They came, they saw, they conquered! The PARSIQ team recently had the opportunity to attend Ethereum Denver. In fact, we were proud to be an official sponsor of the largest & longest running ETH event in the world!
Our entire BizDev team was there, not only to network and meet as many teams as possible, but also to gain knowledge and insights from the top minds in crypto! And the reports are in — since coming back from the conference, all PARSIQ team members have confirmed the success of our presence at ETHDenver. BizDev spoke with many projects about PARSIQ and IQ and have 40+ qualified leads for follow-up. More exciting announcements coming soon!
In fact, those who attended have been generous enough to give us a little insight into their experience there. Also, and very importantly, PARSIQ product owner, Daniil Romazanov was also there to give a presentation: “PARSIQ Real-time Blockchain Data Delivery”. Also, during ETHDenver PARSIQ hosted some hackathons and bounty-based events (both IRL and virtually). Overall, we established a lot of interesting leads and we look forward to sharing exciting announcements that will sprout from our time in Denver!
Below, you’ll find some interview-style questions that the team has have answered for us, a quick recap of the hackathon results, as well as some details (and links) to Daniil’s presentation.
Daniil’s Presentation
On February 17, 2022 Danill Romazanov hit up the Art Stage to give a presentation: “PARSIQ Real-time Blockchain Data Delivery”. Due to technical difficulties on the part of ETHDenver, the full presentation was not recorded. Luckily, our team was able to find another video recording and put together the majority of the presentation. Although the quality of the video file may not be perfect, the content of the presentation certainly does not disappoint! You can watch the video here, and we also have the transcription of the presentation here.
IRL Hackathon
As part of our participation in ETHDenver, PARSIQ hosted a few hackathon events. First, there was the IRL hackathon, offering $4000 in prizes. Next, we also hosted a virtual hackathon, also offering $4000 in prizes (results still pending). And finally, running until March 10th, we have a bounty-based event where you can win $500!
In preparation for the hackathons, our team put together a helpful demo of how our platform works. It’s actually quite helpful in general, so even if you’re not interested in participating in any kind of hackathon you may find it worth a watch. You can find the PARSIQ demo here.
You can find information about the winners of the IRL hackathon here. But we’ll also provide a quick recap! Congratulations go out to the teams at PolyEcho, innerCircle, and Stardust.
PolyEcho is an NFT project centered on co-creating songs which are put up for sale to NFT collectors. They’ve utilized PARSIQ real time monitoring to keep immediately up to date, tracking events and functions during the creation of NFT tokens. innerCircle allows users to track professional NFT investors and analyze smart money returns. And Stardust — an NFT Analytics Dashboard along with a Liquidity creation platform for NFTs — uses PARSIQ to better understand when NFTs are being bought or sold from a collection, so users can have an accurate picture on which to make their decisions.
Team Interview
Tell us about your time at ETHDenver, how was it? Was this your first time there? How was your experience?
Tom: Yes, first time at the IRL ETH-DENVER event. It was fantastic, and packed with people and events! There were 10K+ attendees spread over a few city blocks in Denver, and 150+ sponsors, and some of the biggest names in crypto: Balancer, Uniswap, Algorand, Polygon, Chainlink, Metamask, you name it.
Positive experiences: We got a team photo with the Bufficorn and found out later that it was Vitalik Buterin wearing the costume! We were able to talk with a ton of projects about PARSIQ’s new flagship product, and they are very interested in working with us. Based on our conversations in real life we were able to find out the specific developer or engineer we need to work with in the future to start PARSIQ integrations. Having Daniil there was fantastic because he could speak developer to developer with projects, and get them excited about what we are building. The ETH-DENVER created a token called a Buffigwei (BFG) which we could use to buy food at food trucks, and because it was based on Arbitrum, paying was super fast and gasless (with MetaMask on mobile).
Simon: It was great — first time in Denver and first time at an Eth conference. I went to the Solana Breakpoint conference late last year, which was amazing, and this was another amazing experience anda really productive work trip.
