Devconnect 2025: Privacy, Stablecoins, and the Next Wave of Infrastructure

Buenos Aires has a definite frequency. It is a metropolis the place European grandeur collides with Latin American depth, a spot the place financial concept just isn’t an summary idea mentioned in ivory towers, however a visceral, day by day wrestle for preservation. It is, due to this fact, no accident that this metropolis was chosen to host Devconnect 2025. The backdrop of Argentina, a rustic synonymous with each financial volatility and grassroots crypto adoption, offered the good stage for an trade that’s lastly rising up.

If earlier years in the crypto cycle have been outlined by noise, spectacle, and the blinding lights of speculative mania, reminiscent of a Las Vegas on line casino ground, Buenos Aires provided a stark, sobering distinction. The air didn’t scent of “straightforward cash” and vaporware; it smelled of sturdy espresso and critical engineering. Here, the narrative shifted. We are not constructing toys for the bored and rich; we’re constructing infrastructure for a world that’s cracking at the seams.

To navigate this profound shift, we enlisted the insights of key trade architects: Arthur Firstov (Mercuryo CBO), who centered on the privateness mandate; Vivien Lin (BingX CPO), who detailed the integration of AI into buying and selling ecosystems; and Ivan Machena (8lends CCO), who offered a significant evaluation of the layer-2 adoption panorama.

Through intensive back-channel conversations with these leaders, a transparent image emerges. We are getting into a brand new epoch. This is the story of how privateness grew to become a mandate, how Artificial Intelligence is demanding a seat at the monetary desk, and how international variety lastly shattered the fable of the “archetypal person.”

The Privacy Mandate, From Feature to Foundation

The most potent message from Buenos Aires was not broadcast through fireworks or celeb endorsements. It was whispered in the dense cloth of technical workshops and crowded hacker homes. The message is easy: transparency is a characteristic, however whole publicity is a flaw.

In Bangkok, at earlier gatherings, privateness was merely a “observe”, a facet room visited by cypherpunks and idealists. In Buenos Aires, it was the principal occasion. The trade has collectively realized that with out privateness, there isn’t any mass adoption, solely mass surveillance.

Arthur Firstov, the Chief Business Officer of Mercuryo, captured this paradigm shift completely. Reflecting on the dominant analysis areas of the occasion, Firstov famous a definite change in temperature.

“Privacy was the defining theme,” Firstov asserts, earlier than persevering with:

“Compared to Bangkok, the place privateness was only one necessary observe, Buenos Aires elevated it to the principal stage.”

His commentary aligns with a sentiment that permeated each venue of the convention. A phrase started circulating round the co-working areas and lecture halls, changing into the unofficial motto of Devconnect 2025:

“If your pockets just isn’t privacy-preserving by design, it’s legacy.”

This just isn’t a technological fad, it’s a response to an more and more clear world the place monetary knowledge is weaponized. Firstov highlights that the tone was set from the high, with Vitalik Buterin providing a “full walkthrough of his private privateness stack, from OS and cellular gadgets to personal RPC.”

But the essential evolution lies in how this know-how is now being packaged. It is not about command-line interfaces for the elite; it’s about invisibility.

Firstov explains:

“Builders centered on stealth addresses, good AA [Account Abstraction] patterns, selective disclosures, and ‘creating higher defaults so customers don’t even discover how a lot complexity is being dealt with beneath the floor.”

This “invisibility” is the holy grail. The person doesn’t wish to perceive zero-knowledge proofs; they merely wish to know their financial institution steadiness isn’t public property.

Alongside this push for privateness, Firstov recognized a realistic evolution in DeFi: the rise of “preconfirmations for instant-feeling stablecoin funds” and new yield surfaces that supply “easy, ‘money-market type’ experiences with out going full degen.” The trade is shifting away from 10,000% APY Ponzi schemes towards boring, dependable, personal finance.

The “Black Box” Controversy, Who Do We Trust?

However, no revolution is with out its inside schisms. While the consensus on the want for privateness was absolute, the technique of reaching it sparked the most heated technical debates of the week. The eye of the storm was the reliance on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), hardware-based safe enclaves.

