Day 2 in Dublin: Developers & MoneyConf
Day 2 of ConsenSys’ time in Dublin. The office launched on June 11 (read about it here) and the next day the team jumped right into developer meetups and MoneyConf 2018. Updates from the day below.
Day two in Dublin started early with a meetup at the ConsenSys office for developers interested in working in the Ethereum ecosystem. Jeremy Millar and Eoin Connolly discussed the unique structure of ConsenSys, the evolving blockchain ecosystem, and the opportunity that lies in a still-nascent technology. Chief among Jeremy’s and Eoin’s messages was the flat nature of ConsenSys. Whether developers, marketers, solutions, or another team at ConsenSys, communication, organization, and project management are organized amongst teams, not pushed from the top down. Individuals are empowered and independent — but conversely, wholly accountable for the projects they initiate or in which they participate. The developers in the room left the meeting informed and invigorated. At the office launch, the ConsenSys Dublin team announced a team of 60–70 with 70% developers would be in the office within a year. An 8:00am meetup the morning after the launch suggests the team is well on its way to building a strong and talented developer base in Dublin.
The day continued with ConsenSys’ presence at MoneyConf 2018 in Dublin. Joe Lubin took the stage in the morning to discuss the “Power of Ethereum” for the future of financial institutions, investors, and customers. Focusing on the potential for equitable, global, instant financial participation, the speech elevated the focus of the day from financial collaboration and improvement to the goal of ushering in a new world economy powered by blockchain technology.
Soon after, Joe joined Max Keiser of the Keiser Report and Fernando Gutierrez of Dash.org on stage for a discussion led by Keiser, titled “Beyond the Hype: Tomorrow’s Tookit for Social Change”. The questions and answers focused on the collaborative nature of the blockchain industry, the significance of transparency and decentralization for both incumbent and new industries, and the progress of the technology in all sectors of business. Recap of some quotes and overarching ideas from the panel below. A full recording of the discussion can be found here.
“The prospect of building more trustworthy foundations for our systems and more collaborative infrastructure for our world is profound.” Right now there is lots of speculation in the market — that is unavoidable, but also not necessarily a bad thing. Speculation drives interest, interest brings innovators and technologists, and those entrepreneurs build infrastructure and grow the economy. In short, “speculation drives innovation.”
ConsenSys invests in startups that are looking to be disruptive to incumbent industries. They are looking to build out different ways to offer value to consumers. We are also working, however, with established players such as banks, insurance providers, and health care services. We enable them to build out new, better business business models to better serve their consumers. The combination of disruptive approaches and evolutionary approaches, we believe, will work well together to usher in a blockchain-enabled future.
The open-source, collaborative nature of Ethereum is crucial to its improvement. “People’s ability to come and fork our code base and explore their own solutions is fundamental and powerful.” We currently have a great layer 1 infrastructure we’re improving even more and we’re building out layer 2 scaling solutions. We’re going to achieve the infinite scalability we see today on the Internet. Blockchain and Ethereum is a vast solution space; we need many projects to work on these issues to succeed. This space is big enough for lots of projects (i.e. Ethereum and Dash) to interoperate and collaborate.
In the afternoon, ConsenSys led a Partner Panel upstairs at MoneyConf, “Can Ireland become a Blockchain Powerhouse?” The first hour was a discussion between Lory Kehoe of ConsenSys Dublin, Alex Batlin of Trustology, and Ed Budd of Adhara. Budd and Batlin answered questions regarding their projects, their progress, and the challenges they’ve faced in developing their platforms. In particular, the discussion focused on the importance of collaboration with governments (in the case of recent collaboration with South Africa) and with regulation as the space continues to grow. After a short break, a panel of experts in Irish finance, tech, regulation, and blockchain joined onstage. Niamh O’Connell of ConsenSys Dublin moderated the panel as they answered questions from the crowd. The panel included Pearse Ryan of Arthur Cox, Mai Santamaria of the Department of Finance, Keith Fingleton of the Irish Development Authority, Emma Walker of Wachsman, and Eoin Connolly of ConsenSys Dublin. The panelists discussed the success that Ireland has had with drawing tech talent and business in previous years and their optimism for the further introduction of blockchain technology into the country. With Dublin’s further integration into tech, the panelists discussed the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for them and their institutions as they work to continuously support the Irish economy, people, and businesses while drawing international investment and talent to grow Dublin’s global presence.
Next, ConsenSys heads to London for Tech Week! Keep an eye out for more updates.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
