Yesterday marked the first day of ETHDenver.
The price for ETH at the time was $2,300. You must think that people here are depressed.
Not really. In 20 conversations I’m sure, only 1 person brought up market prices.
ETHDenver, with its 18,000 participants in the city is the second largest Ethereum event free of charge after Devcon.
Jonathan started the evening with his folkiest songs. “A Song A Day” Mann. Mann. “feminized wef soyboy mentality” Solana DeFi bronze-age Spartans might cringe at the vibes.
ETHDenver has been criticized by some people for not meeting their expectations “Ethereum-aligned” Why are there sponsors who do not use Ethereum?
The criticism was so salient that ETHDenver’s founder John Paller addressed it during the opening of the festival.
“95%+ of our sponsors and 90% of our content is ETH, EVM or ETH aligned 😘😘😘,” His slide show read:
In the main hall, you will find booths from Uniswap Arbitrum Coinbase.
Samantha Yap, the founder of Yap Global, ETHDenver’s official PR partners and ETHDenver’s PR director told me that this year’s ETHDenver has a more professional feel.
“ETHDenver in its earlier years was more scrappy. This year, booths are spending a lot more money and there’s a greater professionalization of the event. The industry is evolving,” Yap said.
This year, there doesn’t appear to be a single dominant narrative.
Unlike last year, where EigenLayer and restaking dominated the agenda, there’s pretty much a sprinkle of anything you could think of: DePIN, AI agents, regulation, RWAs, privacy and — of course — interoperability. Ethereum is all about interoperability.
Many conferences are packed with panels and fireside talks, as well as speakers giving their PR-approved but sometimes dull speeches. The day’s first agenda featured a fiery debate between Haseeb Queshi, from Dragonfly Capital, and Matt O’Connor of Legion. They were discussing the differences between venture capital financing and ICOs. Legion, a crowdfunding platform similar to ICOs.
Matt: “The idea that VCs are catalyzing growth and the product’s purpose to begin with…this gatekeeping and holier-than-thou attitude of VCs knowing which projects to fund leads to less experimentation and variety of what’s backed.”
Haseeb: “It’s rich since Legion raised money from VCs…and how many individual users using Legion own equity in Legion? I’m going to assume the number is zero.”
The following are the most important launches of yesterday.
- MetaMask has launched integrations for Bitcoin, Solana, gas abstractions, an overhaul of the UX, smart transactions, and a MetaMask credit card.
- Open Agents Alliance is a global initiative that combines infrastructure to allow AI access without permission.
- Uniswap has announced a fiat-off-ramping for the Uniswap Wallet, powered by Transak Moonpay and Robinhood.
- BitLayer has announced BitVM Bridge. This bridge allows for a trust-minimized connection between Bitcoin and other chains such as Base, Starknet Arbitrum Sonic Plume.
- Babylon and the digital asset broker Native have developed institutional-grade bitcoin insurance for stakeholders. The coverage is denominated BTC.
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