Privacy is becoming the center of gravity for what’s coming with Ethereum and DeFi. Zero-knowledge proofs and SNARKs are at the center of the discussion and seen as the means to achieve the Lean Ethereum Roadmap. The ecosystem is moving towards a narrative in which security, censorship resistance, and user protection are key pillars at every layer.
Early at DevConnect, Vitalik Buterin unveiled Kohaku, a new open-source framework that provides developers with modular tools to build privacy-preserving wallets without relying on centralized services. It’s designed to evolve into a broader suite of primitives that may include mixnets for network anonymity and ZK-powered browsers.
The Ethereum leader also announced that the Ethereum Foundation is rolling out Tor and onion hidden services across the ecosystem wherever possible, giving nodes, clients, and users stronger protection from surveillance and metadata leaks, while reducing the network’s dependence on centralized infrastructure.
These are signs of where DeFi and Ethereum are headed next. Let’s dive into what DevConnect Buenos Aires 2025 meant for the industry.
A Mature Ecosystem: 10 Years of Ethereum
In July, Ethereum made it to 10 years live on mainnet without ever going down. That maturing process was also seen in other technologies being widely adopted: Zero-knowledge proofs, which have carved their way into the Ethereum ethos and are now set to be the foundation for the next decade of development.Several threads merged into the same bigger picture:
- ZK tooling is now accessible to developers who are not cryptographers.
- Boundless is using ZK proofs to design a consensus client for ZCash that enables permissionless transfers to and from Ethereum with no new security assumptions.
- Privacy is seen as returning to crypto’s “roots” after years of being deprioritized.
- Kohaku, Lean Ethereum, and Tor integration show the Ethereum Foundation is treating privacy and security as key infrastructure.
Security Beyond Smart Contracts
Smart contract audits are no longer enough when it comes to DeFi security: it’s now about securing the entire stack.
Here are some of the key takeaways throughout the two days of the DeFi Security Summit:
- Security is design, testing, monitoring, and threat modeling, not just an audit checkpoint.
- The Balancer exploit demonstrated how “minor” assumptions like rounding can evolve into major attack vectors.
- Attack surfaces now include chain splits, DoS vectors, memory corruption, and leader election failures.
- AI-powered auditing is already catching logical bugs that humans miss, but validation remains the expensive part.
- Code and smart contracts are cheaper to write thanks to AI, but reviewing them is the new bottleneck.
“Do users care about security?” was one of the big questions asked. The consensus was that they may not think consciously about it, but care immediately when funds are at risk.
L1, L2, and the Move Toward a More Robust Ecosystem
Even though the narratives came from different rooms, they converged on one concern: Ethereum needs to stay resilient and fast enough to remain the ecosystem’s center of gravity.
Here are some recurring themes about scalability:
- Ethereum should rely more on L1 for durability and less on centralized external services.
- Gas limit increases are on the table, potentially scaling by up to 100x over the coming years.
- L2s must be able to react to incidents quickly, while L1 remains “the Wild West” by design.
- The only viable way to scale to millions of transactions is a healthy L2 ecosystem.
- Founders are pushing for improved interoperability and clearer alignment around a rollup-centric roadmap.
Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum is stabilizing as it matures. Ossification is gradual, but it will eventually happen. The protocol will harden over time, without blocking improvements.
Adoption in LATAM Shows What “Invisible Crypto” Looks Like
Latin America, especially Argentina, is showing the world what real adoption looks like. As counterintuitive as it may sound, crypto is becoming more relevant as it becomes less visible. Crypto solutions are now so embedded that many users interact with them without ever realizing it.
Common ground across the panels at DeFi Day del Sur:
- In Argentina, most people save in crypto and spend in pesos.
- Stablecoins act as financial infrastructure in countries with unstable currencies and limited banking access.
- LATAM populations adopt new technology early because they have to, usually due to economic or political constraints.
This reality explains why DevConnect came to Buenos Aires. The city reflects the world Ethereum is trying to build.
The Future of DeFi: Cross-Chain and User-Focused
A new wave of DeFi tooling showed how the ecosystem is aligning around simpler, safer, and more unified experiences. On Tuesday, the Ethereum Foundation revealed more technical details about the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL), aiming to enable users to interact with different rollups without the need for bridging or switching networks.
The dominant threads at DeFi Connect on cross-chain and adoption included:
- Ymax introduced a one-stop platform to deploy, allocate, rebalance, and exit positions across chains with a single signature.
- Stablecoins are becoming platforms, not just assets.
- Builders are pushing for stablecoin UX that feels like any modern neobank.
- LATAM adoption is pushing DeFi into a more real-world phase, where crypto solves actual financial pain points.
What’s to come for Ethereum and DeFi
After a week of conversations that cut across privacy, scalability, governance, and security, a clear sense of direction emerged for Ethereum and the broader DeFi ecosystem:
- The industry is moving toward a privacy-first architecture, powered by zero-knowledge proofs that are no longer experimental tools but core building blocks.
- Security is evolving into a full-stack discipline, where audits are only one part of a larger system that includes threat modeling, monitoring, and better engineering practices.
- The community is re-centering the importance of a resilient L1 while relying on L2s for meaningful scale, and exploring how these layers interact under stress.
Equally important is the growing influence of real-world adoption, especially in Latin America, where crypto already functions as daily infrastructure. The region’s experience with inflation, unstable banking, and messy dollar rates is shaping how builders think about adoption, UX, stablecoins, and financial access; and even though Real World Assets (RWA) and institutional adoption have been at the center of the 2025 agenda, the conversation at DevConnect did not specifically revolve around those themes.
The week closed with one more signal of where Ethereum is headed: the Ethereum Foundation announced that Devcon 8 will take place in Mumbai, India, by Q4 2026. Taken together, the themes that defined DevConnect this year show an ecosystem maturing in real time. Ethereum is strengthening its foundations, rewriting how it approaches privacy and security, and learning from regions where crypto already operates as daily infrastructure. Buenos Aires is now part of that story.
