EthDenver 2023’s Optimism, Beyond the Bear. A Roundup.
Did you miss EthDenver 2023? We’ve got you covered.
Group meditations at the DAO Town Stage, dudes at the Blockchain Arcade, hardcore builders napping in the sleep zone and folks coworking on beanbags, EthDenver was a choose-your-own adventure
Of all the web3 community conferences, EthDenver is the most adored. It’s more of a celebration of the scene than a conference. As my Uber driver described on my ride to the venue, “it’s like an entire nation looking after itself.”
The spirit of the festival tends to mirror crypto’s current psyche. While EthDenver 2022 was louder and flashier with the confidence of the bull market, this year was equally as optimistic. When you take away the financial focus, it makes way for a more grounded, honest energy – a collective feel of “we’ve got work to do.”
The castle didn’t lack for color or characters. Event organizers were forced to move this year’s conference to the National Western Complex, lovingly nicknamed Spork Castle, due to the tens of thousands of attendees. An enormous open venue with concrete floors that houses the world’s largest cattle auction every year, the smell of industrial fried cheese hung in the air outside. Or something like that, the smell was hard to pinpoint.
The floor was a maze to discover, with each themed section showcasing the variety of people in this world. From group meditations at the DAO Town Stage and the dudes at the Blockchain Arcade, to the hardcore builders napping on mattresses at the sleep zone, and folks coworking on beanbags, EthDenver was a choose-your-own adventure.
While a web3 festival, EthDenver encouraged a celebration of our shared humanity. A woman, rocking black boots, pink high socks and a beanie, walked around with a sign: ‘Confirm you are a human?’ The hipsters are here for this cultural revolution.
However, what the web3 space is missing, according to Alex Kim, Head of Partnerships and Growth at BNB Chain, are more deep thinkers. “Web3 needs more philosophers than builders.” Our industry could benefit from people pondering the big questions about crypto and its place in the world. That’s how we can reach the masses.
Insightful conversations were had over at the Impact and Public Goods stage. In a session about finding community in web3, Jarred Winn, a blockchain philanthropist, said the industry is full of opportunists.
“Crypto is one of those industries where everyone wants to be early,” he said. “A lot of people are just trying to find a reason to build something with it versus actually creating real use cases.”
Winn said there are plenty of brilliant minds in crypto but what he thinks is lacking is the link between brilliance and execution. “There’s lots of grandiose visions of changing the world and then three years later, nothing’s happened,” he said. “Ideas are cheap in crypto.”
Ashley Caines, a community builder and core DAO contributor, also spoke on the panel. “I look at if community members have something in common beyond financial gain. Are they organizing themselves and meeting on their own outside of community events? Now I look for communities that are not yet tokenized. Because that tells me community members don’t have financial gain at the front of mind,” Caines said.
She also said the collective economics and co-ownership aspects of DAOs to motivate and validate a community is powerful.
“Oftentimes the token isn’t really required,” Winn added. “It’s more of a marketing play or a way to add some type of flavor in order to raise capital.”
“If your primary motivation for joining a community is financial, the relationship will always be transactional,” he said. DAOs aren’t all just good vibes. They’re companies with an asterisk.
Wipe away
At EthDenver, it wasn’t all onesies, blow-up unicorns, parties, games, and gains. Although we had a good time giving SBF the middle finger. The opening ceremony kicked off with a singalong blaming the bear market on SBF, Su Zhu, Do Kwon, and Mashinsky. “In the next bull market, we promise not to use centralized exchanges run by these toxic dudes.” Organizers printed SBF’s face on toilet paper rolls. Only at EthDenver.
There are outright fraudsters and there are the more invisible dangers. While waiting for my name to be called at a taco truck, I overhead two guys talk about deep fakes being an existential threat to humanity. It was an entrée to the conversation I was headed to, with Andrey Doronichev, a tech entrepreneur from San Francisco.
AI fantasies and fears
Doronichev led YouTube’s mobile team and helped Google launch its metaverse initiatives. He founded Optic to prevent fraud in web3, specifically NFTs.
“We’re all in our own echo chambers. There’s nothing new about polarization but we always had some kind of common ground. Now everyone has their own AI-generated program that defines their reality. A lot of people are busy making it easier to create more fake content, but there’s little investment in trust, safety, authenticity, and moderation,” Doronichev said.
Imagine using a magnifying glass to see where a photo originated. For example, it first appeared as a photograph in the New York Times, but got machine-altered by Photoshop, and now it appears on Instagram. Optic tracks digital content back to its origins, showing how it’s been modified, remixed or reimagined.
OpenSea uses Optic for every token that goes on sale. They process hundreds of requests per second to validate different media assets.
The AI representation at EthDenver had definitely picked up since last year, thanks to ChatGPT and DALL·E’s explosion.
After a long conversation about threats to humanity, it was time to check out with some new friends. We headed over to an after party at an industrial winery. So Denver. I was standing next to a girl with a dog, wrapped in a warning: “Do not pet. I’m in training.” Of course, when you see a cute dog at a bar, you pat it.
Ronny was one of these guys. He was at EthDenver to film SOVEREIGN, his documentary about the story of crypto. “It was originally a narrative about the timeline from Bitcoin to the fall of FTX. But I wanted to bring people into the story more. The Government will have drones and AI robots. The documentary intends to educate people on crypto and if, at the end, they still don’t believe in the technology, be able to offer an alternative solution,” he said.
“It’s not about selling them on crypto, but rather, uniting to find a solution,” he added. After a few hours in crypto’s underbelly, it was time to get some rest.
Discovering crypto fighting cancer
The conversations with Uber drivers were an opportunity to gauge how Denver perceived web3. I got a lovely guy who goes by Roger Rabbit on Twitter. “I discovered the Lazy Bunny NFT community while I had cancer. I couldn’t go outside. The community saved my life,” he said.
“I even sent Vitalik a bunny for his philanthropic efforts,” he added. From the curious to the committed, it was clear the love for crypto had extended throughout this city.
The next morning, I met a small group of women in web3 for brunch at the hip restaurant, Urban Farmer. The waitress spotted my EthDenver pass and ushered me to a Uniswap meet-up. I quickly realized it was a mistake and made my way to the table booking. We had well and truly taken over the city.
There were four of us women and one guy at the table. Me, a VC, a web3 lifestyle platform builder, a woman exploring regenerative fashion, and Ashley Caines – the DAO expert I saw speak the day before. Web3 can be a small world. Half of us had Bloody Marys, the other half had coffee. We all laughed that this was our first real meal in days.
Read more: Hong Kong Regulators to Test Crypto Traders and Require Their Holdings to be Disclosed, New Paper Proposes
Tommy, the VC and token guy in the group, said he’d heard the recent cryptocurrency regulation in Hong Kong might bring in the bull market sooner. Caines shared the work she’s doing to encourage the first federal policy for DAOs. After three days full of meet and greets, it was re-energizing to spend a few hours with an intimate group, all coming from different sides of web3.
I made it over to the castle just in time to catch Collab.Land’s film series premiere. Thobey Campion, the ex-VICE filmmaker calls it a love letter to web3. “The community often struggles to explain itself. We wanted to give a human face to what we’re doing in crypto and create a bridge for people who know nothing about it,” Campion shared.
I did one final lap of the festival floor, walking out behind a guy in swag that said: ‘I’m ending extreme poverty with a stablecoin.’ Web3 is certainly a place of possibilities and potential.