Epic Web3 – events in AI and Web3 industries

How to onboard real users by messenger? 🤔

Here's an answer from Benji Kim, Director of Web3 Business Group @ Dapp Portal & Kaia Chain!

L2con is less than a month away!

It’s the largest EthCC-side event on scaling & adoption.

Here’s why you should register:

🗣 40 speakers from top web3 companies & rising stars like Tenderly, Giza & more
🤝 ​1000+ web3 builders & non-technical enthusiasts
🎫 ​2 stages: one about the Chains and one about dApps
🍽 ​Food & drinks throughout the day

​​​​Meet us at Cannes, mon chéri 🥂
https://t.ly/G0YNa

Why DeFi = EVM? 🤔

Insight from Marco Monaco, co-founder @TACbuild. From dApps and Mini-Apps Day in Dubai 🌴

Two narratives. One venue. Agents + DeFAI in Cannes 🇫🇷

Speakers from: NEAR, elizaOS, Giza, Cytonic, Recall, AITV, Warden Protocol, Venice AI, Mode & more.

No corporate fluff, no recycled keynotes: just sharp talks, live demos, and heated hallway debates on where intelligence, autonomy, and decentralized finance will go next.

What to expect?
– ​Autonomous systems;
– Multiagentic future;
– Governance, data & security;
– dePIN & agentic infra;
– Agentic and AI-enhanced dApps;

👾 500+ founders, hackers, investors, protocol whisperers, agent wranglers, and LLM tweakers.

📍 June 29, Cannes 🇫🇷
https://t.ly/gyhsD

🚨 Big ideas from ETHDenver’s Agents Day:

The panel “Who Owns Intelligence?” hit hard.
As AI agents become economic actors, we have to ask:
Who actually controls their intelligence?

Key takeaways:

🧠 Code alone isn’t enough, real ownership means open models, execution, and autonomy.
⚙️ Decentralized agents need the ability to earn, spend, and coordinate without bridges to centralized platforms.
💰 Tokenization should reflect real performance, not speculation.
🌍 Intelligence should be a public good, not another closed ecosystem.

We're still early. Let’s build it right.

DeFAI Breakfast 🥐

Why roll out of bed for this?
– 15 + speakers from leading DeFi & AI projects
– 500 + builders, investors, product leads & partners under one roof
– Two tracks: DeFAI (AI‑driven DeFi, VC takes, market efficiency & liquidity) + Agents Day (autonomous systems, data, dApps)
– French breakfast, great coffee, zero fluff — just high‑voltage networking ​​

📅 June 29
Spots are limited — be ahead of the curve!

According to recent Routescan research, there are 4,080 blockchains right now. Of them, 1,973 are unique.

Why the hell are there so many of them?

We found three types of reasons:

🔧 The tech is ready
New chains aren’t just vanity projects, they’re technologically superior. Monad offers parallel execution at 10,000+ TPS with full EVM compatibility. Berachain introduces a novel “proof-of-liquidity” model. These aren’t small tweaks, but foundational shifts.

Modular frameworks like Celestia and the OP Stack are removing the technical barriers to entry. Today, launching a custom L2 is more like assembling Lego than rewriting core consensus from scratch.

💰 Economic incentives are clear
Crypto startups raised $13.7B in 2024, and a disproportionate chunk went to chain infrastructure. Why? Because owning a chain means owning value flow - fees, MEV, governance, and upside.

It’s no coincidence that projects with significant volume (like Uniswap) are moving to capture the fees they currently surrender to host chains. Base received 118M OP tokens for adopting the OP Stack. Other exchanges and apps are lining up for similar deals.

🖖 Control, brand, and sovereignty
Custom chains allow projects to shape their execution environment, governance, and regulatory posture. Game studios can optimize for asset standards. DAOs can embed their values directly into chain rules. Sovereignty matters.

In a multi-chain future, each chain can express its own vision, priorities, and community values. That’s deeply aligned with the ethos of decentralization.

Talks end, the merch walks.

DeHugs forges your logo into premium merch ETH builders keep wearing long after EthCC.

EU production – zero import-VAT – white-glove drop at your Cannes booth.

