Wintermute EthCC Observation: DeFi Fully Shifts to the Vault Track, Founders No Longer Rush to Issue Tokens

Author: Wintermute Ventures

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Brief: Wintermute Ventures’ investment manager Joscha Kupferberg attended the EthCC conference held in Cannes and brought back first-hand observations: VCs are making more cautious moves, but they’re still investing; founders generally aren’t in a rush to issue tokens—they’re instead focusing on building products first; DeFi builders are collectively flocking to the Vault track; new bank features are becoming standard rather than a differentiating advantage; and in the crypto space, almost all applications of AI Agents have effectively retreated back to trading bots.

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What are crypto builders doing right now?

“Vault is the new Perps.” This is a line that was heard repeatedly at the EthCC conference in Cannes. The conference reflects a broader shift across the industry: there’s less noise, more institutional faces, and founders are quietly getting work done rather than chasing release timelines. Our investment manager @joschakup spent a full week immersed in these conversations. Here are his observations.

EthCC atmosphere

Unlike some pessimistic takes, the mood on site was generally positive. Early builders, VCs, and family offices that are actively writing checks were mixed together, creating a relatively healthy environment. The only clearly visible shadow was layoffs—this reality is still real and widespread across the entire industry.

How crypto VCs are investing now

VCs have become more cautious, but they’re still active. The direction has shifted toward later-stage seed rounds and beyond, because that’s where there’s traction and product-market fit that can be assessed. The era of placing moonshot bets purely on vibes appears to be over.

Founders no longer chase token issuance

Most of the early founders Joscha spoke with didn’t treat token issuance as a priority. The focus was on building an economically viable product first. Token optionality is a topic for later—if there even is one.

Topics worth tracking

A few trends are heating up:

On-chain foreign exchange is quietly becoming a serious topic

Privacy-oriented DeFi is rising as a legitimate track, and more and more projects are exploring institutional-grade use cases

Prediction markets have gained substantial traction, and competition around liquidity infrastructure and incentive design is getting increasingly fierce

Vault is the new Perps

DeFi builders are hunkering down to do the work, increasingly focused on institutional use cases and RWA. If there’s one theme you can’t get around, it’s the Vault. From Vault infrastructure, yield products, and rehypothecation, to strategy discovery engines and rating systems, the entire track has already highly consolidated into this category—followed closely by stablecoins and neobank offerings.

New bank features are no longer a differentiating advantage

Many DeFi projects with substantial TVL are integrating third-party service providers to deliver new bank functionality: on/off-ramp channels, debit cards, and yield vaults. This is a sensible approach for retaining users, but the logical inference is that new bank features on their own no longer constitute differentiation.

AI Agents have almost all retreated into trading bots

Most AI Agent use cases in crypto appear to have made an almost 180-degree turn, retreating back to trading bots. Joscha originally hoped to bring back some new ideas, but he didn’t. This is the only area that hasn’t yet surprised him.