Emilijus: It was absolutely amazing. This was my first time visiting the States and the first IRL EthDenver, so you can imagine how excited I was. First of all I was stunned by the attention this event generated. I arrived quite early in the week, but there were long lines of people forming at the entries already! Secondly, the amount of events running through the week was insane. It was hard to keep up with everything that was going on — and at times difficult to choose what to attend! And then there’s evening events — plenty of opportunities to network with people from so many different projects/backgrounds.
David: ETH Denver was amazing. Every venue was packed! There were lines that stretched around blocks, waiting hours to get into venues, and loads of Crypto-hungry people eager to learn more about all the projects attending.
This was my first time at ETH Denver. The place was full of new and established projects that were looking to make their mark at ETH Denver.
My favorite part was that drinks, food, and merch were all completely free for all those that attended. It showed how generous the Web3 space was. No one went hungry. My favorite place was the Castle. There, I met so many interesting people, projects, and talents interested in using PARSIQ and hearing more about IQ Protocol.
What was the best presentation you attended and why?
Tom: My favorite presentation that I was able to attend (I missed Daniil’s presentation due to travel) was by my wife, Christine Perry, who is a VP for Skale Labs (an ethereum scaling solution). Her workshops from a few years ago were about Skale as a proof of concept, and this year it was an overview of 5 current customer use cases, which was super exciting.
Simon: Daniil’s presentation! Haha — can you tell I’m excited about the expanded direction that PARSIQ is taking? The teams I talked to are excited about what is to come as well.
Besides our presentation there were some NFT companies that presented that I liked. I got to talk to their teams after the presentatiosn and we set up some calls to discuss renting use cases leveraging IQ.
Emilijus: There were a lot of great presentations, but the first one that comes to mind is “EVM The Lingua Franca of Smart Contracts” by Daniel Ferrin. I thought it was well presented, the content made a lot of sense without overuse of buzzwords and I share the same opinions with the presenter. Link:
David: Daniil hit his presentation out of the park. He delivered the news about the changes being made to PARSIQ with expert precision and grace! He was nervous before the speech… IDK why. He did great. I wish they had live streamed it.
Was there anything that inspired you, while you were there?
Tom: There is a Denver based artist called Android Jones who had a number of his paintings displayed and was doing live art. It’s like a psychedelic cyber punk style.
Simon: The amount of talent pouring into the space. You meet so many interesting teams and builders with varying backgrounds, but what unites us all is the understanding of the tech and the genuine belief that we are all building the next revolution of the internet (Web3) and that it is going to power so many amazing use cases.
Emilijus: A couple of things. First of all, there was a really strong sense of community. People patiently waited in 2+ hour lines just to get in; the whole Denver Sports Castle filled with project booths; merch sharing; loud chatter and handshakes all around. You could tell that people who were there genuinely wanted to be a part of the crypto movement. Everybody was so friendly and approachable. This unity was truly inspiring. Great reminder of how awesome it is to be a part of this.
Another thing that inspired me was our team’s chemistry. It was awesome just being around my teammates, working together, seeing how motivated and caring for the project they are.
David: Elena from Metis spoke about the need for Decentralization especially since Canada began blocking people’s bank accounts. Tom Matta was an excellent leader and directed the team while being a diplomat the entire time. Honestly, the team got to weigh in on every decision and it felt empowering.
What did you learn about crypto/the space that would be something of interest to others?
Tom: How inclusive the crypto culture is — the event was full of coders, builders, and crypto-anarchists of every shape, color, size, gender, orientation, and nationality. The people watching was amazing — I’ve never seen such an eclectic group of people.
Simon: Everyone wants to get involved in some way. There are a ton of builders but also traditional companies are becoming interested in the technology’s endless use cases as well as celebrities. I met a manager of multiple celebrities from LA as well as a social justice organization looking for ways to leverage blockchain technology for good.
