Ethereal Summit NY — Day 1 & 2 (11th and 12th of May)
Here are my impressions from the two-day conference #EtherealSummit in NYC.
Day 1 — We arrived at the venue at around 9:15 am as it was announced that the doors open at 9:00 am. It was a warm day with a sunny weather so I was prepared to wait a bit longer until we get in. Actually, the organization of the event was so good that we did not even wait and we went through registration really fast as we got our e-tickets prepared.
The opening of the event started with “Greetings” of the co-founders of Ethereal Summit — Jesse Grushack, Amanda Gutterman and Saraswathi Subbaraman. Their mission is to create systems that enable humanity to move with a shared purpose.
Overall, the whole venue was really interesting, there were 6 different halls with attention-grabbing decoration in a contemporary style.
Let’s not forget the food which was delivered by food trucks in front of the venue, offering a variety of choices — Lebanese, Korean, NYC’s most iconic dishes, etc. During the breaks between the panels everyone was outside as the weather was great and it was an opportunity to meet new people and have a chat.
As a program, the first day of the event was really amazing, but one of the key speakers that impressed me was Amber Baldet with her closing lecture on the Main stage. Maybe here is good to mention, that everyone was surprised how fast she was actually speaking and the same time it was understandable. She covered many aspects of blockchain technology in general, but she did not say a word for her future project and she promised to reveal the secret at the Consensus Conference, which is between 14th and 16th of May.
So… we are looking forward to it.
It is also worth mentioning we met many of the people from the audience who are working on interesting projects. We also had significant talks with potential investors. We did more than 40 meetings and talks with inspiring people and we received a positive feedback about 15toGO and our mission to decentralize group travel industry.
Day 2 — around noon we attended a “Daily Show” Reboot with Ronny Chieng, a Tech reporter, having a conversation about the token craze with the Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin, moderated by Kavita Gupta, a Founding Managing Partner at ConsenSys Ventures. Ronny brought everyone in attendance to tears with his jokes about blockchain.
Kavita also made announcements regarding the next projects supported by ConsenSys Ventures.
Straight after that, there was an interesting talk by Sid Coelho-Prabhu from Coinbase. He is the Product Lead of Toshi, a browser for the Ethereum network that provides universal access to financial services.
Sid said: “ÐApps are where consumers will experience the full power of crypto. We now organize ÐApps into categories to help new users make sense of the decentralized ecosystem. Take your pick from a variety of Exchanges, Games & Collectibles, Marketplaces, Social Media, Jobs, and Crowdfunding ÐApps.”
That is pretty much similar to my personal belief that
The real power of the tokenization will be unveiled only when the industry has its examples of globally adopted products with hundreds of millions of users. To achieve that we don’t have to explain how blockchain works but to create a better user experience and seamless process of interaction with the DApps.
It was definitely hard to attract the audience’ attention after the entertaining talk of Ronny Chieng. In the first 2 to 3 minutes, everyone was kind of distracted. He is leading one of the projects of Coinbase. With his lecture on Toshi, he succeeded to engage the public again.
The last talk of Joe Lubin before the end of the conference was about the road toward a decentralized future and his vision of what lies ahead. He explained that the organization is one layer, there is no hierarchy, everyone is equal.
He also said: “We have traded scalability for trust, but now we have a trustworthy foundation to rebuild on — and scale.” And he definately was confident about that saying that in next year or two Ethereum will be able to scale and satisfy the growing demand for fast and safe transactions through the network.
Joe announced the full potential od ConsenSys, which a whole ecosystem and an organism, in which all parts work towards the achievement of one common aim.
At the end of the event, there was a charity auction where everyone could buy a piece of art with cryptocurrencies.
One of the rooms was an art hall with an exhibition called Codex & R.A.R.E Art, which represents the work of many artists. “This exhibition features works including commissions from nine artists and art collectives taking up themes of trustless social organization, structural inequity, extrastate conflict, techno-piety, and digital commons, using the technology and language of distributed ledgers as material for critical investigation.”
We had an amazing time, the @EtherealSummit brought us positive vibes, great keynotes and new friends, and supporters.
We are looking forward to our next event @Consensus during the #BlockchainWeekNYC.
