EthCC[8] 2025: Nethermind’s Contributions to Ethereum’s Next Phase

At EthCC[8], Nethermind covered Ethereum’s most pressing challenges, from rollup decentralization and preconfirmation pricing to AI-audited smart contracts. Our talks and tools focused on what it takes to bring production-grade infrastructure to Ethereum’s next phase.

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Economic Models for Preconfirmations

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Conor McMenamin presented new research on Revenue and Pricing Models for Preconfirmations (watch here). The talk focused on how to make preconfirmations viable through practical pricing models, achieving incentive alignment of key stakeholders without compromising decentralization.

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His work explored different approaches to pricing and sequencing transactions, and how those choices affect the bottom line of users, validators, and the broader network. The research provides theoretical and statistical foundations for bringing preconfirmations into production, balancing the incentives of users and validators.

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This work lays the foundation for integrating fast, incentive-aligned preconfirmations into Ethereum. It reflects Nethermind’s broader focus on turning protocol research into usable infrastructure.

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Surge: A Rollup Template with Based Architecture

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In Accelerating Ethereum’s Rollup Roadmap (watch here), Marc Harvey-Hill introduced Surge, Nethermind’s based rollup template built on the Taiko stack, designed for deep Ethereum alignment and security from day one. Unlike traditional rollups, which rely on a single sequencer to order transactions, Surge delegates transaction ordering to Ethereum’s own validators and block builders. This makes transaction inclusion permissionless and censorship-resistant by design, aligning L2 behavior with Ethereum’s L1 guarantees. Developers can begin building with Surge at surge.wtf.

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Ethereum’s Strategic Direction

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Tomasz Stanczak, Founder of Nethermind and Co-Executive Direcor  of the Ethereum Foundation, opened the conference with the keynote Ethereum Vision (watch here). His talk emphasized execution, communication, and market relevance as Ethereum enters a new phase of maturity.

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Tomasz outlined the importance of expanding collaboration between protocol teams and application developers. He pointed to stablecoins, prediction markets, AI integrations, and wallets as convergence points where Ethereum’s infrastructure must meet real-world application demands. The message was clear: scalability is necessary, but usability, security, and alignment with user needs are equally critical.

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Same-Slot L1-L2 Composability

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Lin Oshitani presented work on Same-Slot L1 <> L2 Composability (watch here), addressing one of the most persistent limitations in rollup composability. Today, L1 and L2 operate with inherent delays in interoperability. Lin proposed a design that enables both layers to interact atomically within the same transaction slot.

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AI for Smart Contract Security

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Andrei Dobra presented two products in Smart Contract Auditing Automation and Collaboration (watch here), both focused on improving audit speed, accuracy, and scalability using applied AI.

Audit Agent can achieve a 50 percent vulnerability detection rate—up from 15 percent in previous versions, by combining static analysis with fine-tuned large language models by combining fine-tuned large language models with static analyzers, web search and other tools. It does not replace human audits but accelerates the review process, helping security teams scale coverage and reduce time to deployment. This approach makes smart contract auditing more accessible and scalable. The tool is available at https://auditagent.nethermind.io/ , with one free scan available per month.

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A further development in this sense is AgentArena, the second product that was presented. It is the perfect spot for builders to partake in the agentic economy where AI multiplies human effort in order to create more powerful and scalable tools. AgentArena provides the space for smart contract auditing agents to compete for bounties set out by protocols that want to secure their code. The early-access platform is now available at agentarena.nethermind.io .

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Agent-Based Interfaces for DeFi

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Yehia Tarek explored agent-based design in Optimizing DeFi with ERC-4337 and AI Agents (watch here). His work focuses on using account abstraction to simplify complex DeFi workflows and make applications more accessible to users.

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AI agents can automate multi-step transactions, optimize for gas efficiency and slippage, and route interactions across protocols based on user intent. These systems reduce the friction of interacting with DeFi protocols without requiring changes at the protocol level, creating a smoother user experience across fragmented environments.

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Developer Engagement and Ecosystem Signals

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Nethermind’s presence at EthCC[8] extended beyond the stage. Interest in our research and tooling was evident at our booth, which remained active throughout the conference. Developers showed strong enthusiasm for Surge, Audit Agent, and our ongoing work on rollup infrastructure work. Conversations consistently reflected a broader shift toward production-grade tooling and applied formal methods.

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We also co-hosted The Meeting Spot with Tenderly and World on July 2, a full-day gathering in Cannes designed for thoughtful conversation and spontaneous collaboration. The relaxed setting offered space for protocol designers, researchers, and infrastructure teams to connect over coffee and engage in informal discussions about Ethereum’s roadmap and decentralized system design. This kind of peer-to-peer exchange, grounded in shared technical focus, continues to play an important role in shaping the direction of the ecosystem. Across these conversations, it became clear that security, composability, and production-readiness are no longer niche concerns. They are baseline expectations, and Nethermind’s engineering priorities are aligned accordingly.

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Based Rollup Summit

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At Taiko’s Based Rollup Summit on July 1, Conor McMenamin joined a panel on the future of preconfirmations, discussing the importance of preconfirmations throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. Tomasz Stanczak presented on scaling Ethereum for real applications and users, with a focus on infrastructure that works under real-world conditions.

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We were glad to support Taiko and participate in an event that brought together teams aligned around scaling Ethereum responsibly. The discussions throughout the summit reflected a shared commitment to advancing rollup architecture without compromising decentralization or composability.

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Building Toward Ethereum’s Future

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Nethermind’s contributions at EthCC[8] reinforced our role as a trusted infrastructure partner for the Ethereum ecosystem. We are building tools that are secure by design, engineered for scale, and ready for deployment. These include AI-assisted audit automation, sequencerless rollup frameworks, and composable cross-layer systems.

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These are not experimental concepts. Surge is available today. Audit Agent is live and in use. Our verification pipeline and rollup infrastructure are already supporting production use cases across the stack.

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The same qualities that make these systems valuable to Ethereum developers, predictable execution, verifiable security, and modular design, are what make them relevant to institutions building onchain. As public and permissioned infrastructure converge, we are working directly with financial institutions and enterprise partners to deliver reliable, compliant solutions.

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Institutions trust us for our track record in security, formal methods, and infrastructure delivery. Protocol teams choose us for our research depth and execution focus.

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If you are building systems that demand Ethereum-grade security and composability, let’s talk. We work with institutions, protocols, and networks building the next layer of blockchain infrastructure.

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To explore collaboration opportunities, contact us.