After some much needed few days off in the South of France, it is time to look back at the intense week that EthCC was.
Here are my 4 key takeaways.
1- IRL is the best
After 15 months of COVID lockdown and Zoom calls, I was really looking forward to finally meeting people in real life again! While an in-person conference sucks the life out of you, all these discussions made me feel so much more energized than my weekly regimen of video-conferences which have ruled my life in 2020.
My last time speaking at EthCC was for EthCC 2 in 2019, and wow, how things have changed! The new venue is an upgrade even though I felt a bit nostalgic for the “rough around the edges” feel of the CNAM conference rooms from days of old.
Holding the event in the summer was also a great idea. People crowded terraces around the venue and the Victor became my second office during the conference.
I can’t wait for the next in person event! EthLisbon anyone?
2- DAOs provided real utility
As usual DAOs and governance were a major topic. While all the most prominent DeFi DAO were here: AAVE DAO, MakerDAO, Synthetix DAO, etc.. A select few got some usage from prominent Etherians: Vitalik Butterin actually tested out the proof of Humanity protocol of Kleros DAO. Kain from Synthetix gave an honest feedback on his experience turning Synthetix into a DAO. Moving to fully decentralized governance is not an easy road but it is worth it.
But the most interesting part to me were the DAOs who organized events only accessible to their members. JennyDAO organized a boat party for their members and Kleros organized a cocktail where drinks were free only for people who verified their Proof of Humanity (maybe the reason why Vitalik verified his proof of humanity ;).
Just like in Miami however, the must-attend DAO party was organized by Friends With Benefits. They even went so far as to introduce FWB Gatekeeper, a token gating ticketing solution for IRL events.
Finally TheDAOist put together a conference around DAO the day after EthCC, I am sorry I missed it as feedback from the event was great. If you made it there please share with me your take-away from the event.
3- NFT NFT NFT
The DeFi track was still the largest with great projects such as APWine, Paraswap, Centrifuge and many others presenting. Not to mention, the DeFi facilitated some very desirable afterparties (AAVE, Paraswap, Uniswap all held amazing side events). But regardless of what type of champagne was poured, NFT was the acronyme everybody was talking about.
Art NFTs and collectibles had a strong presence with projects such as Solid enabling you to print your favorite NFTs or EthBlockArt (a platform to create generative art from blockchain data). Decryptstreet organized an NFT treasure hunt in the streets of Paris which proved quite successful! If you are still skeptical about Art NFT, you should watch Primavera’s presentation about the legal aspects of NFTs. Fascinating talk!
However there is more to NFTs than art, and if you doubted it, Ben Lackoff’s talk is a good primer on the wide range of NFT types. Everybody seemed convinced that gaming is the killer application for NFts. And with the ridiculous funding rounds of Sorare, or Cometh celebrating passing 10k players, there were plenty of examples of successful games at EthCC.
The most interesting talk on this subject was with Axie Infinity founder Aleksander Larsen. Axie Infinity has seen tremendous growth over the last couple of months reaching close to 500k daily users. He explained their vision of building a digital nation around their game. Yes, an ambitious goal, but with such an active gamer community they might just make it a reality!
But all in all, the undercurrent of the week was: what utility do NFTs unleash? This brings us to our next and final takeaway.
4- Blockchain as the social graph
A major topic of discussion, and definitely the one topic in which I was most interested was how blockchain can be used as a social layer. One of Arianee’s key goals is to create a new way for creators to interact with their community. We use NFTs as a touchpoint which ensures that a brand can reach the current product owner even if they do not know who they are. This was actually the main topic of my talk Speaking NFTs where I talked about how brands such as Breitling, Ba&Sh and Satoshi Studio (among many others) use Arianee to create new relationships with their product owners. I also hinted at a new product launch in September….
So when Vitalik criticized Google login and proposed an Ethereum login to replace it and turn Ethereum accounts into full-fledged profiles, I could not be happier. Vitalik’s overall message was that Ethereum is more than just finance. The current NFT enthusiasm is proof of that and the first applications we see adding value .
While Vitalik is always a few steps ahead, others are not far behind. Jamie Burke described NFTs as a “native Social Media” on which the metaverse will be built. Cooper Turley presented how Audius is already using blockchain to create communities of music fans. And finally the AAVE team went even one step further and announced that they were working on a standard for on-chain social graphs.
It seems like the use of blockchain as a social graph has finally met its time and I could not be more excited with what is about to come.
