Payments on every stage
Payments got more airtime than we expected. Sessions ranged from the next era of stablecoin payments to bringing the next billion users on-chain without them ever having to think about the blockchain underneath.
That second idea is the problem eCurrency was designed around. We've run a Layer-1 blockchain for digital payments since 2018, with a block every 10 seconds. It was good to hear the same question discussed from so many angles: what the settlement layer under everyday digital payments should look like.
Traditional finance in the room
Nasdaq’s CEO spoke on the main stage. Seeing the head of one of the world’s largest stock exchanges at a crypto conference shows how far traditional finance has moved into these conversations. Several sessions covered institutional finance moving on-chain, and the people we met reflected it: alongside founders and builders, we spent time with compliance teams, market makers and exchanges.
Quantum security for digital assets
We attended Quantum Security for Digital Assets, a private technical event for protocol engineers, cryptography researchers and institutional teams. The agenda covered post-quantum signatures, key lifecycle management, consensus security, custody, and how existing digital asset systems can move away from elliptic curve cryptography. Over the evening we talked with other attendees about how quickly the quantum threat could develop, which defences make sense, and how much time the industry realistically has to prepare.
We spend a lot of time on these questions ourselves. eCurrency signs transactions within a crypto-agile framework: Falcon, the post-quantum scheme NIST selected through its standardisation process, runs alongside classical Schnorr and ECDSA. The protocol can change its cryptographic requirements over time without breaking the address or transaction format, and existing coins stay spendable through the change. Our addresses also support MAST, so spending conditions that are never used, and the keys tied to them, never appear on-chain. Section 5 of the whitepaper covers both.
Two days of meetings
Most of our time went to back-to-back meetings with market makers, exchanges, compliance teams, agencies and founders, with evenings running well past midnight. We came home with a long list of follow-ups. Anything that becomes public will appear on our X and Telegram channels first.
Next stop: Lugano
Next week we're at Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano on 23 and 24 October. Lugano is home to the eCurrency Foundation, so this one is close to us. If you're attending, come and say hello, and follow us on X and Telegram for updates from the event.
