DeFi’s true believers reminisce in Cannes as they hunt for crypto’s next big thing

Tucked away in an alley behind the designer brand shopfronts and seafront hotels in Cannes, decentralised finance’s true believers ignored the luxury.

Instead, they reminisced about the industry’s glory days, lamented the growing influence of the suits — corporations and traditional finance players who are increasingly muscling in on the crypto industry — and hunted for the next big DeFi breakthrough.

I joined them during the yearly EthCC conference for a night of candid conversations and free beer to find out what DeFi’s early adopters think of the industry which, by many accounts, is quickly leaving them behind.

It’s a common view that EthCC’s privately-hosted side events, which are often closed, invite-only affairs, are where the “real” conference happens, away from corporate coffee sponsors and pay-to-play speaking opportunities of the main event.

And the Tuesday evening gathering, hosted by DL News' sister company DefiLlama, Octav, and several DeFi-native sponsors, was no exception.

‘Giga brain’

The event took place at Barrel, a classic pub setting with beers on tap, creaky wooden tables and a bustling atmosphere. It’s a world away from Cannes’ hillside villas and marinas filled with luxury yachts, which serve as a constant reminder that the town is a popular haunt of the world’s elite.

Inside the venue, nobody was putting on airs. The authenticity that’s becoming harder to find on the conference circuit was in plentiful supply.

“Let me introduce you to the founder, he’s a giga brain,” I overheard one reveller shout to an acquaintance.

“Do you know this guy? He’s a scammer,” joked another about a friend.

For those on the fringes, it was as much a networking event as an opportunity to receive a crash course in what’s hot right now in the world of DeFi.

Peer-to-peer markets powered by zero-knowledge proofs were yielding 500% yearly returns, I was told. Permissionless prediction markets can redefine how we understand the world, someone said.

Yet there was also a sad nostalgia for times past.

To this day, the so-called DeFi summer of 2020 is still seen by many as the peak of onchain finance. It was a heady time where adoption soared and traders gambled on whether new projects would define the industry for the next decade, or run off with their money.

Pioneers at the heart of the DeFi summer, like yield aggregator Yearn and decentralised exchange Curve, are enshrined in DeFi’s lore, and still elicit fond memories from many in the industry — even if they lost money betting on them.

The future isn’t corporate

One popular question was what the next lore-defining breakthrough could be.

Would it be something to do with prediction markets? Another decentralised stablecoin maybe? Those I asked weren’t certain.

The one thing they were sure about was that the next big thing wasn’t coming from the suits.

It would be decentralised, permissionless technology, like the original vision of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, that would drive innovation. To think otherwise was heresy.

Ultimately, it’s that tension between the decentralisation-focused cypherpunks and crypto’s corporate interests that defines the industry in 2026.

Institutional interest in crypto is at an all-time high. Many people I spoke to at the main EthCC event were there explicitly to search for clients, form corporate partnerships, and sell products to crypto-curious suits.

The money pouring into the industry from the traditional financial world is more visible than ever, as is its impact.

“Everyone is taking sides,” one attendee said of the corporate-cypherpunk split. “And perhaps those in the middle ground — the no man’s land — are the ones getting slaughtered.”

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.