Is the future of privateness present in cryptographic math or in silicon manufacturing?

Firstov describes this division as the “most surprising or controversial technical debate” of the occasion. On one facet stood the pragmatists. He notes:

“One camp argued that TEEs are ‘virtually needed for high-throughput, low-latency, and personal computation’, significantly for personal settlement, derivatives methods, and agent-based execution.”

The argument is compelling: if we wish Wall Street speeds on the blockchain, math alone could be too gradual. We want {hardware} acceleration.

But the opposition was loud, principled, and deeply skeptical. Firstov relays their warning: “If the belief mannequin turns into ‘belief this black-box server in an information heart,’ then crypto just isn’t enhancing a lot over conventional finance.”

If we merely change a financial institution’s server with Intel’s SGX enclave, have we truly decentralized something?

This led to an unresolved meta-question that can possible outline analysis priorities for the relaxation of the decade:

“How a lot of the world’s stablecoin and fee rails are we comfy working on opaque {hardware}… and what does ‘trust-minimized sufficient’ truly imply in that context?”

The Rise of the Machines: AI as the New Financial Architect

While cryptographers sparred over {hardware} belief, one other titan was quietly integrating itself into the crypto stack: Artificial Intelligence. Devconnect 2025 wasn’t nearly the ledger; it was about the inevitable marriage of the decentralized database and the autonomous mind.

Vivien Lin, Chief Product Officer and Head of BingX Labs, introduced a perspective from the entrance strains of centralized exchanges (CEXs), that are quickly morphing into one thing way more complicated. For her, the major theme was plain.

Lin says:

“The major theme for me was the integration of AI into alternate infrastructure and the realization that exchanges are evolving into full monetary ecosystems, not simply buying and selling functions.”

She paints an image of a future the place AI acts as the connective tissue of finance.

“Builders have been centered on how AI can unify buying and selling, custody, funds, threat administration, and person intelligence right into a single ‘tremendous app’ expertise.”

However, very similar to the TEE debate in the privateness sector, the integration of AI brings its personal safety paradox. How do you belief an AI together with your life financial savings? Lin notes a powerful push towards “safe, verifiable techniques, together with privacy-preserving compute and on-chain proofs, that guarantee AI-driven options don’t compromise person knowledge or fund security.”

The purpose is to create ecosystems which can be “each clever and deeply safe, giving customers extra automation and context with out sacrificing belief.” But the most fascinating friction level, in response to Lin, wasn’t about functionality, it was about autonomy.

“The main friction level was how a lot autonomy AI brokers ought to have in buying and selling environments,” Lin explains. The debate cut up the room.

She provides:

“Some builders argued that brokers ought to handle liquidity, rebalance portfolios, or place orders with out human oversight. Others warned that giving AI unrestricted entry to execution layers may create systemic threat.”

The core disagreement touches on the very nature of human company in markets: “Should AI be a co-pilot for merchants or a completely autonomous participant in market construction?” In Buenos Aires, the consensus gave the impression to be shifting towards autonomy, offered the guardrails of cryptography are sturdy sufficient to carry it.

Geography is Destiny, Lessons from the Global South

Perhaps the most transformative facet of Devconnect 2025 was the location itself. Hosting this occasion in Argentina pressured the international developer neighborhood to the touch grass. While Silicon Valley builders obsess over optimizing code for milliseconds, the folks of Buenos Aires obsess over preserving the worth of their labor towards inflation.

Arthur Firstov noticed how this radical variety shifted the dialog from theoretical scaling to survival instruments. “Devconnect introduced radically completely different person priorities into the identical room,” he says.

“Latin American groups highlighted on a regular basis use instances similar to ‘wallets on low-cost smartphones’ and hire or payroll paid in stablecoins,” Firstov notes, additional including:

“Contrast this with the Asian and US infrastructure groups, who remained centered on “perpetual futures, routing, MEV, and latency.”

This collision of worlds pressured a synthesis. The dialog moved away from easy “Transactions Per Second” (TPS) bragging rights towards UX and sensible deployment. Firstov lists the questions that truly matter now:

“How can good wallets conceal complexity so customers really feel like they’re utilizing a traditional fintech app? How will we help each ‘high-frequency buying and selling flows and month-to-month wage funds’ with out compromising belief or safety?”

