ETH Denver 2023: a BUIDL year
Last week I attended ETH Denver 2023. For folks who don’t know what that is, ETH Denver is one of the most famous Crypto conferences in the world. It consists of a hackathon plus a conference. This year I believe there were around 25k people attending it.
I did not take part in the hackathon but I did end up going to conference and talking to a lot of people.
I also went to last year’s ETH Denver. I saw very interesting differences between these two years:
This year people the conference and events were most about building rather than shilling NFTs (yes last year a lot was about NFT). It was probably because of the bear market this year where people are heads down building.
The location in terms of space was way better than last year. It could accommodate everybody. I know WiFi was really really bad but at least it was not that crowded.
Events were not only about music, drinks, etc. They were a lot about networking and talking about products.
Builders everywhere you go.
What are some cool things I observed?
Outdid.io - I got a cool demo from the founder about ZK-based proofs. Using this application, a user can skin their passport and then generates proof that they are, for example, more than 21 year old without revealing their birthday. How cool if we are able to generate proof of KYC from a user without revealing their personal information. Win-Win for background check and privacy
Base - Coinbase released its own L2 called Base, which will power the next generation of developers into building decentralized apps. I saw a lot of folks wanting to build on Base. They released the Base testnet just before ETH Denver and Base has already deployed more smart contracts than other L2s which is quite cool
Eigenlayer - I met Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer and he explained how we can use the shared security model of Ethereum for securing apps on Ethereum to hyperscale Ethereum. It introduces a new concept of Restaking to secure apps. I still don’t understand a lot about it but it’s on my reading list.
Metaverse - I have been following developments in Metaverse for some time but haven’t seen any good ideas or products. At ETH Denver I saw some talks on Fashion and Gaming in Metaverse and some cool ideas about how the Metaverse experience can be made similar if not the same to real-world experience.
Wallets - Well Uniswap released a mobile wallet right in the middle of the conference was pretty cool to see. I saw a lot of new wallets coming out with their own unique ideas and use cases. I also saw a lot of praise for Coinbase Wallet (which nobody was discussing during the last ETH Denver). I guess one year can change a lot of things.
One thing I have to say is that there are lots of wallets in this space now and more are coming. I wonder if we will see some convergence or if we will start having application-specific wallets. Maybe there can be a super wallet.Social - Lens and Farcaster have been a clear hit at the conference. I think the world will eventually move to protocol-based social media where these two can lead. I saw folks getting BlueSky invites during the conference. (Side note: Lens Swag was really cool). There was also this cool meetup of Farcaster folks which I really enjoyed. I met some cool people who just flew in for ETH Denver. They had some great products and ideas and I am rooting for them.
Music NFTs - I didn’t actually see a lot of them but I heard from other folks that it’s going to be quite amazing. People are excited to build applications in this domain.
ETH Denver events - I really liked the events I attended during ETH Denver, especially the Farcaster meetup and OrangeDAO party. I got to talk to a variety of builders, investors, etc. A bunch of folks was also heading to a16z crypto startup school for their journey to learn from world-class people.
It was really fascinating to see a lot of people still building in the bear market. I think it’s a much better time to meet people in a bear market than in a bull market. People are more focused on building. I didn’t hear any talk about the next NFT project or what crypto prices are going to be. People were talking mostly about applications and the utility of blockchain-based tech which excites me to build more things.
I am happy that I was able to attend this year’s ETH Denver and I am looking forward to next year.
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