How to Hack a Blockchain Conference
Nimiq attends TicoBlockchain 2019
“Excuse me, I don’t really know your background… but I have the feeling that you are from Team Nimiq” he wrote in the organization committee group chat. It was in that moment that I knew this could go very wrong very fast…
Costa Rica is the 51,100 km² piece of land that glues North America and South America together. Around 4.9 million people call it home and over 540 of them are part of a Telegram Group called BTCCR dedicated to crypto talk. From those, 20 members ended up creating a group dedicated to educating Ticos (a friendly nickname for Costarricans) on blockchain and to put Costa Rica on the map when it comes to the crypto tech space.
Last year in May, Panama organized a two-day blockchain conference featuring Andreas M. Antonopoulos. It was great! Andreas’ talk was very inspiring and the event was overall a success; making it the first of its kind in Centro America… damn! It could have been us.
Don’t get me wrong, Ticos (and I personally) enjoy a good relationship with Panama… still, it gives you this feeling of “Why can’t we have one too?” But instead of getting bitter, we got inspired by our fellow Panamanians and started to organize the TicoBlockchain. And yes, we were still going to invite them, of course.
Step 1: Infiltrating the organizer's committee
Social engineering is usually the most efficient attack
Being the noisy helpful fella that I am, I easily made my way into the organizer's committee. There was going to be a crypto conference in my country and I was not going to miss the chance to be part of it.
As you probably know, I’m Nimiq’s community manager and if there is something that the Nimiq Community asks for, it’s:
- Richy, when are you speaking at a conference?
- Richy, when are you doing more marketing to make Nimiq more visible?
- Richy, when will people in Costa Rica see how easy it is to use Nimiq?
When? When? When?… The time was now!
I know the conference is not a big deal compared to massive conferences like the Web3 Summit, Stanford Conference or Malta Blockchain Summit (to which Nimiq attended last year) but it’s the perfect conference to have a very strong first participation.
Nimiq often does hackathons in Costa Rica (check out our YouTube for more), so Team Nimiq is no stranger to the country we Ticos call Tiquicia. After all, TicoBlockchain was a medium-sized conference with around 200 people right in Nimiq’s neighborhood. I was part of the organizers, had access to the venue (which is close to my house)… what else could I ask for.
Step 3: Skipping Step 2
Expect the unexpected. Use opportunities to your advantage.
Whatever Step 2 was, we skipped it. Everything, from the perspective of the organizers, happened very fast. The official date of the conference was coming closer and we still had a lot of things to do. This led to such tasks being organized in record-time — Tico style — and Nimiq didn’t have much time to plan the marketing stunt. As usual ;). In this state of hazy madness, more help was needed. I stepped up my game as an organizer.
While helping with the event, I noticed the lack of clarity in regards to the closing event. An initial idea was to actually sell a separate ticket for it. Nobody is going to go then, I thought to myself.
The closing event takes literally one-third of the time of the entire event and owning it would mean:
- Participants would spend a considerable amount of time exposed to the brand.
- We could showcase Nimiq’s ease-of-use by selling drinks in an actual Nimiq Bar.
- The one thing that would stick in the visitors mind when leaving the conference would be Nimiq.
Up to that point, the organizers’ committee had not thought of sponsorship for the closing event. I suggested to do so. Everybody agreed. I suggested Nimiq could sponsor it, if we were granted total control of the closing event. No complaints there, I was on a good track.
Step 4: Extend your reach
Always search for new attack vectors
I do like technical conferences a lot and I have attended a few. My interest in helping with the organization of TicoBlockchain was not only fueled by my interest in decentralized technologies and love for Costa Rica — it’s a cool place, we’ve got all the sloths and corky birds — but also by my personal dream of being part of organizing such a conference. I genuinely wanted to help more and was determined for this event to be a success.
The agenda was a bit “businessy” for my taste, considering it was a blockchain conference. I suggested a parallel technical track to appeal to the technical audience. The main concern amongst members of the committee was getting enough speakers. “We need a technical track and I think I can take care of the speakers if you want”, I said.
I was then in charge of the agenda for half of the event, the interesting half, the technical track. This will prove to be useful for my master plan in the future.
Step 5: Making sure you don’t get caught
Your actions should not disclose your actual intentions
At all times I remained neutral, playing both the role of an organizer and a sponsor. But it got tricky. The website was built by one of the organizers and the Nimiq logo had a prominent presence on it since Nimiq was the sponsor of the closing event after all. During a meeting about the location of the logos on the websites, Nimiq’s presence took a hit.
It was indeed difficult to discuss the positioning of sponsor logos when, at the same time, your main job is to promote one specific sponsor. I’m sure all the other organizers trusted me and knew my priority was the success of the event itself. However, confusion was still to be expected and especially occurred with one specific organizer who was not aware of my “second agenda”.