The greatest realization? “There is not any single archetypal person in crypto.”

Vivien Lin echoes this sentiment, noting how the Argentine presence grounded the high-flying technical debates.

“The variety of builders, particularly sturdy illustration from Argentina, shifted the dialogue towards actual adoption challenges on the floor, not simply theoretical scaling.”

Argentine builders didn’t wish to speak about the philosophy of cash; they needed to resolve instant issues.

Lin explains:

“Argentine builders raised points round inflation, capital controls, and the want for quick settlement rails that work reliably in risky economies.”

This expanded the scope of what an alternate ought to be, pushing for “AI-powered ecosystems that tackle each native constraints and broader challenges similar to compliance fragmentation, cross-border liquidity, and mobile-first onboarding.”

What is Actually Being Built? Infrastructure Over Hype

Stepping away from the philosophical and geographical, we should ask: the place are the builders truly deploying code?

Ivan Machena, Chief Communication Officer at 8lends, offers a sober take a look at the panorama. The period of “ghost chains”, blockchains with high valuations however no customers, is ending. The focus is now on ecosystems that help actual merchandise.

“Looking at the broader trade conversations taking place round Devconnect,” Machena observes, “a number of layer-2 and application-layer tasks proceed to draw sturdy builder curiosity.”

On the shopper entrance, Machena highlights Base. It is steadily cited for its “speedy progress and clean onboarding infrastructure,” successfully changing into the gateway for the retail person. In the DeFi section, Arbitrum retains its crown as the “most popular alternative because of its mature ecosystem and composability,” whereas Polygon stays a staple for groups in search of steadiness.

However, Machena notes a migration towards the technically superior.

Arthur Firstov provides one other layer to this adoption map, pointing towards the privateness and “agent-native” sectors. He identifies Aztec as drawing “critical consideration as a privacy-first setting the place merchandise may be ‘personal by default, selectively clear the place needed’.”

Crucially, Firstov highlights Privacy Pools as the bridge between the cypherpunk ethos and institutional actuality. It emerged as a “compliance-aware answer… a ‘sensible reply to what privateness seems like when regulators and critical capital should be comfy with it’.”

Furthermore, the bodily world is coming on-chain. Firstov notes a pattern of groups constructing DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) type storage and compute companies, paid for in stablecoins, “aiming to make crypto really feel like conventional cloud APIs.”

Outlook 2026: From Casino to Cathedral

As the attendees of Devconnect 2025 disperse from Buenos Aires, returning to their respective corners of the globe, the temper is undeniably completely different. The trade is maturing. The cultural ethos of the occasion, small, technical, community-led classes relatively than large advertising spectacles is shaping the narrative for the coming yr.

Arthur Firstov predicts a basic pivot in how we inform the story of crypto:

“Expect 2026 narratives to replicate that shift,  ‘infrastructure story as a substitute of on line casino story,’ ‘stablecoins as the entrance finish of crypto,’ and privateness as desk stakes.”

This is a imaginative and prescient of a world the place crypto ceases to be a synonym for playing and turns into the invisible, strong plumbing of the international monetary system. The questions are not about token costs. As Firstov places it, the rising query is: “Which Web2–Web3 integrations will truly ship and transfer the needle on actual customers?”

Vivien Lin agrees, seeing the future in interconnected ecosystems relatively than walled gardens.

“It strengthened the view that the future of crypto buying and selling will probably be ecosystem-first. This ethos pushes the trade towards interoperable, AI-powered buying and selling ecosystems the place liquidity, id, execution, and technique automation grow to be more and more unified as we transfer into 2026.”

Buenos Aires was a stress take a look at for the soul of crypto. The trade handed, not by providing straightforward solutions, however by lastly asking the proper, troublesome questions. We depart with fewer illusions, however with higher instruments. The “Casino Story” is useless; the “Infrastructure Story” has begun. And for the first time in a very long time, it appears like we’re constructing one thing that can final.

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