Emilijus: Probably won’t say anything new with this, but EthDenver was another proof to me how multichain the industry has become. Also — *lots* of DAO’s and wallets trying to emerge. :)
David: Well, I learned that there are a lot of projects not really building anything but might be trying to solve complex social or technological problems. There are people who say that a lot of these projects will disappear, but I believe that some will survive due to the important roles they can play in the future.
Do you have anything that may be of interest to our community, or could you provide some hype?!
Tom: We made a point of going to chat with our major competitors to learn more about their plans for 2022, and we established that due to our core tech, we have the fastest query speed! And that a lot of projects are unhappy with incumbents and so there is going to be a lot of room for us to make a big impact.
Simon: I got to meet the team that I have talked to before of a top-25 crypto project. I’m excited to see what our expanded product direction can do for them and people building around their technology.
Emilijus: I’ll put it this way: I think the BD team managed to convince Danny on some of the aspects regarding where the industry is going. Secondly, Danny’s stage speech was quite hype inducing — if you listen carefully. :)
David: A lot of projects need PARSIQ but might not know it. Most projects don’t truly understand the need for data from one source to another. If there was some way to demonstrate the use PARSIQ provides with a common/essential Web2 protocol, then that would be beneficial to helping clients understand what we are offering.
Did you speak with any projects that were excited about working with PARSIQ? Or, who had not heard of us before?
Tom: Yes there were many projects interested in adding PARSIQ’s current capabilities, and wanted to learn more about our new flagship product. A number of wallet providers were interested in adding real-time address monitoring and notifications, and anyone currently using competitor offerings for historical data queries was excited about our ability to query 1 million blocks in under 60 seconds.
Simon: Yes! It was great to meet some of the teams I have been chatting with in person and meet the rest of their team. Not only did this help establish our relationship, but I got to talk to other influencers in their companies that I did not before and establish a credible relationship.
Emilijus: Both. We are still a young company, so it would be naive to assume that everybody out there is going to know PARSIQ. However, there were some cases of people saying “we need this” just seconds after hearing out what PARSIQ can actually do — and this is why we were there! Obviously, there were projects who knew us well, too.
David: We spoke to our partners that were there like Metis and Polygon. Most projects haven’t heard of us but after a simple explanation of what we do, they immediately saw the benefit of our technology.
Did you speak with any projects that were excited about working with IQ Protocol? Or, who had not heard of us before?
Tom: All the NFT projects that we spoke with were excited about NFT renting powered by IQ. Developers were intrigued by using wrapped expirable versions of NFTs, and Simon has a list a mile long for follow-up.
Simon: Yes, many! There are so many use cases with IQ Protocol that the flexibility can help an endless amount of projects and protocols. It was very fun brainstorming the use cases with a variety of teams at ETHDenver and share contact information so we can continue to connect after the event.
David: Most projects we spoke to have a use case for IQ Protocol and were excited to learn more, although they had never heard of us before.
And for the last question: Emilijus, it sounds like you had a memorable win during your time in Denver, can you tell us about it?
Emilijus: Yes! I was able to participate in the ETHDenver Poker Tourney. The tournament had more than 100 players in it and also featured rebuys, totaling in ~140 entries, and I won third place! It’s common knowledge among poker players that a lot of positive variance (aka luck) is required to go deep in a single tournament — so I mostly attribute my result to that.
But I do have some poker background: I’ve been playing since I was 16 and (even if I never considered myself a pro) there was a stretch in life when online poker became my main way of putting bread on the table. I am not playing actively anymore, but I still love the game. So I definitely wanted to take part in that tournament — especially since live poker is such a social game! In my eyes, it was another opportunity to network and meet people.
Thanks to everyone who followed along with us at ETHDenver. We always value the support and dedication from our community!
About PARSIQ
PARSIQ is a blockchain monitoring and workflow automation platform connecting on-chain and off-chain applications in real-time, providing transaction notifications for end-users. With PARSIQ you can connect blockchain activity to off-chain apps and devices, monitor and secure DeFi applications, and build custom event triggers and power real-time automations.
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