralized contributions are crucial to ensuring network security and smooth operation.

"Ethereum has been able to operate without interruption during each upgrade thanks to the efforts of these long-term contributors."

Hsiao-Wei Wang explained the foundation's management philosophy by saying "Ethereum is a ladder," using the metaphor of "compound interest on steps" to describe the evolution of the ecosystem. This means that from the beginning of research to the client, to the application, and finally to the community, each step becomes a new step for the next generation of builders.

She stated, "This year marks a new chapter for Ethereum. Since the Ethereum Foundation completed its leadership transition, Tomasz and I have made it our primary responsibility to ensure a stable and smooth transition, as Ethereum is entering a new phase."

Regarding the Fusaka upgrade of the Ethereum mainnet next month, she explained at the meeting that Ethereum needs to focus on three core capabilities to move towards "Fusaka". The first is to maintain 100% continuous block production reliability in each major upgrade; the second is to have enough flexibility to leave room for the diversified technical paths of the ecosystem; and the third is the foundation's concern for Ethereum, but not control of Ethereum's stewardship.

Wang emphasized that Ethereum's decade of accumulation stems from countless trials and tribulations and perseverance. The network maintains 100% availability during all major updates, which is a testament to this reliability, allowing users to invest in building without fear.

In addition, Danny Ryan, a former core researcher at the foundation, shared his experience transitioning from protocol development to institutional applications. Ryan criticized the inefficiencies of traditional finance, citing severe market fragmentation, T+1 settlement for stocks, and T+2 settlement for bonds, far inferior to Ethereum's instant settlement. He also criticized the outdated architecture of traditional institutional systems as being as cluttered as layers of laws and paper.

However, Ryan also expressed surprise at the strong demand for decentralization from institutions. From an institutional perspective, things like decentralization at the infrastructure layer, 100% online availability, security to support trillions of dollars in assets, and a mature application layer and privacy are all essential requirements. Ryan also emphasized that once the cognitive gap is filled, institutions will realize the necessity of Ethereum.

Ethereum is repositioning itself, and Vitalik Buterin discusses his value in the crypto industry.

Vitalik Buterin has consistently used the "Ethereum in 30 Minutes" framework in his developer conference speeches, outlining Ethereum's current state and future in just 30 minutes. Comparing the content from Devcon SEA in 2024 to Devconnect ARG in 2025, Ethereum is repositioning itself, from its technical roadmap to its value on the blockchain.

Last year, Vitalik mainly focused on the technical details of the "world computer," specifically how L1 acts as a trust anchor and how L2 complements the GPU. "The reason Ethereum's world computer can unite is that each GPU is connected to the most trusted machine through various technologies such as optimistic proof systems, zero-knowledge proofs, SNARKs, STARKs, Jolt, Plonk, etc."

These systems effectively ensure that L1 can verify what is happening inside L2 without trust, and that L2 can read what is happening on L1 without trust. There is a significant interaction between these two components, Vitalik stated, "Together, they constitute Ethereum as it is today."

Last year, he emphasized decentralized technical practices, such as fault-tolerant design of multi-client architecture and diversity of staking pools, and reviewed the initial results from the 2013 white paper to the Merge transition and the Surge phase, especially the significant reduction in fees and the improvement in transaction confirmation time (from minutes to milliseconds), highlighting Ethereum's breakthroughs in scalability.

In contrast, the 2025 speech leaned more towards principled reflection, beginning with FTX as a negative example. Vitalik criticized FTX for its insolvency as a centralized exchange, emphasizing its fundamental difference from Ethereum—the shift from centralized trust to a mechanism that anyone can verify. He extensively incorporated cryptographic tools such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and introduced the concept of "cosmolocal," stressing that Ethereum is a global network, not designed to appease any particular company or superpower, but to protect the freedom of people worldwide.

Furthermore, this year's overall technology is more future-oriented, focusing on ZK-EVM's full node regression and quantum-resistant upgrade. Last year, Vitalik mentioned "wanting to perform SNARK proofs on the entire chain," and this year he clearly announced that ZK-EVM has entered the Alpha stage. Vitalik stated at the conference that "data from ethproofs.org shows that there are now provers who can use dozens of consumer-grade GPUs to prove Ethereum blocks in real time."

It can be observed that Vitalik focused on discussing technology in previous years, but this year he has shifted to discussing the "value of existence" of Ethereum, reflecting that Ethereum is moving from the infrastructure construction phase to positioning its influence on the chain.

Perhaps Ethereum is coming of age, just as Vitalik said in Devconnect ARG: "Ethereum can be a flag that leads to a freer, more open and collaborative world supported by permissionless open technology and decentralized security."