ETHcc — It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times
The 7th ETHcc took place in Brussels last week, with participation from 350 speakers and 5,000 attendees, about double 2023 attendance. It was my 3rd ETHcc, and the first outside of Paris (due to the Olympics).
Since leaving Brussels on Saturday, after a week of ETHcc festivities, I’ve read a lot of handwringing and navel gazing related crypto posts. Here are my 5 takeaways:
#1 — Brussels Was A Poor Choice Of Location
The negative twitter comments from many started upon arrival at the Brussels Airport where the line for passport control (per the video below) for non-EU residents took 3–4 hours:
And once in Brussels, attendee tweets about Brussels generally ranged from snarky:
To scary:
And for many, even leaving from Brussels Airport was a massive hassle:
And rememebr, there are two sides to every story..
#2 — The ETHcc Event Was Sold Out, But Attendance was Sparse At Side Events
With over 500 side events, if the event venue was more than a 10 min drive from the main venue/center of Brussels, attendance was sparse, regardless of the number of RSVPS. Even though Aptos & SEI had 1700 RSVPs for their Parallel Summit, the audience for the opening talk was brutal:
But the main event was packed for Vitalik:
The event felt less developer heavy than ETHDenver, with a higher percentage of attendees in BD and Marketing, or investors (i.e. VCs, family offices, institutional investors …) mostly from Europe and Asia.
#3 There Was Lots Of Events Focused On Decentralized AI
It felt like everyday was DeAI day at ETHcc starting with my first event on Monday (Day 1):
The participating Morpheus community members included many innovators shaping the Decentralized AI tech stack including The Lifted Initiative.
Day 1 also included a great CryptoMondays Brussels focused on Decentralized AI:
CryptoMondays Brussels happened at the same time as “Web3 AI Pioneers VIP Dinner.”
My favorite Day 2 events were BASSLite, an event hosted by the Stanford Blockchain Club, which was followed by a sister event of theirs “GrowthCon: AI & Next-Gen Blockchain.” Those events happened concurrently with “Web3 meets AI by Fabric VC, NEAR Protocol, RSS3, Sentient, Caladan & Masa”. A few hours later was “AI + DePIN Happy Hour with Halborn, Immunefi, SKALE, GaiaNet, & zkPass”
And so it went for the entire week.
#4 — “What are we building that the real people in the real world care about? What are we building that will change the world?”
Interestingly, post ETHcc, there were lots of navel gazing tweets that shared worrisome views:
I get why people are concerned. We’re not mainstream yet. Nothing is scaling outside of DeFi. But to me, the glass is half full. Shit takes time. I feel more like Nate Hindman:
In his tweet, Nate referenced Antonio’s tweet, and shared that his crypto journey hit a rough patch last year when he questioned why the industry’s main accomplishment in his 7 years was having built “ … the ultimate 24/7 casino for shitcoinery”. But then he goes on to share that “Early this year I randomly stumbled on #DeSci and it made me excited about crypto again.”
It’s not just DeSci. There is so much going on in crypto. For the last year I’ve been burrowing deep down the DeAI rabbit hole. How can you not be excited by DeAI? Or by DePIN. Or By DeSci. Or by RWA. Or by …..
#5 —ETHcc 2024 Was Fine, But I’m Really Looking Forward To ETHcc 2025!
I liked Sandy Carter’s summary of ETHcc 2024:
“The conference not only highlighted the transformative power of blockchain technology but also reinforced the importance of collaboration, diversity and, above all, community in driving the industry forward. Additionally, the growing intersection of AI and blockchain demonstrated the limitless potential for future innovations, promising even greater advancements in the years to come.”
Hopefully the biggest problem we’ll be facing at ETHcc 2025 will be the lack of slips in which to dock our yachts, because ETHcc 2025 is at:
See some of you in Nashville next week for BTC 2024!
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This content is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute trading advice. The author of this article may hold assets mentioned in the piece.
