Epic Web3 – events in AI and Web3 industries

25,000 people attended Token2049.

There were countless discussions across different topics.

We compiled and analyzed Twitter sentiment to identify the 3 main narrative takeaways from the event.

🔥 RWAs, Perps & Prediction Markets lead the narrative

The top 3 themes dominating conversations this year are RWAs, Perpetuals and Prediction Markets.

Stablecoins also made plenty of noise — a possible sign of growing institutional adoption and bigger players entering the space.

👔 More serious people, less fluff

The vibe has changed. Token2049 isn’t just for degens anymore — it’s for builders and long-term investors. The crowd feels more professional, focused on real collaboration and sustainable growth.

🤖 AI Agents: the quiet builders

You might think the AI Agent hype is gone, but it’s just evolved.

The noise has cooled — now it’s about real products, not just buzzwords. Think of it like Layer 2s or modularity: the hype fades, but the innovation keeps building.

💡 Overall takeaway:
Token2049 feels more mature. Less hype, more substance. The next cycle might just be built by the people who stayed focused.

⚡️Oz City has joined as a residency at Edge City Patagonia! ⚡️

Join our residency and network of founders who are building at intersection of AI and Web3.

👀Oz City participants get Edge City access at a special $945 rate:
• That's 50% off compared to standard Edge City tickets
• Covers Weeks 3 & 4 (November 1-16 — your Oz City dates)
• Full access to all Edge City infrastructure and programming

We are creating a Hub for AI Founders and Builders.

👉Apply now! https://luma.com/ozcity_patagonia

dAGI Summit — October 24, San Francisco

The only event this fall where OSS founders and frontier AI researchers sit down together to discuss how open AI infrastructure will actually get built.

📍Oct 24, SF, Open Source AI Week

cyber•Fund / Delphi Ventures / OpenAI / Liquid AI / Amazon Web Services (AWS) / NVIDIA / Snowflake / Lightning AI / Ai2 / Cline / Letta / OpenMind / Prime Intellect / Pluralis Research / Nous Research & more!

⚡️ Only 30 early adopter tickets left, use code FRIENDSOFDAGI for 10% off.

🎟 Reserve Your Spot

🪙 Presenting a new partner for dApps and Mini-Apps Day - @monetag

Monetag is a platform for monetization of desktop, mobile web and Telegram Mini App audiences, remnant ad inventory and social traffic!

😉 Catch them in Seoul!

📅 September 22, Seoul

🔗 RSVP here

A sleeping BTC whale just chose ETH, and the way they did it matters.

They used futures to get in fast, then closed them and kept buying spot. That reads like a position they want to hold.

At the same time, big buys showed up off-exchange through BitGo and Galaxy. Quiet fills, less slippage.

🧮 Result: BTC had a shaky weekend. ETH dipped, then bounced faster and even poked to new highs before cooling. That’s what real spot demand looks like; pullbacks don’t stick.

Ethereum is a net win for all.

From Robinhood’s choice of Arbitrum L2 to the growing momentum behind Ethereum, it’s clear – collaboration is key.

From Declan Fox, Director of Product Management @ Linea

Ever wonder why so many tokens are losing their value after a day on the market?

Here’s an explanation from Mário Alves, Co-founder & CEO @ Garden

📜 Timeline: The fall of Story Protocol

💰Aug 2024 (before launch) – PIP Labs, the core dev, raises $80M Series B (a16z-led). Total funding later cited at $130M+.

🟢 Feb 13, 2025 – Story Protocol launches
A blockchain for registering IP and setting usage rules. IP token goes live.

🚨Aug 16–17, 2025 – Cofounder Jason Zhao steps back
• Leaves full-time role after 3.5 yrs → focuses on new AI venture Poseidon.
• Stays on as advisor; cofounder SY Lee becomes CEO.
• Price reaction: token ~$5.80, basically flat.

💭 The criticisms
1. On-chain activity? Just $26.6K lifetime fees; $23 in fees on Aug 17.
2. Tokenomics: ~50%+ in team/foundation hands, only ~30% circulating, big unlocks ahead.
3. Deal optics: Heritage Distilling announces $220M placement, incl. $82M buy at $3.40/token from Story Foundation → to be repurchased on open market in 90 days. Seen by some as liquidity stunt.

