The 7th annual EthCC brought thousands to Cannes last week, where Mediterranean heat couldn’t dampen builder enthusiasm for the packed agenda.

While the broader conversation around Ethereum, the Ethereum Foundation, and the ECF deserves its own analysis (coming soon), the conference’s most compelling signals emerged from the surrounding ecosystem — where tokenized markets, mobile experiences, and privacy infrastructure came up frequently in conversations on the ground.

Let’s take a closer look at how these topics made a splash in Cannes

Privacy: The Institutional Prerequisite

It was refreshing to hear so much about privacy during the week, with people interested in it from a technical aspect — given the slew of acronyms (TEEs, FHE, MPC, ZK) being tossed around these days — but also from a practical, everyday angle. Many I chatted with had used consumer-friendly privacy apps like ZKP2P before, and voiced excitement

When it came to what the path forward for privacy would look like, it really centered around increased integration of zero-knowledge proofs into everyday, onchain activities coupled with TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments) for added security. Yes, multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption were acknowledged as top-tier technology to strive for, but consensus seemed that, in their current forms (especially FHE), they proved too complex for production use. (That being said, Coinbase’s Yehuda Lindell did present on their open-source MPC library — a move aimed at raising industry-wide security standards and addressing the MPC talent gap to fuel related innovation.)

Beyond discussions of privacy as an essential component for our digitally vulnerable day and age, it was also front of mind as a necessity for enticing institutions onchain.

In his talk, Paul Brody, Global Blockchain Leader at EY, argued that privacy isn’t a feature enterprises can opt into—it’s a prerequisite for using blockchain in real business operations. Coordination, not computation, is the core enterprise bottleneck, and while tokenized workflows and smart contracts can streamline contracts and cut inventory costs, none of that matters if sensitive information is exposed. Without privacy, no firm will move high-value business logic or transactions onchain. The same proves true for institutions, especially since dark pools have already become so established in traditional stock trading. We need solutions for large actors to move onchain without broadcasting every action taken.

Tokenized Markets: Stocks Meet Chains

While Robinhood’s tokenized stock announcement certainly grabbed headlines, I’d attribute as much excitement around tokenized stocks to BackedFi, which launched xStocks the same day, allowing people to buy popular stocks like $SPY, $NVDA, and $TSLA on Solana.

Most at EthCC still felt these announcements were just half-measures. Yes, we can trade tokenized AAPL, but we’ve had this before. Real excitement will come when we can borrow against these and plug them into yield strategies. So, right now, we’re in an awkward intermediate phase — progress without integration.

Outside of tokenized stocks though, people were generally excited about tokenization — particularly for commodities. Given uranium’s recent performance, Uranium Digital came up across multiple conversations as did continued interest in tokenized gold.

The pattern is clear: start with familiar assets, prove the pipes work, then push into markets where blockchain’s 24/7 settlement and fractional ownership offer genuine advantages over traditional infrastructure.

Mobile-First

One of the discussions which got people most excited at the conference came from the quiet burst of experimentation around consumer crypto apps — apps that are, almost without exception, being built mobile-first. With the majority of wallet activity now coming from phones, builders (and users) are thinking about product design, user interaction, and mobile-native flows from the start.

Coinbase Wallet’s upcoming redesign which comes equipped with a social feed stood out here, as it’s not only going mobile first, but also adopting mobile’s native patterns into wallet design.

Interestingly, there was also a lot of excitement about mobile apps bringing consumer ease to perpetuals trading on Hyperliquid — Lootbase and Dexari, in particular. Robinhood’s announcement of their own perps platform lit up excitement further. Overall, these apps show what’s possible when you design for thumbs first: fast execution, visual clarity, gamified interfaces.

EthCC solidified what we’re seeing online, that Crypto is no longer just about endlessly debating architectures; it’s intent on solving for coordination, compliance, and consumer-grade design. The question isn’t whether blockchains can support serious use cases — it’s how quickly we can make them usable, private, and portable enough to matter.

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