# Devcon 8 - Talks Wishlist The following document presents ideas for talks and workshops at Devcon. If you are well-suited for any of these topics, we strongly encourage you to apply. These are merely suggestions and not exhaustive, so feel free to propose your unique ideas. Applying to a suggestion does not guarantee the selection by our committee of reviewers. Interesting topics to cover in each track: - **What is **[INSERT TRACK]**, Definition, 101, ELI5** - **Challenges of** [INSERT TRACK] - **Latest developments of** [INSERT TRACK] - **Future of** [INSERT TRACK] - **Debunking myths of** [INSERT TRACK] - **Hands-on** **workshops on** [INSERT TRACK], **Tutorials, Live coding sessions** **Talk Suggestions by Track:** [TOC] ---  ## (Core) Protocol > Researchers and developers have worked for over ten years on building and improving Ethereum. What are the latest findings, what's on the roadmap, and what does Ethereum need to become to still be Ethereum in twenty years? *Tags*: `Core Protocol, Consensus, Staking, Decentralization, Scalability, MEV, Post-Quantum, Roadmap, EVM` <details> <summary><b>Lean / Post-Quantum</b></summary> - Explaining Lean - leanVM - leanDA - PQ roadmap - XMSS signature scheme - EL path to post-quantum signatures (leanSPHINCS, FORS, JARDIN, etc.) - State commitments (PQ aligned) </details> <details> <summary><b>Formal Verification</b></summary> - Formal verification of the spec / what an FV client means - Formal verification of cryptographic components of the spec - evm-sail and ELIR </details> <details> <summary><b>Consensus/Protocol Design</b></summary> - Deep dive in the strawmap - Decoupled consensus - One slot finality - 2s block time / block time reduction - Inclusion lists and the future role of includers - FOCIL / multi-proposers in general - Delayed execution and propagation </details> <details> <summary><b>Scaling/Sharding</b></summary> - Scaling in Glamsterdam - Scaling in Hegota - State sharding - Execution sharding </details> <details> <summary><b>State/Execution</b></summary> - State and tree changes - State expiry - ZKEVM primer - Frame txs and privacy </details> <details> <summary><b>Hardforks/Process</b></summary> - Glamsterdam in production (how everything is looking so far) - Hardfork testing - Upcoming EIPs (e.g. frames) - Issuance </details> <details> <summary><b>Tooling/Dev</b></summary> Using LLMs to write clients, find bugs, etc. </details> ---  ## Applied Cryptography > Cryptographic primitives like ZKP, MPC and FHE are advancing rapidly. What can we build now that we couldn't last year, and how do we put these breakthroughs to work? *Tags*: `ZK, MPC, FHE, Cryptography, Privacy, Proving Systems, Identity, AI` <details> <summary><b>Topics</b></summary> - Progress of iO - Practical PIR on Ethereum - PQ transition of various Ethereum parts </details> <details> <summary><b>Introduction to Cryptographic Concepts</b></summary> - Cryptography 101: hash functions, digital signatures, private/public-key </details> <details> <summary><b>Education and Usability</b></summary> - How applied crypto education is facilitated? </details> ---  ## Users, Builders, and Agents > The people building on Ethereum, the people using it, and the agents now working alongside both. What does it take to make that experience secure, private and usable? *Tags*: `Wallets, Account Abstraction, UX, AI, DeFi, Key Management, Privacy, Security` <details> <summary><b>Agent as economic actors</b></summary> - AI agents as “companies”, when the wallet with an api endpoint becomes a business, the agentic commerce stack (8004, 8183, x402) - Who is the agent? Identity, reputation, validation, creating trust without gatekeepers and why registration is not verification - Building paid services on Ethereum agents can actually use (x402, EIP-3009), and how the infrastructure can be improved (e.g. facilitators) - Open rails (Ethereum) vs centralized platforms (big tech stripe, openai, google, etc.), why agent payments belong on open infrastructure </details> <details> <summary><b>Privacy</b></summary> - Private payments: stealth addresses, shielded transfers, and metadata leaks - Metadata is the leak: what your RPC, indexer, and wallet expose even when funds are private —> Private app infrastructure: RPC privacy, light clients, relayers, paymasters, and wallet-side privacy defaults - Prove you're eligible, not who you are: ZK credentials and selective disclosure in the wallet - Compliant privacy: proving your funds are clean to an auditor without going fully public </details> <details> <summary><b>Data sources</b></summary> - Decentralized oracles, indexers, token lists - Off-chain to on-chain: oracles in 2026 (low-latency feeds, and the Oracle Extractable Value they leak) - On-chain to your app: the indexer landscape (The Graph, Subsquid, Envio) and decentralization vs latency - Putting real-world assets on-chain: how tokenized funds and stablecoins get their data, and why you still have to trust an auditor </details> <details> <summary><b>Building and shipping real products</b></summary> - What it takes to ship a product to non-crypto-native users - Onboarding without the seed phrase: passkeys, embedded wallets, and social login - Fiat in, fiat out: on-ramps, off-ramps, and stablecoin UX for normal users - Making chains invisible: cross-chain UX so users never pick a network (e.g. intents, ERC-7828 names) - Designing for irreversibility: confirmations, simulations, and undo when there is no undo </details> <details> <summary><b>AI between user & keys / local models, Delegations</b></summary> - Design agent wallets that assume that the agent using it is compromised (bound blast radius with spend caps, signing rules) - Be aware of attack vectors: