DAS still feels like a real Web3 conference, but stepping back—what's actually left of the original vision?

We came into this space talking about decentralization, cutting out middlemen, breaking free from all the gatekeeping we hated in traditional finance. The messaging was loud and clear: no more intermediaries, no more centralized control.

But look around. Are we just recreating the same old power structures under a different label? The players change, the promise stays fresh, but somehow we're drifting back toward the same concentration and dependency issues we swore we'd moved beyond.

It's worth asking: are we building something genuinely different, or just repackaging the old model with blockchain branding?