Author: Wintermute Ventures

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Guide: Joscha Kupferberg, Investment Manager at Wintermute Ventures, attended the EthCC conference held in Cannes and brought back frontline observations: VCs are more cautious but still investing, founders are generally not in a rush to issue tokens but are focusing on product development first, DeFi builders are collectively flocking to the Vault track, new banking features are becoming standard rather than differential advantages, and AI Agent applications in the crypto space have almost entirely reverted to trading bots.

@wmt_ventures tweeted:

What are crypto builders really doing now?

“Vault is the new Perps.” This was a phrase repeatedly heard at the EthCC conference in Cannes. The event reflected a broader industry shift: less noise, more institutional faces, and founders quietly working instead of chasing publication schedules. Our investment manager @joschakup spent an entire week immersed in these conversations. Here are his observations.

EthCC Atmosphere

Contrary to some pessimistic views, the overall atmosphere was positive. Early builders, VCs, and family offices actively funding were mixed together, creating a relatively healthy environment. The only obvious shadow was layoffs—this is still happening in a real and widespread manner across the entire industry.

How Crypto VCs Are Investing Now

VCs are more cautious but still active. The focus has shifted toward later-stage seed rounds and beyond, as there is traction and product-market fit to evaluate. The era of betting on moonshots purely based on vibes seems to be over.

Founders Are No Longer Chasing Token Issuance

The vast majority of early founders Joscha spoke with do not prioritize token issuance. The focus is on creating economically viable products first. The optionality of tokens is a topic for later—if there is one.

Trends Worth Tracking

Several warming trends:

• On-chain foreign exchange is quietly becoming a serious topic
• Privacy-oriented DeFi is emerging as a legitimate track, with more projects exploring institutional-grade use cases
• Prediction markets have gained substantial traction, with increasing competition in liquidity infrastructure and incentive design

Vault Is the New Perps

DeFi builders are focusing on work, increasingly centering on institutional use cases and RWA. If there's one unavoidable theme, it's Vault. From Vault infrastructure, yield products to rehypothecation, strategy finders, and ratings, the entire track has highly converged to this category, closely followed by stablecoins and new banks (neobanks).

New Banks Are No Longer a Differential Advantage

Many DeFi projects with significant TVL are connecting with third-party providers to offer new bank functionalities: capital flow channels, bank cards, yield vaults. This is a reasonable approach for retaining users, but the logical inference is that new banks alone are no longer a differentiator.

AI Agent Has Almost Completely Reverted to Trading Bots

The majority of AI Agent use cases in the crypto space seem to have made a 180-degree turn, reverting back to trading bots. Joscha had hoped to bring back some new ideas, but he did not. This is the one area that has not surprised him so far.