prompt injection will happen and can not be prevented, so design your wallet around it - Delegations 101 for agents: ERC7702/4337 (overlap with wallets & account abstraction) 7710/15, session keys (7579), etc. - Making intent legible before signing: clear signing (ERC-7730) and transaction assertions - Intents and solvers: agents declare what they want, the network executes - Agents that manage DeFi positions without holding the keys </details> <details> <summary><b>Wallets & account abstraction</b></summary> - The account stack: ERC-4337 and ERC-7579 (smart, modular accounts) - Account abstraction at the protocol level: what EIP-8141 (frame transactions) will enable - Smart accounts in production: what's live, what's draft, where the gaps are - Recovery and custody: social recovery, guardians, MPC, and who actually holds the key - Passkeys as account primitives: EIP-7951, WebAuthn, device keys </details> ---  ## Open & Verifiable Stack > From silicon to application, what does it take to trust the full stack? Open hardware, firmware, and the software that runs on it. *Tags*: `Open Source, Hardware, Security, Privacy, Decentralization, AI, Supply Chain` <details> <summary><b>Secure devices & firmware</b></summary> - Can you trust your device? Secure enclaves and what they don't solve - On-device security as an operating system property - Securing devices without relying on manufacturer trust </details> <details> <summary><b>Open hardware & RISC-V</b></summary> - Open-source hardware wallets: designing devices anyone can audit and afford - Reproducible builds end to end: from firmware to client binary </details> <details> <summary><b>Open source & shared foundations</b></summary> - What the open source community and Ethereum are building together - Lessons from decades of open source for decentralized infrastructure </details> <details> <summary><b>Verifiable trust end to end</b></summary> - What does it take to trust a device end to end? </details> <details> <summary><b>Supply chain & chip production</b></summary> - Supply chain attestation: how do you verify what's inside your device? </details> ---  ## Permissionless Networks > Open networks, censorship resistance, and the infrastructure that keeps connectivity in the hands of its users. What survives when the network layer is hostile? *Tags*: `P2P, Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Decentralization, Privacy, Security` <details> <summary><b>P2P & decentralized infrastructure</b></summary> - Running your own node: why it matters - Federated and P2P messaging in practice </details> <details> <summary><b>Mesh networking</b></summary> - Mesh networks as resilient infrastructure - When the Internet Goes Away: Mesh Networks That People Actually Use </details> <details> <summary><b>Mixnets & metadata resistance</b></summary> - Why encrypting content is not enough - Traffic analysis resistance in practice </details> <details> <summary><b>Network resilience & open connectivity</b></summary> - What does it take to keep the network layer open? - Decentralized inference and model provenance - Building infrastructure that stays in users' hands </details> ---  ## Security > Threat modeling, operational security, and what it takes to protect people who cannot afford to be wrong. *Tags*: `Security, Formal Verification, OpSec, Privacy, AI` <details> <summary><b>Security Best Practices</b></summary> - Security best practices every user of Ethereum should know - What is the minimum required setup to manage cryptos safely (MM+cold wallet+…safe?) - How to safely store a private key - Key management for dummies / digital nomads </details> <details> <summary><b>Smart Contract Auditing</b></summary> - Formal verification vs Fuzzing - The state of smart contracts auditing - How to audit a contract - Entry Level - How to Implement proper monitoring solutions </details> <details> <summary><b>Incident Analysis and Case Studies</b></summary> - What happened with the XYZ hack (e.g. Euler hack) - War rooms’ insider stories, behind the “hack” scenes - The most nerve-wracking Security audit/challenge in Ethereum history - Lessons learned from the biggest security breaches </details> <details> <summary><b>Cybersecurity Models and Theories</b></summary> - What is the cybersecurity “swiss cheese“ models - Web3 vs Web2 Security: Same or Different? - Auditing in the age of AI - Game theory to enhance security measures </details> <details> <summary><b>Security education</b></summary> - Tools / discovery path to learn about security - Protocol security lessons </details> <details> <summary><b>Transaction Assertions</b></summary> - security guarantees during execution </details> <details> <summary><b>Formal Verification </b></summary> - </details> <details> <summary><b>Operational security from the field</b></summary> - Security for people who cannot afford to be wrong - Op-sec lessons from the field - Social engineering as the dominant attack vector - The gap between what security tools can do and how they are actually used </details> ---  ## Rights, Freedoms, and Governance > Human rights don't enforce themselves. Which tools equitably deliver digital rights and agency to people and communities, especially the most vulnerable and marginalised? This track is for best practices from success stories and lessons learned from what failed alike, from people building toward the same ends by different means. *Tags*: `Governance, DAOs, Human Rights, Public Goods, Privacy, Censorship Resistance, DeSci, Real World, Digital Rights` <details> <summary><b>Reports from the frontlines: where rights are won, where they break, and what remains unsolved</b></summary> - Stablecoins and remittances as rights infrastructure: case studies from