📊 Bottom line:
Big investments ≠ great product.

EPIC WEB3 IS COMING TO KBW AND TOKEN2049 THIS SEPTEMBER.

WE HAVE 3 EVENTS.

DON’T MISS THEM 👇

🚀 dApps & Mini-Apps Day - a full day of keynotes, panels, workshops, and networking on dapps and mini-apps.

Messenger-agnostic - covering Line, Kakao, Farcaster, and more!

📅 Seoul, September 22

🌎 Real-World Adoption Day - explore how Web3 is revolutionizing finance for institutions and enterprises.

Panels, showcases, and top networking with 350+ leaders and 20+ speakers.

📅 Singapore, September 30

🧠 Agents Day - the Agentic Web is not a far-off vision, it’s happening right now.

Agents Day is where AI meets crypto to enable autonomous systems without gatekeepers.

📅 Singapore, October 1

The future of Ethereum is in Based Rollups

Don't believe us?

Then listen to Alon Muroch, CEO @ SSV Labs

Web3’s biggest bottleneck isn’t a lack of developers — it’s the absence of meaningful product-market fit and real user value.

The metrics show steady developer counts since 2022, but the ecosystem remains dominated by a handful of truly impactful dApps.

The problem?

Builders often replicate the same dozens of protocols across chains instead of creating genuinely new use cases or solving real user needs. Attracting developers ultimately depends on delivering actual utility, not just better tools or infrastructure.

Developers want clarity and opportunity: ecosystems that invest deeply and selectively in solving specific problems outperform those chasing broad grants or ephemeral hype.

Success hinges on a few key pillars:

💡 Clear value prop — e.g., Stellar’s roots in cross-border payments or concrete use cases like stablecoins
🌐 Community & users — real growth comes from engaged, sticky users, not just developer counts
🛠 Developer-first doesn’t mean just slick SDKs — it demands tangible end-user utility and integrated support (like audits and marketing)
🚫 Avoid “solutions in search of problems” — roll-ups or chains without clear purpose struggle to sustain development and users
🚀 Innovation beyond cloning AMMs or lending protocols — radical new financial instruments or truly user-friendly UX create fresh markets

The ecosystem must think beyond “developer experience” as shallow tooling and fund builders who solve actual problems. Yes, simplifying onboarding is critical, but no amount of polish makes up for a lack of real-world value.

So here’s the challenge for builders:
Are you building merely to attract developers or to empower real users? Because the next era of Web3 will be won not by the slickest SDK but by products that rewrite what utility means on-chain. How will you prove your product matters?

Ready to co-create before Devconnect?

Welcome to Oz city! 🌄

Oz City is a two-week pop-up village in Patagonia for 100 builders at the frontier of AI agents & decentralized systems.

It’s both a residency, co-working, bootcamp, hackathon, demo day with funders, and nature-fueled co-living by the lake. 🧠🏕

📅 Nov 1–16

Early-bird applications are live

Web3 has a retention crisis - less than 10% of users stay within dapps.

But why?

Insight from V from Proximity Labs (Near)

5 Reasons to Attend dAGI Summit

This October in San Francisco, dAGI Summit will bring together the brightest minds shaping the future of AI. Here’s why you shouldn’t miss it:

1️⃣ In-Depth Content

From frontier AI research to implementations at scale, our program covers the most critical challenges in AI today: reinforcement learning, interpretability, privacy, evaluations, and the next generation of AI systems.

2️⃣ World-Class Speakers

Hear directly from leaders at the forefront of AI. Our lineup includes researchers, engineers, and visionaries from companies like OpenAI, Snowflake, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, and top universities including Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. Expect deep technical sessions with real insights.

3️⃣ A Stage for Your Work

Whether you’re building breakthrough algorithms, novel applications, or unique tools, the dAGI Summit is your opportunity to share your project with an audience of peers, potential collaborators, and industry leaders. Showcase your ideas, get valuable feedback, and open new doors.

