ETHDenver 2026: Vitalik Outlines Ethereum's Path Forward
ETHDenver 2026, Day 2: Ethereum Foundation Day
ETHDenver 2026 continued its momentum on Day 2, building on the “New #BUIDL City” theme with a clear shift toward deeper, more focused builder conversations. The day featured dedicated summits on infrastructure, protocol engineering, scalability, and emerging intersections like AI coordination and institutional finance.
A major highlight was a dedicated Ethereum Foundation Day on the main stage, which delivered a series of high-signal, technically grounded talks that clarified where the protocol is headed.
One of the most compelling sessions came from Zsolt Felföldi, Geth core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, in his talk “Less State, More Logs: Scaling Ethereum With Stateless Parallel Transactions.” He outlined a vision for reducing state bloat by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and a trustless log index, enabling stateless parallel execution. The proposal reflects a broader architectural shift: rethinking how Ethereum manages state and execution to unlock more efficient scaling while preserving decentralization and verifiability.
Beyond core scaling mechanics, speakers such as Davide Crapis, AI Lead at the Ethereum Foundation explored Ethereum’s growing role as foundational infrastructure for AI-driven applications. In his talk, he highlights how Ethereum's verifiable, decentralized architecture uniquely supports trust-minimized AI execution and agent coordination—making it the ideal base layer for an agentic economy where outputs and actions can be cryptographically proven without relying on centralized intermediaries.
Similarly, Austin Griffith of buidlguidl and the Ethereum Foundation emphasized practical builder enablement in his session on "Builder Growth, AI Agents, and One-Shotting Onchain Apps", showcasing tools and frameworks that allow developers to deploy full onchain applications in a single transaction ("one-shotting"), accelerating iteration and lowering barriers for AI-native projects while tying into broader growth of the Ethereum builder community.
Institutional adoption featured prominently as well, with Ethereum increasingly described as both a settlement layer for L2 ecosystems and a credible base layer for global finance. Collectively, these conversations reinforced the Foundation’s 2026 Protocol Priorities: scale aggressively and improve UX to enable seamless, secure interactions.
ETHDenver 2026 is proving that even in tougher conditions, the Ethereum ecosystem is maturing by prioritizing security, verifiability, privacy, and real-world coordination over flash.
Stay tuned for Day 3 coverage as the conversations deepen. ETHDenver 2026, Day 1: Vitalik Outlines Ethereum's Path Forward ETHDenver 2026 opened today at Denver's National Western Center under the banner of the "New #BUIDL City." As the largest Web3 BUIDLathon and innovation gathering, it runs through February 21 and is expected to draw more than 25,000 participants. The event remains fully community-led and open-source, centered on Ethereum ecosystem development through workshops, summits, art installations, Camp BUIDL, and numerous side events.
The Opening Ceremony featured Colorado Governor Jared Polis, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, and key Ethereum figures. The event's clearest directional signal was provided early on by Vitalik Buterin in his main stage presentation, "The Next Epoch of Ethereum," in which he examined the impact of AI on ETH and society at large.
Vitalik opened with a step back, outlining idealistic visions from 20 years ago, such as perfect markets, direct democracy, disintermediation and trust minimization. He explained that they all failed due to one common theme -- the limits of human attention -- before suggesting: If AI can solve the problem of limited human attention, then many of these old ideas could come back.
Vitalik caveated that LLMs, even local ones, are not trustless, and encouraged the need for a security-first mindset in building proofs. In his own words: "It's very irresponsible to treat AI as inscrutable magic." This was balanced by a more hawkish POV: that AI will wash away many of the half-solutions that are relics of the old era of development, in favor of new ones.
Even with AI superpowers, Vitalik encouraged the developer community to build with a deep commitment to the original mission: Think of the underlying goals that motivated the creation of Ethereum in the first place, and ask the question: What would you do?
Tomasz Stańczak discusses Decentralized AI and Ethereum
In his fireside chat, Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak painted an ambitious vision for Ethereum as the premier trust and coordination layer in an agentic, AI-driven future.
He described well-tested systems that never break and deliver on the promise of credible neutrality. Then, he defined the north star: real value for agentic commerce, while ensuring the safety and security aspects of AI.
Coinciding with the event, the Ethereum Foundation released its Protocol Priorities Update for 2026. The announcement outlined new focused tracks, including Scale targeting consensus, execution, and blob scaling; and Improve UX for seamless, secure interactions.
ETHDenver continues to serve as an important gauge of Ethereum's trajectory. The week ahead will bring further discussion on scaling, decentralization, and emerging use cases.
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