Good morning everyone. My name is Kartik. I am one of the co-founders of ETHGlobal. I want to welcome all of you to ETHDenver. This is a conference.
And in fact, it is the largest conference in America, focused entirely on showcasing what is happening in the world of Ethereum. At ETHGlobal, we are used to being in the rooms where this technology is actually being created. From overnight hackathons to funding demos that become protocols, to interesting ideas that become standards, and watching a small group of people invent infrastructure that becomes quite important to our field. It was, in a way, an environment we were used to. And over the years, especially after a decade of working on this, we've always wondered and wondered , is this really something that people care about, is this going to be ready?
Will it be able to support what we want people to do? And increasingly, the question is how fast can we move forward? And this is exactly the change that made us enthusiastic about holding this entire conference. Increasingly, we are seeing businesses, institutions, and companies outside of our own ecosystem requesting and integrating this entire stack. And this is the motivation for holding EthCon.
It is intentionally institutional, proudly American, and focused on where we see the best of digital assets with the best finance. Right here in New York, where we think it should be. This entire audience and this entire room is an incredible group of people. There are so many of you here . Some of you have been Ethereum developers for many years.
Some of you are Ethereum co-founders who are here now. There are people carelessly managing billions of dollars on balance sheets, trying to figure out how they can integrate stablecoins and everything in between. There are founders of DeFi founders of DeFi protocols that are bigger than most banks that are just hanging out. And there is at least one person who told me they are here because their boss told them to report on what the crypto people are doing. So we are happy to welcome all of you here, no matter where you come from or what industry you work in every day.
This is a place where we want to offer all of you a real understanding of what's going on in our little ecosystem little ecosystem . I'm sure many of you have attended many conferences. You know how it all works. So I'm not going to bore you with the details of how to wear a badge or wristband, and we're not going to give you a new one or make you download our app, which now in 2026, you don't have to download anything. He works on a website.
Just find people, contact them directly on the website. And now I'll also tell you about everything we have planned, what our incredible team has prepared for you for the next 3 days, especially about the coworking space, where you can just relax and work. But I want you to thank our incredible sponsors. They made this event possible. You will see many of them on the street talking to you, and for their support, please give support, please give them a round of applause.
One of the reasons we organized this event was because we saw a gap in how we perceived what was only being reported by the general ecosystem, whether through other events or in the news events or in the news . Our goal for the next three days is next three days is to focus on these three key topics. They will not be separated by days. You will see a combination of all of this every day at all stages. But a large part of this entire event will be dedicated to the institutional side of the world.
You'll hear from people who are actually integrating these things, and they'll talk about they'll talk about what they're doing and how you can actually see things. We will focus on how the Ethereum protocol is evolving, including applications and other protocols. So you'll understand what technological improvements are becoming easier, what things are becoming cheaper, faster, what pieces are missing, when we expect to see these changes, how the direction of this protocol is changing. And all of this will be connected to working on the blockchain on a large scale. This will cover everything from what is missing to millions of transactions per second and nearly free transactions everywhere so that everyone can use them.
Whether it's people sending money to each other or agents, we'll cover the full spectrum of practically where we are now. And it will be this curation that will be the main part of the next three days. Three important things I want you to take away from this whole event: what you see on stage, whether here or in another room, will be connected to real things. What does this mean? This means that the speaker will not be on stage if he has not presented what he is working on.
You'll see things that actually exist, things you can use, things you can go back to and reference, not just ideas that may or may not come to fruition. We spent a lot of time putting together an amazing group of people. So, especially if you work on the institutional side, you will meet many founders of our ecosystem, from startups to large protocols. They are just communicating. They want to talk to all of you.
And they want to make sure they can explain everything from the nuances to what interests them and how you can work together. And when you combine those two groups, you actually get a lot of decision makers in a room where you miss a lot of the details. You can speak to the right person immediately, and their support team is also here to make sure everyone gets the results and ideas they are trying to implement. Ultimately, we want this event to be a place where you can shape what happens in our space and really help us understand what's missing. Not many events have a good mix of developers and people who integrate on the financial side.
And we really want to make sure that this is a place where you can clearly see how we can simplify the integration of these groups. That's all I want to talk to you about regarding how the entire week is organized. We will have many people sharing their versions of what they see in the space, come today. All these people are right here, on the main stage. Another group of people are also on another stage with me.
But you can see all of this on our website. You can follow the schedule. You can receive notifications about various reports. And many of them will stay here afterwards to chat with you and learn more. I'm not going to list every speaker, but we'll jump right into our first talk for today.
Automatic transcript — names and jargon may be misspelled.