Worn by Valory, Nil, Ledger & 40+ Web3 teams.

⚡️ Lock your EthCC batch by 10 Jun. DM @tdeshkevich (or email tanya@dehugs.com).

🚨 Why EigenLayer’s slashing matters

Until now, restaking your ETH was mostly about chasing extra yield and there wasn’t much real-world risk for anyone who cheated. But that changed with the introduction of slashing:

👮 Accountability restored – Operators who violate an AVS’s rules now face immediate economic penalties, converting previously passive TVL into an active security guarantee.

📊 Risk-adjusted economics – Restakers earn yield commensurate with real slashing risk, while operators can price their services according to each AVS’s security demands.

🎯 Targeted exposure – The Unique Stake model ensures that a penalty on one AVS does not cascade through a provider’s entire stake, containing systemic risk.

💪 Stronger value proposition for AVSs – New services can rely on enforceable, collateral-backed security rather than reputation alone, raising the overall cost of corruption.

⚡️ Join Builder Hackathon at the Oz city! Work on Agents and more!
📍 June 27–28, French Riviera, right before EthCC

One day, two tracks, full focus:
Join AI × Web3 builders for a 24h hackathon inside Oz City — a pop-up village where agents, infra & decentralized intelligence come to life.

🛠 Founders track — ship new features, test GTM
🧪 Builders track — launch something from scratch

🤖 Powered by NEAR:
Explore intents, Shade Agents & chain abstraction with workshops, mentorship & live Q&A from the NEAR core team.

💬 Real feedback from mentors & VCs
🏆 Prizes announced June 15
🎟 Open to Oz residents + local builders (limited spots)

🔗 Apply now — spots are limited:
https://t.ly/ipJjO

Telegram Mini Apps are booming, but here’s the catch

Yes, TMAs are hot right now…

But did you know Telegram’s projected ad market is just $10B out of a global $1 TRILLION?

That’s only 1% of the pie 🍰

If you're building only for Telegram, you’re leaving serious money on the table.

The ecosystem is growing, but it’s still limited in scale, user retention, and monetization:
🔍 Users bounce between apps.
⚔️ Competition is rising.
💸 Revenue caps are real.

(insights from Konstantinos Kafkalias, Customer Success Team Lead @monetag)

🚨 The REAL State of Web3 Layers
By Giacomo Barbiery, Head of Growth @ Routescan, from dApps & Mini-Apps Day:

📊 L1s aren’t dead: Cosmos still powers 22% of them. But L2s are exploding, and L3s (especially gaming) are rising fast.

🌀 Rollups 101:

L2: Optimistic rollups still dominate (simple + cheap)
L3: Optimum-style wins (~70%) — gaming doesn’t need full finality

ZK is still the “endgame”... just pricey (for now)

🛠 RAAS wars:

Top provider? 👉 Conduit (36%)

Caldera is quietly building deep in testnet

💻 VM Trends:

EVM = king (86%) but non-EVM (CosmWasm, SVM) is gaining ground

🔎 Block explorers:

BlockScout leads, but 12% of chains go proprietary — a UX disaster waiting to happen

🚨 New alpha drop from Andrew Hill (Recall Protocol) & Irena Timofeeva (Chainflip)

Here are 3 big insights:

🤖 Intelligence is being commoditized fast.

🧩 Agentic scaffolding is everywhere: startups are wrapping AIs to solve niche problems.

🔍 Trust is the next frontier: Recall builds public, permissionless evaluation for AI agents.

Why most token launches will fail

The current model for launching crypto tokens is fundamentally broken — and hurting the entire Web3 ecosystem. 👇
Why?

Here are a few reasons from Mário Alves (CEO of Taikai & The Garden)

1️⃣ Hype Over Substance
Token launches today are optimized for attention, not sustainability. Projects chase short-term price spikes instead of long-term value.

2️⃣ The Data Is Brutal
- 72% of tokens launched since 2021 have lost 90%+ of their value.
- Only 8% of tokenized projects remain active a year post-launch.