4️⃣ Expand your Network

Meet researchers, engineers, product leaders, and founders working on some of the toughest and most exciting problems in AI.

5️⃣ The Energy of San Francisco

This is where AI history is being written. Join us in the city that’s home to many of the world’s most influential AI labs and startups, and experience the conversations and connections you can’t get anywhere else.

📅 October 24 • 📍 San Francisco

🚨 Last week of early birds!
Use code FRIENDSOFDAGI and get 10% off
➡️ https://dagihouse.com/

TradFi + DeFi = friends. Key takeaways from our recent research:

📱 Intent-first UX — one “USD” balance; cards/Apple Pay now, native C2M on-chain as ops reach card-grade.
🍤 EVM rails + chain abstraction — Stripe “Tempo,” issuer-native mint/burn; agents route liquidity while chains stay invisible.
🏦📜 Banks + policy — deposit tokens join USDT/USDC; build by jurisdiction (GENIUS, MiCA) with compliance modular by design.

The next internet UX isn’t apps - it’s agents.
That creates a fork: keep funneling data into centralized AI silos, or build a user-owned agentic internet.

3 industry shifts to watch:

💭 Intents > transactions — users state goals; human/AI solvers compete to execute.
🔗 Chain abstraction — agents route across multiple chains; the backend becomes invisible.
🤖 Verifiable off-chain truth — TEEs + agent oracles bring real-world data on-chain.

This demands ultra-low-latency settlement (sub-second blocks), cheap micro-payments, and open ecosystems that fund builders, not gate them. That’s the path we should be building toward.

☀️ Decentralized AI’s value lies not just in tech, but in designing ecosystems where ownership and collaboration scale beyond token hype ☀️
(insights from the panel discussion "From Dev Tool to Ecosystem. Scaling deAI Products with Purpose")

DAI’s promise hinges on more than decentralizing compute or storage, it demands building communities that genuinely steward and scale the tech.

📶 Early-stage projects often stumble by prioritizing token launches over product-market fit, which fractures participation and fragments liquidity.

True decentralization is a spectrum, balancing early coordinated control with progressive decentralization to maintain usability and growth.

Incentives alone don’t guarantee engagement. Cultural values, recognition, and meaningful impact often fuel open-source and protocol contributions more than pure compensation 💰

Key builder takeaways:
1️⃣ Focus on product before token; let users choose the platform for utility, not just speculation.
2️⃣ Structure tokenomics to reward long-term ecosystem stewardship. Avoid large token dumps that skew governance toward speculators.
3️⃣ Embrace progressive decentralization - centralized launchpads or coordination may bootstrap adoption even in decentralized projects.
4️⃣ Recognize that agents will shift demand dynamics and tokens will become utility instruments for outcome-driven AI, not just human investors.
5️⃣ Culture and community are foundational; authentic engagement can’t be forced by tokenomics alone.

The question for builders: In a world where AI agents will optimize for outcomes rather than governance participation, how will you architect token and governance models that remain resilient, meaningful, and adoptable?

4th Edition: Agents Day → Singapore 🇸🇬

After Denver, Dubai, and Cannes — Agents Day lands in Singapore. We’re gathering the people building the future of AI × Web3, and you’re invited.

Why it’s special:
This isn’t just another conference. It’s where the Agentic Web comes alive — from on-chain AI agents running without human oversight to decentralized compute powering AI at scale.

On the agenda:
– On-chain Autonomy
– Agentic Infrastructure
– Decentralized Compute for AI
– Multi-Agent Coordination
– Web3 + AI at Scale
– Agent-Governed Yield Strategies

Expect:
20+ speakers, 350+ builders & VCs, high-signal networking, and all-day food & drinks.

🎟 Get your free ticket

FastPay is one of the most innovative projects in Web3.

It makes payments fast and secure without needing to wait for hours.

Why is it so important, and what problems does it have?

New insights from Grigore Rosu, Founder & CEO Pi Squared!

What will be the future of crypto beyond payments? 💰

From the panel discussion “Mass Adoption through Dapps: How to Bring More Users Onchain”