ETHDenver Conference Observation: The market is not as bad as it seems

By Mason Nystrom , Pentera Investor

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

ETHDenver 2025 was held at the National Western Complex in Denver, Colorado, USA from February 27 to March 2. After a week of talking with builders and investors, Pentera investor Mason Nystrom posted some thoughts on the key points and feelings of the meeting on the X platform. The following are the details of the content.

The market isn't as bad as it looks

Sentiment on CT (Crypto Twitter) is bearish, but not very representative. Memecoin speculators are frustrated and the overall consensus among investors is short-term bearish. This is not financial advice and investors can make mistakes.

However, everyone should be aware of the current situation: the regulatory environment is becoming positive, legal stablecoins are growing, and more RWA and Tradfi are moving to the chain. In the long run, people are still very excited and optimistic about the market landscape.

However, the next catalyst remains unknown. Keep going.

What are people building and what are investors seeing?

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

DePIN/Robotics — Related to AI, but different enough. Many companies are building hardware or data collection networks for robots, and DePIN seems to capture this narrative. Energy DePIN has also been gaining attention, and new DePIN-like projects have the opportunity to emerge.

DeFi — A lot of DeFi applications are still being built. More types of lending protocols, new stablecoins, Uni Hooks, more DeFi interfaces. PayFi and DeFAI also overlap in some ways.

zkTLS — provides real use cases, but what’s important is release and commercialization, not actual technical implementation.

Stablecoins - Although less discussed on CT, every investor is paying attention to and investing in this track, most of which are equity transactions, so the attention is not high. Many companies will be established based on the market opportunities of stablecoins.

Three Dragons: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana

Bitcoin: Many Bitcoin L2s are coming online, all competing for Bitcoin deposits. Bitcoin yields will get higher and higher. Bitcoin lending will improve. Bitcoin is no longer a “pet rock”.

Ethereum: Price sentiment aside, many builders continue to work on Ethereum. Optimism remains about a high throughput ETH chain. Base remains fundamental. FlashBlocksTM is coming soon and is being hyped at conferences. Unichain is being ignored by many. More chains are coming.

Solana: Despite ETHDenver, there was still a lot of Solana activity, founders, and small meetups. Even after the memecoin market correction, many people are still excited about Solana. The DePIN narrative continues to grow on Solana. More SVMs are being launched, which means interoperability "ducks" between SVM chains are needed.

About Venture Capital

For many investors, pre-seed and seed stage investments feel like slower returns. Expected valuations on the public market are higher, causing some funds to sit on the sidelines and not invest. Most investments are concentrated in liquidity and Series A rounds. Also, the Series B round market seems to be better than it was 6 months ago. Please note that the analysis here is based on sentiment and hearsay only, not data.

Some token launches have underperformed in the recent market correction, and valuation mentality is re-correcting. Like clockwork, those who once prioritized trends and narratives are now pushing projects to increase revenue and fees. Building conviction is more important than ever.

Related reading: Full text of the conversation between Trump’s eldest son and ETH Denver 2025: It is recommended that newcomers enter the market with small amounts and continue to learn DeFi