3️⃣ Extractive by Design
The typical launch cycle:

Founder → VC entry at inflated valuations → Launchpad pumps hype → Early whales dump on retail → Token crashes.

Everyone wins — except the community.

4️⃣ Launchpads Are Expensive Middlemen
They take 5%–20% in fees + token allocations. Add in airdrops and OTC deals, and you've got a liquidity mess before TGE even happens.

5️⃣ Retail Is Left Holding the Bag
Presale investors dump 40–60% of the supply within 2 weeks of launch. Retail buys in last — and watches the chart collapse.

🛑 The result?
A short-lived pump, a long-term dump, and zero incentive for builders to stick around.

“If you don’t learn to drive the train, it’s going to be bad. But if you do—the opportunities are massive.”

Is AI reducing work, or just creating more of it? 🚂

New insight from Andrew Hill on the future of agents, compute, and Jevon’s paradox.

Full convo on the Epic Web3 Podcast!

How do we trust AI agents?
Why is intelligence being commoditized?
Can blockchain help align autonomous systems?

New pod with Andrew Hill, Founder @ Recall — building an open evaluation layer for AI agents.

Our amazing host is Irena Timofeeva, Head of Ecosystem @ Chainflip!

Watch the full episode below 👇

❤️ Youtube
❤️ Spotify
❤️ Apple Podcasts

🌐 Scaling your dApp in 2025? Start here 👇

🧠 Takeaways from the “Beyond the Bubble: Scaling dApps in 2025” panel with leaders from 1inch, Axelar, AEON, Zerolend, Nomisma & Chainflip:

1️⃣ UX > Decentralization
Users care more about smooth, fast, intuitive interfaces than whether your app is “fully on-chain.” Make it seamless. Make it feel like magic.

2️⃣ Infra Alone Won’t Pay the Bills
Cross-chain fees are falling fast. As Axelar’s Georgios said, infra value is being commoditized. The real opportunity? User interfaces and owning the user journey.

3️⃣ Community = Direction
Your users aren’t just there to click—they're your co-builders. Dima from Nomisma shared how real-time feedback and open communication drives better product decisions.

⚙️ Bottom line: To scale in 2025, build apps people can actually use—and want to come back to.

🧞‍♂️Epic Web3 x Cannes → EthCC Week 🚀🇫🇷

We’re bringing TWO major events + a week-long coliving bootcamp to the French Riviera!

From testing AI x Web3 ideas in the wild to scaling the next-gen dApp stack — here's what’s coming 👇

🏕 Oz city: AI x Web3 Pop-Up City
A hands-on week with 80 top builders, founders & researchers.
Infra, agents, VCs, and nature — all under one roof.

🤖 Agents Day: Autonomous Agents x DeFAI
Back for round 3 — Cannes edition!
Autonomous systems, dePIN, multi-agent infra & AI-enhanced dApps.

🌀 L2con @ EthCC[8]
The largest EthCC-side event on scaling & adoption.
50+ speakers, 1200+ builders, 2 stages: Chains & dApps.

We read over 100 tweets to find the top 3 trending topics from TOKEN2049 in Dubai.

Here they are:

👾 AI is the main topic. It seems like almost every event had some AI themes in one way or another in different narratives. AI is definitely alive and well.

Some say "AI agents were a dominant narrative".

While others are even more optimistic: "Teams are deploying useful AI applications and agents that will account for the majority of onchain volume in the next 18 months."

🀄️ The market is maturing. People are more interested in long-term projects that bring something to the industry, not just the hype around tokens and TGEs.

"The game of the token being just the product is clearly dead" - Logan Jastremski

🏪 CEXs are everywhere - they sponsored most of the booths in the main conference and generally ran the show.

Why won't AI save DeFi?
What should Web3 founders learn from Web2?
How to make UX accessible to all?

New podcast with Ilya Letunov, Founder @rivoxyz, unified DeFi front-end that allows to earn yield on BTC, ETH and USD through the top strategies across the whole DeFi.

Our amazing host is Irena Timofeeva, Head of Ecosystem @ Chainflip!

Watch the full episode below 👇

❤️ Youtube
❤️ Spotify
❤️ Apple