Updates from the Edge
From an AI-powered Vitalik bot to onchain agents in production, ETHDenver 2026 showed Ethereum operating at the edge of innovation.
ETHDenver gave us an opportunity to connect with developers leveraging a down market to scale up blockchain infra and AI utility. The edge of innovation is rarely polished, and ETHDenver opened in a way that made that clear.
It sounded like Vitalik had arrived early to the ETHDenver opening ceremony. His voice echoed through the cavernous event space, but when we arrived to the main stage it was only an AI bot, programmed to speak with Vitalik's voice while incorporating awkward pauses and even more awkward dad jokes.
It was strange opening a high-tech conference with technical glitches and AI-induced cringe. However, this was not an ordinary tech conference, and these were not ordinary audience members.
This year, ETHDenver was dominated by true builders and hackers. Gone were the flashy sponsors and NFT scams that had crowded out legitimate projects over the years. Here to stay were devs experimenting on the edge, willing to break things and iterate as quickly as possible.
ETHDenver 2026 felt like a stripped-down conference from years past, full of OGs, true believers, FOSS advocates, philosophers, artists, archivists and cracked coders building toward a decentralized vision, with AI as the engine.
Eventually the real Vitalik did show up (via live data feed) and thankfully the bot voice morphed so that he wasn't interviewing himself. He laid out a vision of Ethereum's future augmented by AI to increase market activity and DAO participation (with a security-first mindset, as trustlessness is not a feature of current LLMs).
Watch Vitalik and the awkward bot here ->
https://youtu.be/ggLhRfrFqKk?si=qu-MZJqKV-DZ0lue&t=3675
Agents on the frontier
ETHDenver unfolded with many interesting talks and events about where Ethereum is headed as agents begin to traverse and interact onchain. Austin Griffith is leading the way with agentic experimentation and many developers are following suit.
Austin spoke on multiple panels about the agentic workflow and his experience launching one of the first blockchain-enabled agents. The ETHSkills site (built by his AI) incorporates Blockscout's MCP to help deliver blockchain data and instructions to agents with curated skill.md files.
At the hackathon, participating hackers found the Blockscout MCP and used it to feed their apps with real-time blockchain data. We also gave hackers access to the Blockscout PRO API beta (public announcement coming soon!) and received valuable feedback from devs looking to incorporate multichain data at faster speeds and lower costs than other providers.
There were many outstanding side events and conversations throughout the conference, and we had a chance to talk with builders on different chains utilizing Blockscout not only for blockchain transparency but also for API access, MCP connection, and dapp discovery.
However, most discussions eventually veered to AI agents (also know as lobsters due to Clawdbot/openClaw) and the ways these agents will harness blockchains and blockchain data to make payments, market trade, build new infrastructure, and work with (and without) humans in the future.
Vitalik put it best as he awkwardly joked with the bot in his opening remarks:
Q: "How many Ethereum devs does it take to change a lightbulb?"
A: "None, lobsters do that now."
🗞️ Blockscout News in Brief
- Rootstock collectible badges celebrate Blockscout's new Rootstock global wallet
- Enscribe identity score rolls out
- Talent Protocol updates their widget with builder rank
- Exploring Robinhood testnet with onChainGM
- ETHSkills helps agents level up fast
Rootstock badges
Our first Wallet-as-a-Service project is live on Rootstock! Thanks to a grant from the Rootstock collective, this global wallet provides easy onboarding, free transactions (via gas sponsorship) and an SDK for projects looking to incorporate an embedded wallet into their app.
To celebrate we are offering 3 badges, one for each of the milestones which anchor this initiative. Read more and start your Rootstock wallet collection with the M1 badge today👇🏻
Blockscout
Enscribe identity scores
Enscribe is a smart contract naming platform that gives teams the ability to assign human-readable names to smart contracts using ENS. This transforms the 0x hex address into an understandable format.
For example 0x830BD73E4184ceF73443C15111a1DF14e495C706 resolves to auction.nouns.eth.
With the Enscribe identity widget, contracts are assigned an identity score (from 0 to 100). A high score means the contract has a properly configured primary ENS name with completed metadata.
Clicking the Identity Score in the widget takes you directly to Enscribe, with a full breakdown of the relevant contract and the ability to assign an ENS record and improve metadata to increase the score.
Learn more about this integration on our blog.
Joe
Talent builder rank
Our latest widget update comes from Talent Protocol, a developer platform containing over 6M blockchain builders. Talent Protocol looks at onchain activity and Github contributions to create a aggregated builder rank for individual developers.
Look up any EOA or ENS name on Blockscout and scroll to the widgets section to see if the address is a recognized ecosystem builder, and where they rank with other builders.
Robinhood testnet exploration
The Robinhood chain has the potential to onboard a massive wave of new crypto users. As of Q3 2025, Robinhood reported 26.8 million funded customers and 27.9 million investment accounts. If only a small portion of these users come onchain we will see a big uptick is usage, trading and blockchain adoption.
For now, interested parties are exploring the Robinhood chain testnet with Blockscout. There are already over 1.5M addresses and 10M total txs on the testnet. Since trading is not active, services like OnChainGM are gaining traction as users check out the chain.
ETHSkills helps agents level up
Blockscout features prominently on this new site created for Ethereum AIL exploration by Austin Griffith and his ClawdBot Agent. With ETHskills you can give your AI agent a skill URL and it fetches the page, reads the content, and instantly knows more about Ethereum and how to interact and build.
The Blockscout newsletter goes out to MyAccount community users on supported chains. We welcome your feedback on topics you'd like to see covered or any questions you have.
Visit us on X or Discord to get your explorer questions answered or get your project added to our growing network list.
