ETH Taipei 2025

I’m thrilled to have participated in ETH Taipei 2025, this year’s Ethereum extravaganza. Compared to last year, I witnessed even more significant and exciting progress, met developers from Europe, the Philippines, and New York, and saw numerous inspiring applications. Here are a few that stood out:

Impressive Applications

Portus

A cross-chain token swapping tool that helps users quickly find the best exchange rates without spending time comparing options manually. It supports a massive transaction volume per second, promising to greatly enhance liquidity across chains. This is a win-win for the Portus platform, swap users, and various chain communities, driving vibrant ecosystem development.

Self

A fascinating application leveraging cryptographic techniques like Zero Knowledge Proofs to address privacy issues in identity verification. With this service, users can verify their identity anywhere without revealing personal documents or information, significantly reducing the risk of data breaches. When integrated with blockchain services, it could further enhance privacy and seamlessly fit into the broader ecosystem.

Key Takeaways and Reflections

Here are some insights and reflections from the event:

Privacy Issues

In today’s Web2 world, privacy breaches are rampant—search “data breach” on Google, and you’ll find endless news stories. Companies, governments, and websites, intentionally or not, leak user data, often without users’ knowledge (the phone list of fraud groups is the best example). This is an urgent issue. Leveraging blockchain and cryptographic technologies, such as Zero Knowledge Proofs, to protect user information is a critical direction for the future.

Open Source and Public Goods

In his speech, Vitalik Buterin emphasized the role of public goods in Ethereum’s success. Ethereum thrives as an open-source project, built through the collective efforts of companies, non-profits, and individual developers. Many of Ethereum’s technologies and projects can be considered “public goods”—resources where one person’s benefit doesn’t diminish others’. The future of Ethereum hinges on this principle of open-source public goods. However, the open-source world faces a paradox: critical open-source projects often struggle to generate revenue, making it hard to attract and retain talent. Creating a sustainable funding flywheel—where successful projects fund the next generation—is vital for the ecosystem’s growth. Currently, many blockchain projects remain profit-driven private ventures, while promising open-source initiatives lack sufficient support, hindering their growth.

Real-World Applications

Despite blockchain’s progress, its adoption remains limited due to technical, regulatory, and application-layer challenges. Most decentralized applications (DApps) are still focused on gaming and financial transactions, failing to reach broader audiences. Cross-chain and token conversions remain complex, and the user experience is often unfriendly, leaving many unaware of blockchain’s potential.
For technology to go mainstream, it must address pain points simply and quickly or create compelling, innovative use cases. Currently, blockchain lacks both: there aren’t enough intuitive, pain-point-solving apps or groundbreaking new applications. Many efforts focus on upgrading Web2 apps to Web3, which may not be enough. This is an area ripe for further exploration.

Closing Thoughts

Vitalik opened his speech with a thought-provoking question: “If Ethereum’s price had never skyrocketed, would you still be here?”

Understanding Ethereum’s ethos and vision reveals a value far beyond its market price. As someone who resonates with this vision, I’m committed to staying and contributing to this journey.