Some CPL developer thoughts on DevCon IV
The CPL team took a trip to DevCon IV. Here are some reflections from a few of our developers.
Isaac: DC4 was very professional. Some of the rooms were exploding with interest. Some of the talks were not organized properly. I tried to schedule my limited availability around workshops that included live-coding; however these were the talks that had the most technical difficulties, and i found myself distracted by all the bustle and banter. Most days I left the overflowing rooms and found refuge in meeting other devs from around the world — an excited frenchman who had no place he called home (he travelled from airbnb to friend’s couches to underground techno clubs), an ex-coworker who is now specializing in security camera software, a friend I met in Korea who had just launched a token worth millions. I appreciated the variety of lessons and learnings that the foundation decided to feature. Listening to Sarah Friend’s “decentralization and its discontents” talk and “A conversation with Stewart Brand”, I discovered that I was more captivated by conceptual discussions rather than in-person workshops, and I intend to attend such types of lessons more in future conferences.
John: Having only joined the CPL team in August, I am fairly new to working as a developer in the Blockchain space. Making my way along the steep learning curve of this new and experimental technology has been a fun but challenging experience so far. While completing what are primarily Front-End dev tasks in my job, I have been doing my best to understand the technical capabilities of Ethereum. I have also become very aware of the challenges that we face when attempting to build a decentralized solution that will solve a real world problem. My goal before arriving in Prague was to connect with as many like-minded crypto enthusiasts as possible and to further my understanding of the various scaling solutions that are soon to be introduced to the ecosystem. DevCon 4 would be my first ever developer conference and I arrived with very little idea of what to expect, and without a ticket.
Fortunately for me I was able to make it in to the Prague Congress Centre for 2.5 of the 4 days of events thanks to some lucky networking on the ground. I also got a tip-off from my friends at Flex Dapps who informed me that the good people at Status had rented a space for anyone to come hang during the week and watch live streams of the events on a big screen. The National House Smichov was a short walk from my airbnb and this was where I spent my time when I wasn’t able to attend the Congress Centre.
It was there that I bumped into a couple of people that are involved in a project called Jerusalemchain, which centers around fractional ownership of land and a virtual temple… You can make your own mind up if you think this is a good idea or not. For me it was a fascinating introduction to a concept that I had never even considered. I also caught a talk on scaling solutions where I learned a little more about State Channels. Having the opportunity to create a payment channel with no fees is something we desperately need if we are going to compete with the web 2.0 giants like Venmo. The idea of grounding off chain transactions in the security of layer one is certainly something that I am determined to learn more about.
Phil Daian gave a talk which focused on Decentralized Exchanges. Phil seems to be on a mission to make crypto trading a more transparent and safe place for consumers. I really like how he used his time wisely by explaining some heady topics at a high level and then providing listeners with tips of where to find further reading material if they wished to deep-dive a little more. In a past life I was a day-trader for a brief time and the problem of front-running was a topic that I had often read about. The problem has now manifested as miner front-running within decentralized exchanges and you can see some data of the evidence here. If you really wanna go down the hole you can start by reading this paper by Eric Budish, Peter Cramton and John Shim. Also, Dark DAOS are a thing! Fascinating stuff.
Blockchain based life-forms… now that is something I could never have imagined until I accidentally caught the brilliant talk by Primavera De Filippi. I recognized Primavera immediately from an event I attended in New York a few months back where she was discussing her new book, “Blockchain and the Law: The Rule of Code”, which is co-authored with Professor Aaron Wright. Her work on plantoids is really fascinating. This idea of Artists (plantoid creators) gaining royalties via their creations, with all transactions handled in a decentralized manner by smart contracts that are backed by legitimate legal agreements is pretty amazing. Check out the Coalition of Automated Legal Applications for more info on other potential applications.
Online privacy is a topic that is particularly close to my heart. Ever since I learned to code I have become more conscious about the power of data in the hands of the wrong people. Out of all the DApps I was introduced to at DevCon, one in particular really sparked my attention — the Status app. It uses Whisper to send decentralized messages between accounts. I have been using Signal as my primary messaging app for years and I had come to believe that we would not see a more decentralized alternative for a long time. Looking forward to digging a little more into the Status app and the capabilities of Whisper.
It was pretty clear from the outset that DevCon organizers had made considerable effort this year to highlight the work of designers in the space. As a Front-End dev, User Experience is something that has always been interesting to me, but it is especially prominent in my thoughts due to all the headaches I now face during DApp development. While the heady talks on various crypto-economic systems are a lot of fun for me, I definitely need to learn more about understanding and engaging users. I caught a little bit of a design talk that was presented by ConsenSys. One take away I got from it is that devs really need to educate designers more on the full tech stack that ethereum provides, and designers need to educate devs more about UX. Within the CPL team I feel that we have been doing a decent job on this front, but we can definitely do better.
Stewart Brand really humbled everyone in attendance at the main stage on the last day by asking what solutions, if any, Blockchain can bring to the problems created by climate change. The conversation was definitely a highlight for me and I would highly recommend anyone watching the recording when it is online. One interesting perspective he offered (and I am paraphrasing) was that developers need to be careful not to design for problems that don’t exist yet as this could mean you inadvertently reduce freedoms. This comment led to a great conversation.
I believe I can break down my takeaways from DevCon into two main points. Firstly, I now have a better understanding and appreciation of all the work that is being done to develop the tooling we need to ensure mass adoption of DApps. It can often feel that we are a long way off from actually seeing a killer implementation of a DApp, but the enthusiasm on show at DevCon by those folks who are pioneering the research and development in this field is really inspiring. Even when I would find myself listening to a complex conversation on a piece of tech that I don’t quite fully understand, there was always enough within the material to spark an idea in my head for a potential use case.
My second big takeaway from DevCon is that I was just as inspired by the folks I bumped into in the lobbies of the Congress Centre as I was by any of the speakers on the various stages. Networking is not something that comes natural to me, but I did feel relatively comfortable doing so at DevCon, especially at lunch time. I got the sense that for a lot of people in attendance, networking is the most important part. I arrived back in New York this week feeling more grateful for the network that is provided to me by simply being a member of a spoke within an organization like ConsenSys.
Kenan: DevCon 4 had some overarching themes for me. I took my time to focus on subjects and skills I knew I needed stronger foundations in.
As a software developer that has just stepped out of being exclusively backend, I spent a good amount of time going to UX/UI talks. The skill level ranged from very basic introductions to design thinking all the way to how companies iterated through design to ensure users did not lose money from simple mistakes. Fundamental constraints exist when working with blockchains and the hardest task DApps face right now is making applications that can compete with companies building on centralized servers and infrastructure. Hopefully, with mass amounts of people aware that blockchains exist, creating mass adoption through education will be easier.
The second largest chunk of my time was spent on learning history and about projects. My hopes were to understand where ideas failed in the past, what has been learned, and new approaches. Learning about the history of browsers and web3 gave me a new appreciation for the work that has been done and needs to be done. What was more prevalent to me was the failures projects such as SpankChain faced as they built out their system. Making programs that run on a system powered by money does not give room for error but also has unknown tolerances from the user. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter that they pay gas, other times it is the worst thing you can do to the user.
There is still a long road ahead. People are ecstatic about the potential of Ethereum but we all must keep contributing to open source, testing new ideas, and redefining decentralization.