Argentina, Nigeria, the Philippines and elsewhere on equitable financial access and household resilience, including where solutions failed to reach the people they intended to reach - Free expression and press freedom under digital authoritarianism - Whistle-blower protection and sanctuary tech under regulatory adversity - Freedom of movement for refugees and stateless people - Economies of surveillance: how data extraction and behavioural tracking become business models, and where open protocols push back - Tornado Cash and the cost of privacy infrastructure </details> <details> <summary><b>Open protocols as civic infrastructure: Ethereum and beyond</b></summary> - Case studies of open protocols and open-source tools deployed in civil society contexts, pursuing shared goals alongside Ethereum - Case studies of Ethereum in digital identity: self-sovereign identity, selective disclosure, and credentials without surveillance, including where it fell short - Portraits of comparable non-Ethereum civic infrastructure (Signal, Tor, Matrix, AT Proto, ActivityPub, other protocols/apps as well as legal/institutional approaches) pursuing the same ends, discussing their experiences and lessons learned - Analyses of national digital sovereignty agendas and pathways to unify collective and self-sovereign digital public infrastructure (DPI) </details> <details> <summary><b>Governance frameworks and DAO designs that uphold digital rights</b></summary> - Standing on the shoulders of giants, such as cooperatives, commons institutions, open-source projects, internet standards bodies, and dispute-resolution traditions that long predate Ethereum: what they can teach our own institution-building, and which of their failure modes we are already repeating - Indian collective-governance traditions, such as SEWA, SHG federations, Kudumbashree, FPOs, Lijjat, Amul and others, and what Ethereum can learn from them - DAO governance, critically assessed: who has governance across Ethereum helped, who has it failed, and why? - Coalition-building toward better governance across DAOs and the wider ecosystem </details> <details> <summary><b>Funding for digital public goods</b></summary> - The state of funding provision for digital public goods: what works, what doesn't, and what we can do about it - Designing funding for impact: monitoring and evaluation (M&E), impact-based financing, and mechanisms such as quadratic and retroactive funding - Fundraising in practice for digital rights activists - Open science, decentralised science (DeSci), and sustainable funding for research </details> <details> <summary><b>Beyond the echo chamber</b></summary> - Comparable work that does not use Ethereum but pursues the same ends by other means, and what its successes and failures teach us - Who are the allies we haven't been talking to? Shared values, common narratives, and coalitions worth building, in practice or aspiration </details> ---  ## Privacy & Consent > Talks about privacy, digital identity, and what consent means as identity systems become more prevalent. Grounded in research and technical merit, from self-sovereign identity to the communities shaped by these systems. *Tags*: `Privacy, Identity, Consent, Biometrics, ZK, Surveillance, AI` <details> <summary><b>Privacy Tools and Techniques</b></summary> - Network privacy - Tor and mixnets, Nym - Are VPNs useful? How they work, why they matter - Onchain privacy tooling - zk mixers, local RPCs,.. - Self-Sovereign Digital Identity - Managing nyms, private identities - Exploring advanced privacy tools and techniques for developers and users - Self hosted setups, FOSS alternatives - Paranoid setups as inspiration of maximizing privacy/self sovereignty - Free open hardware - Workshops - practical privacy today - Payments, daily life spending more private with crypto </details> <details> <summary><b>Importance of Privacy</b></summary> - What does Privacy matter, “Privacy is normal” - History, crypto wars - Current context, enshittification, corporate/government surveillance - How to Integrate privacy into Ethereum-based applications - Discussing the moral and ethical considerations of privacy in the digital age </details> ---  ## Futures Worth Building > The forward-looking conversations, the societal challenges of today, and the futures still open to us. How communities, public goods teams, artists, and builders can reclaim agency over the choices that shape them. *Tags*: `Coordination, Open Source, Public Goods, Censorship Resistance, Speculative Design, Sustainability, Art, Culture, AI` <details> <summary><b>Sustaining Open Infrastructure</b><b> </b></summary> - Project Odin and FRCs: An Innovative Alternative To The Problem of Digital Public Goods’s Sustainability - Funding the infrastructure the world depends on </details> <details> <summary><b>Imagination & deliberate futures</b></summary> - Designing deliberately for the futures we actually want - Science fiction as a design tool - Futures Indian artists and storytellers are already imagining </details> <details> <summary><b>Technology & society</b></summary> - Geopolitics of technology and interdependence - Open source as a political act - AI as a civilisational force: who shapes it and who it serves </details> <details> <summary><b>Building parallel systems</b></summary> - Open hardware and distributed manufacturing - Local energy: microgrids, community solar, P2P energy markets - Food sovereignty and open agtech - Biotech: longevity, clean air, community labs </details> <details> <summary><b>New economic models</b></summary> - Ownership models for community-driven institutions - Programmable money: mutual credit, local currencies - The future of work: DAOs, bounties, agent labor </details>