The Official SKALE Guide to NY Blockchain Week

With more than 150 events — ranging from massive thousand+ person conferences to informal meetups to hackathons to live podcast recordings and beyond — New York Blockchain Week has entered the rarified space of transcending the conference (Consensus) that started it to become a full on festival.

As anyone who has been to other professional festivals like SXSW or CES knows, though, figuring out what events to care about and how to spend one’s time can be a bit of a nightmare.

With that in mind, our team at SKALE has scoured the agendas of all the big events (not to mention even Eventbrites to make us dream in orange forever) to bring you this official guide to Blockchain Week.

Of course, all of these recommendations are subjective. With so many smart people converging on one city, you really can’t go wrong.

Without further ado, here’s the Hitlist!

Fluidity Summit | May 9

Hosted by Airswap, Fluidity is one of two amazing Brooklyn based events kicking off the proceedings. The event is focused on telling the stories of real live use crypto use cases in the wild — including not only the expected decentralized finance but more interesting and emergent topics like the applications of blockchains and cryptocurrency in the film industry. That last one features an interview with the executive producer of the Matrix. Don’t miss it.

Ethereal Summit | May 10 & 11

The flagship event from ConsenSys, Ethereal brings together more than 1000 people to discuss some of the biggest issues in crypto. Like Fluidity, it is representing Brooklyn hard. Ethereal is absolutely chock full of amazing talks, but a few to call out:

• Smart Contract Wars — Some of the smartest analysts in the space discuss the shape of the battle for developer attention
• DeFi and Paths to Every Day Usage — one of the big shifts in focus this year is from everything being theoretical and in the future to the use cases that are actually driving crypto adoption today
• Value Capture at Layer 1 and at Layer 2 — Our very own CEO Jack O’Holleran joins some of the brightest investors on this panel that (hopefully) will get people thinking just a little differently about where the lines between layer 1 and layer 2 really lay.

Beer, Bitcoin & Lightning Meetup | May 10

Layer 2 isn’t just for Ethereum. For those who have been following along with the Lightning Trustchain or who are just interested in how this technology works, this meetup is bringing together some of the most interesting thinkers and doers in that community.

Magical Crypto Conference | May 11 & May 12

If you are interested in the Bitcoin side of the industry, boy have we got the event for you. Put on by the magical super friends (Monero/Tari’s @FluffyPony, Blocksteam’s Samson Mow, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee and WhalePanda), the event is focused on catering to a somewhat more technical audience and with a definite focus on the Bitcoin space. One of the most interesting looking panels to us is the panel on Bitcoin protocol development, moderated by Katherine Wu.

Consensus | May 13–15

It’s the event that started it all, and the very epicenter of the madness. It is, of course, Coindesk’s Consensus. This absolutely absurdly packed event has more content than you can shake a stick at. Outside of putting on a blindfold and throwing a dart at the agenda, a couple discussions that seem particularly interest to us are “Crypto In Historical Perspective” from famed economic historian Niall Ferguson and “Betting on the Builders” with investors from Primitive Ventures and Electric Capital.

Sharding Consensus 2019 | May 14th

If you’re interested in different approaches to scaling and are either a professional working in the space or just trying to wrap your head around the concept of Sharding, this event is for you. It has a really interesting cohort of protocols and platforms collaborating to put on a topic that they share a stake in, and will likely represent some of the best thinking in that domain.

Building Private, Censorship-Resistant Tech: A Chat With The Co-Founder Of Tor | May 14th

Okay, we couldn’t resist. Tor is one of the world’s most important privacy technologies, and this is a rare chance to hear from one of the co-founders and original developers of the technology. For those thinking at a high level about the changes in society and the challenge of surveillance, this one is for you.

Digital Asset Summit | May 15th

Put on by the great team at Blockworks Group (known for their work producing some of the best crypto podcasts including Pomp’s “Off The Chain” and Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson’s “What Grinds My Gears”) this event is highly specialized for the professional investor crowd, and is looking to connect the dots between today’s market movements and a new set of institutions just waiting to get involved.

Token Summit | May 16th

The fourth go-round for this event has some of the most interesting discussion topics we’ve spotted during NY Blockchain Week. We, for one, want to know what folks think the “future of dapps” will be. And the panel looking specifically at the Decentralized products taking on centralized products seems phenomenal.

The Future Of Layer 2 | May 16th

Okay, okay, okay this is the big one; the whole enchilada; the silver tuna. If you have any interest at all in Layer 2 this is the event for you. This is one of the events SKALE is excited to be participating in, alongside other leaders from great projects including Nervos, Celer, Nervos, Loom, and more. Importantly, there will be plenty of time to mingle outside and around the panel. See you there!

ETHNew York & Hackathon | May 17–19

Of course, let’s not forget the latest installment of ETH Global, the event that ends the beautiful chaos of NY Blockchain Week on the build-iest note possible. We are sponsoring this event, because we love builders, we love the Ethereum community, and the right people in the right place hacking on the right projects = magic.

As you can probably tell, we’re downright thrilled to be headed to the Big Apple for this festival of all things blockchain and crypto. If you’re interested in meeting with the SKALE team, join our Discord (skale.chat), or our Telegram group (t.me/skaleofficial) and we will be happy to chat or meet in person.

Originally published at https://skale.network on May 9, 2019.