ETHDenver Conference Observations: The Market Doesn't Look as Bad as It Seems

Original Article Title: ETH Denver Conference Takeaways

Original Article Author: Mason Nystrom, Pantera Investor

Original Article Translation: Felix, PANews

ETHDenver 2025 took place from February 27 to March 2 at the National Western Complex in Denver, Colorado, USA. Pantera investor Mason Nystrom, after a week of conversations with builders and investors, shared some reflections on the key points and takeaways of the conference in a post on the X platform. Below are the details.

The Market Doesn't Look as Bad as It Seems

The sentiment on Crypto Twitter (CT) is relatively pessimistic, but not very representative. Memecoin speculators are feeling discouraged, and the overall investor consensus is bearish in the short term. This is not financial advice, and investors can also be wrong.

However, everyone should be able to recognize the current situation: the regulatory environment is trending positively, legal stablecoin growth is occurring, more RWAs and TradFi are moving onto the chain. Looking ahead, people are still very excited and optimistic about the market outlook.

However, the next catalyst is still unknown. Keep moving forward.

What Are People Building? What Are Investors Seeing?

AI—Many builders are still excited about the impact of AI, various Agentic and DeFAI. There is a lot of market "noise," making it difficult to find high-quality projects.

DePIN / Robotics—Related to AI but different enough. Many companies are building hardware or data collection networks for robotics, and DePIN seems to capture this narrative. Energy DePIN has also been in the spotlight, with opportunities for new DePIN flagship projects.

DeFi—Still building a large number of DeFi applications. More types of lending protocols, new stablecoins, Uni Hooks, more DeFi interfaces. There is also some overlap between PayFi and DeFAI in certain aspects.

zkTLS (Note: a new technology combining zero-knowledge proof and Transport Layer Security protocol)—It provides a real use case, but the key is deployment and commercialization, not just the technical implementation.

Stablecoin - Although discussed less on CT, every investor is paying attention to and investing in this track, most of which are equity trades, so the attention is low. Many enterprises will build on the stablecoin market opportunity.

Three Dragons: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana

Bitcoin: Many Bitcoin L2s are about to go live, all vying for Bitcoin deposits. Bitcoin's yield will continue to rise. Bitcoin's lending will improve. Bitcoin is no longer a "pet rock."

Ethereum: Putting aside price emotions, many builders continue to focus on building on Ethereum. People remain optimistic about a high-throughput ETH chain. Base is still key. FlashBlocks™ are about to launch, heavily promoted at conferences. Unichain is overlooked by many. More chains are coming.

Solana: Despite being ETHDenver, there are still many Solana activities, founders, and small gatherings. Even after the memecoin market correction, many are still excited about Solana. The DePIN narrative continues to evolve on Solana. More SVMs are launching, indicating the need for interoperability "ducks" between SVM chains.

About Venture Capital

For many investors, project investments in the seed and pre-seed stages feel slow in returns. The expected valuations of projects in the public market are high, causing some funds to choose to wait and not invest. Most investments are concentrated in liquidity and Series A financing. In addition, the Series B financing market seems better than it was six months ago. Please note that this analysis is only based on market sentiment and hearsay, with no data support.

Issuance of some tokens has performed poorly in the recent market correction, with valuations undergoing a mindset correction. Like a clock, those who once favored trends and narratives are now pushing projects to increase revenue and cut costs. Establishing faith is more important than ever.

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