Cardano Summit 2025: Day 2 Recap
Day 2 continued with more high-energy sessions, masterclasses, and panels
Today continued the enterprise-driven momentum of Day 1 at Berlin’s Gasometer Schöneberg. Discussions brought fresh perspectives on AI, digital identity, finance, and trust-minimized infrastructure.
The day unfolded with an emphasis on how technical maturity, regulatory clarity, and cross-sector collaboration shape a more transparent and scalable digital future.
Cardano Foundation CTO Giorgio Zinetti announced a new Cardano stablecoin initiative and an upcoming Masumi hackathon in December 2025.
The morning continued with Phillip Pon’s State of the Entity keynote. Pon highlighted how 2025 sharpened EMURGO’s mission as a connector across technology, capital, and real-world value, while also sharing the lessons and strategic pivots that inform the organization’s next phase of growth.
“Cardano - core infrastructure meets real-world assets.”
A conversation on the infrastructure organizations need to fully leverage AI brought together leaders from Infomineo, SNGLR Group, The Metaverse Institute, and Johnson & Johnson.
The panel highlighted the mounting tension between rising AI compute demands and global energy inequities, stressing that billions still lack secure access to power even as infrastructure strains under new workloads. Speakers underscored that sustainable solutions exist if industries learn to harness global energy resources more intelligently and responsibly.
Nick McQuire (Gartner, Managing Vice President, Emerging Technologies) then explored the top AI disruptions poised to shape the future, including advances in decentralized identity and disinformation security.
“You can’t see the art of the possible if you’re fixated on the limitations of the present.”
He noted that organizations should look beyond present-day constraints to grasp the possibilities emerging from agentic AI, cloud sovereignty, and new trust architectures. His outlook pointed to a future where AI agents coordinate complex workflows, enterprises shift toward sovereign cloud environments, and authentication of digital content becomes a multibillion-dollar priority.
The Main Stage shifted to global payments, where speakers from Mastercard, Crypto.com, Aeonic Digital, Wanchain, Anzens, and Nexum Capital examined how stablecoins converge with traditional financial rails. Their discussion framed compliant on and off ramps as critical infrastructure for retailers, banks, and technology providers working to modernize cross-border transactions.
During the discussion, Christian Rau (Mastercard, Senior Vice President, Blockchain and Digital Assets) explained that stablecoins can be viewed through two lenses: one that sees them as the emergence of new, proprietary payment franchises, and another that interprets them as a revitalization of existing payment infrastructure.
Sebastian Küpers followed with insights into the creation of Masumi and explained why Plan.Net Group built its AI agent protocol on Cardano. During the keynote, he put forward the idea that blockchain may ultimately serve autonomous AI agents more naturally than human users.
He suggested that Cardano offers a strong foundation for this emerging agentic economy, since future AI systems will require infrastructure capable of supporting large-scale parallel interactions and high-volume on-chain activity.
Throughout the day, attendees also moved through a broad set of expert-led masterclasses that expanded on topics such as digital identity, decentralized funding models, transparent supply chains, open-source coordination, financial inclusion, and sustainability.
These sessions offered hands-on opportunities to engage with emerging solutions across Cardano’s ecosystem and provided practical context for many of the ideas introduced on the Main Stage.
A later session turned to trust-minimized distributed systems, where speakers from Kaiko, Blockdaemon, GLEIF, Iagon, and STORM Partners compared experiences shifting from legacy structures to decentralized enterprise models. The panel highlighted practical constraints, economic incentives, and the operational benefits that emerge once organizations embrace distributed design.
Digital identity returned to center stage in Toward Digital Identity: Plotting a Roadmap to Adoption by 2030, featuring experts from AQ Forensics, PCCW Global, the Cardano Foundation, and Animoca Brands.
“You can't put a monetary value on a human life. We live in an environment where we don’t have privacy, but we can make decisions on technology that can build a future for our children, and our children’s children, where they can have that privacy.”
The session emphasized the human stakes behind privacy, with speakers stressing that protecting personal data carries value far beyond economics. The conversation underscored the need for technologies that give future generations greater control, security, and dignity in an increasingly digital world.
Don Tapscott then introduced ideas from You to the Power of Two, describing a future where personal digital agents amplify human capability.
“AI is changing from being a set of tools to being part of the personal experience. Get ready for a huge change.”
His talk underscored the risks of centralized AI and illustrated how decentralized systems create safer and more accountable foundations for intelligent tools.
The afternoon continued with a session on Digital Product Passports, where leaders from Plastiks, Tokenance, Agrow Labs, 1Med, and Spin-OS spoke about upcoming requirements across Europe. The afternoon continued with a session on Digital Product Passports, where leaders from Plastiks, Tokenance, Agrow Labs, 1Med, and Spin-OS spoke about upcoming requirements across Europe.
Panelists highlighted fragmentation across supply chains and data systems, calling for reliable, standardized, real-time verification using blockchain to replace missing records and opaque processes. They noted that immutable data, continuous auditing, and digital product passports could drive a major infrastructure shift that advances global product tracking and trust.
Investment strategies for the Web3 era took focus next, with contributors from Sigma Capital, Sundial, LCX, Memberscap, Lqwid, and EMURGO exploring how institutional capital interacts with decentralized innovation.
“DeFi is an extension of finance. We are not reinventing the wheel."
Panelists noted DeFi extends established finance principles onto blockchain, requiring trust, education, adoption, and institutional alignment while scaling only when major banks gain clear economic incentives under supportive regulation. They stressed that uneven regulatory progress across jurisdictions limits institutional commitment, even as vast markets like commodity trading signal strong potential for growth.
Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard closed the Main Stage by weaving together insights from across both days and encouraging attendees to lean into the opportunities created by AI, decentralization, and Europe’s accelerating digital transformation.
“Where AI has agents, blockchain has people. This is the superpower of blockchain. It’s a technology powered by people, for people.”
The Summit Awards followed, honoring community leaders and ecosystem contributors. This year’s winners included:
- Infrastructure Platform: NMKR Studio
- Impactful SPO: PRIDE
- Impactful Native Asset: HOSKY
- Developer & Tooling Excellence: TxPipe
- Governance Champion: Tempo.Vote
- Ambassadors & Education: Catalyst Africa Town Hall
- DEX: Minswap
- Lending Protocol: Fluid Tokens
- Aggregator: Fetch
- Stablecoin: USDM
- Tools & Analytics: TapTools
- Other dApps: Atrium
Giorgio Zinetti announced the Layer Up hackathon winners:
- BioFlow (Florian Krueger-Herbert): A B2B/B2C health-data platform that provides subscription-based blood testing and operates a proprietary data marketplace.
- GovtWool (Ryan Williams): A governance tooling solution focused on implementing emerging standards such as CIP-149 and CIP-169.
- Jaimo Solutions GmbH (Christian Ries): A verification service that authenticates archived social media posts using Merkletree Rootnodes and Membership Proofs.
Frederik Gregaard announced the Battle of the Builders winners:
As attendees moved into the closing reception and the Berlin Barbecue in the Sky, conversations reflected on two days of collaboration, technical progress, and ambitious ideas charting the future of decentralized enterprise.
Highlights and on-demand replays of the Main Stage sessions will be available soon through the Cardano Foundation’s channels.
We hope to see everyone again next year in Singapore!