“It feels to me like you are from Nimiq”, he said. His tone clearly conveyed lack of trust, I knew that us not being on the same page could make things go wrong both for TicoBlockchain and Nimiq. The natural way of solving any doubts is to be completely honest. “Yes, I am part of Team Nimiq and I do want to make Nimiq visible as much as I can but I still think we should organize the logos differently”, I argued. Everything got to a good end, it was obvious we were all playing in the same team.
Step 6: Exploiting all vulnerabilities
Be clear about your goal and maximize chances of achieving it
What was our main goal at Nimiq? To promote our brand and get as many eyes as possible on it. We sponsored the closing event since this allowed us to show our brand and also entitled Team Nimiq to give a talk in the technical track (which as you might remember, I organized too). The business track was not under my responsibility but I did suggest some speakers that I thought could provide valuable information to the conference, including Overnice, who have gained a lot of experience in communicating and designing blockchain products from multiple crypto projects they have been part of; the most recent one: Nimiq.
While looking at the agenda I came across one interesting fact: two talks at the same time mentioned Nimiq. One in the technical track by Philipp, Nimiq’s CTO, and another one in the business track by Overnice, Nimiq’s communication and design experts. Was this a bug or a feature? Should I re-arrange the agenda of the technical track to allow people to catch both of them?
I decided to leave Philipp’s talk for the closing of the technical track, both “Nimiq” talks would occur in parallel. Using this opportunity ended up being the perfect introduction to the closing event since both talks were then the last ones before participants could relax with a drink (which they’ll buy with NIM, but more on that later). So there was literally no way of being at the conference without hearing of Nimiq.
Step 7: Execution
When all the pieces fit together, it’s time to attack
Now to the closing event. The plan was the following:
- Using my convenient access to the venue, I chose the place for Nimiq’s booth in the center of the conference. It had perfect access to both technical and business track.
- We helped the conference by designing a flyer with the agenda. The flyer was bound to be the most used piece of information at the conference. We added information about Nimiq and the closing event on the other side of the flyer. ;)
- In the back side of the flyer, a URL was enough for participants to create a Nimiq account during the event and receive some TestNIM to later “buy” a drink. We even gave them a bit more, thinking maybe they even start sending transactions to each other.
- A Nimiq neon sign in the booth would serve to promote the brand and also give the jazzy feeling of a pub. We used a big hexagon hanging from the wall to further resonate with the already Nimiq-branded feeling of the room.
- We tried it out during the day and, to be honest, some trouble did arise. Luckily, once the event started, most of the bugs had been cleared out, participants already created a Nimiq account and, thanks to its intuitive design, paying by scanning a QR code at the bar went out just fine.
Step 8: Being extra careful at the end
The most delicate part of a hack is its conclusion
Last talks of the conference went well. In the business track, Overnice finished with an insightful talk about the benefits of blockchain technologies that matter most from the user’s perspective, while at the technical track an interesting talk by Lisk Central America was followed by a well-explained overview of Nimiq’s technical aspects. Everybody seemed eager to get a drink and discuss what they’ve learned during the day. The doors opened, revealing Nimiq’s booth and participants lined to receive a nice German drink. Local drinks were also served, but everybody still wanted to test the Nimiq experience and talk crypto with a Club Mate or Erdinger Weißbier in their hand.
After weeks of work organizing the conference and, on top of that, the closing event for Nimiq, the time had come for Nimiq to shine. It was crucial that everything worked out fine for the entire experience to be a success.
German Weißbier and Club Mates were cold, a projector on the wall showed a live feed of transactions on the Nimiq Blockchain for the Nimiq Bar account, music was on and our helpful bartenders were ready. People lined up and the transactions on the wall started appearing.
It worked! It all worked as expected. That was unexpected.
Step 9: Enjoy!
Once the hack is completed, enjoy the bounty
The organizers and the public were thrilled with Nimiq’s closing event. It served as a perfect ending for a very nice and informative day. Some people even send some TestNIM to each other, marveling at the ease-of-use of Nimiq: “It all works in the Browser!” someone said. “Yep, all is in the browser” I replied, with a bit tired but happy smile on my face.
Everybody was given 4,000 TestNIM, 3,000 to buy a drink and 1,000 remaining to try it out with friends. One of the guys I spoke to told me he had the idea of asking for TestNIM around the conference until got the 3,000 TestNIM necessary to buy a second beer. He repeated the process and ended up buying 4 beers.
I think he successfully hacked us, it was supposed to be only one beer per person.
But the fact that he genuinely thought of NIM as cash and successfully asked other participants for the money they were not going to use to then acquire 8,000 extra TestNIMs is indisputable proof of the intuitive nature of Nimiq. He just did what he would have done with regular cash, but using his browser.
I would like to finish by thanking the organizers for giving Nimiq the opportunity to “hack” TicoBlockchain 2019. As we are a project with Tico blood, we loved to get closer to the Costarrican crypto community and show them what we have been building. Thanks also to everybody who participated in the event, I hope you liked it, I certainly did.
Step 10: Repeat
See you at the next conference
