Denver’s culmination consisted of an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a third-party candidate for president.
Despite flexing his crypto bona fides, RFK Jr. — interviewed by Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long — was stopped multiple times by hecklers. One heckler stood up on a chair, shouting “Kennedy is the establishment!” While another repeated the refrain “the Earth is being genocided.”
In the middle of the chaos, a lady handed out flyers about a Kennedy Jr. token which was not actually associated with the actual campaign.
Chris Dixon, the general partner at the venture capital giant Andreessen-Horowitz, signed copies of his book on blockchain technology and the Internet.
This scene may have been a fitting end for the annual Ethereum/Web3 Summit, which was chaotic enough in itself. A central narrative for the conference did not seem to be able to emerge as the crypto world advances at the same time in different directions.
The mood among crypto enthusiasts milling about Denver’s National Western Complex was surprisingly positive.
The noise of the conference attendees who were nearby competed against the presenters. The premises were inhabited by a giant squid. The representatives for the “cloudless” Computer protocol Fluence gave out cotton candy.
John Deaton had a booth in the event. He is a crypto-skeptic Massachusetts Senator and a pro-crypto attorney. Deaton said that he would like to send Warren and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon a video from the event.
“I don’t see criminals. I see regular people,” Deaton stated.
Crypto space has many reasons to be optimistic. The price of bitcoin (BTC), which was boosted by the spot bitcoin ETF’s inflows, reached near-all-time highs at the conference. The venture funding market is showing signs of improvement. Coinbase has posted a better-than-expected earnings.
Jesse Pollak, the Base founder who is optimistic about Coinbase’s future, responded as follows: “Only one?”
What is a narrative?
ETHDenver is a great event, but no one seems to be able to define it.
A senior exchange manager told me Bitcoin’s DeFi applications were in the spotlight. One founder claimed that this is the year for consumer crypto. Other places, I’ve heard that decentralized AI is getting the most attention.
In a recent conversation, I raised this issue with Doug Petkanics. He is the co-founder and CEO of Livepeer. Petkanics said it was his fifth ETHDenver. He wondered aloud if the crypto industry had not outgrown events like this. New York City hosted its first ETHDenver in the late 2000s. “Internet Week,” Petkanics was recalled. However, that seems like a very broad category to use for today’s conference.
Web3 could be headed in the same direction.
I was able to speak to many people who expressed the desire that crypto focus more on developing apps and real-world use cases and less on technical infrastructure.
Crypto has become a popular technology due to its focus on infrastructure. “building for ourselves,” Andy Bromberg told me that Beam is a payment app. The time has come to “build for others.”
It appears that this news did not make it to the next-door developer event, where coders hunched on keyboards on a floor typically used for a rodeo.
Couple of devs napping on beanbags. “FRONT END NEEDED,” A sign was propped on a project table.
A duo was working together on a project for decentralized AI transcription. The duo said that they had expected to see more AI teams, however, most of the projects presented alongside theirs appeared to be related to infrastructure.
Edge City was a soft launch by an organization that hoped to grow into a national brand. “society incubator” Aiming for human flourishing. Edge City, a spin-off from Zuzalu is an exclusive retreat hosted by Vitalik Anderin in Montenegro.
Gary Sheng, co-founder of Edge City, and I were seated inside the venue as attendees practiced yoga outside or enjoyed the saunas and ice baths. Sheng called ETHDenver a “world-class event”. “biggest family reunion” You can also find out more about the following: “soulful technologists,” But said that side events such as his can help separate signal from noise.
“A lot of people, they feel really overwhelmed by ETHDenver. The quality of the average interaction is not very good. A lot of VCs, a lot of shilling,” Sheng said. “It’s like, overwhelming, a sea of information. You’re not sure what’s high quality. And so I think curators are really valuable today.”
This sentiment was generally shared by the few Edge City attendees that I talked to. The joke was that side events at ETHDenver are a way to alleviate congestion, just as layer-2s were created in order to ease congestion on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Conferee goers can also escape the crowds of the main event by attending the happy hours organized by different projects. In a conversation with a DeFi-fanatic at an oracle Pyth event, I learned that this crypto enthusiast would be going to only four conferences for 2018.
“I love talking crypto,” He said. “If only it was all hot girls here,” “I added,” he said, gesturing towards the group of men in our immediate vicinity.
ETHDenver’s attendees were overwhelmingly male and younger. Even though the ETF was approved and institutions are slowly moving into cryptocurrency, it seemed that crypto’s unique outsiders still dominated the event. Zero people wore suits to ETHDenver. The only person I saw in formal clothing was a man wearing a collared t-shirt. However, he wore pajama bottoms and shoes with sequins to make up for it.
I said to Coinbase’s vice president of Engineering Will Robinson, in an unprofessional manner during the interview, that it might make him feel as if he was surrounded by children. Robinson, an engineer who’s worked for 20 years, shrugged his shoulders in reply.
“I’m surrounded by people who see the future,” He told me. “Kids often see the future.”
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