[Short #92] EDCON: An afternoon with Ethereum Foundation

I got to hear Vitalik speak!

While folks were eagerly anticipating the Eminem and Snoop’s performance in the metaverse yesterday evening for the VMA’s, I attended the Ethereum: A New Era event in San Francisco.

This event wasn’t widely advertised and I came across it while scrolling my Twitter feed last week. Hearing Vitalik speak live and free tickets were enough of a draw for me!

So what is this event?

It’s an annual conference held in partnership with De University of Ethereum (UETH), an educational platform from the Ethereum community. Cool initiative!

To whet my appetite, this clip from what I’m assuming is from a previous EDCON went semi-viral. If you click on anything in this piece, click on this one, please.

Leonidas.eth @LeonidasNFT

19 days, 2 hours, and 53 minutes until the Merge. Are you as ready as VB?

Not only is this simultaneously hilarious and cringe but I’ve gotta say, I have respect for Vitalik for to rapping and Ethereum Foundation for participating in this. Why shouldn’t they have a good time? 🙂

One of the replies made a comparison with a historical moment.

markjp @markjp

@LeonidasNFT Gives me windows 95 launch energy.

I mean, look at Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer pumping up the crowd and just having an good time. Maybe the EDCON version will be enshrined as a historical moment in the coming years.

If this is the type of energy that delivers a successful Merge, I’m all for it. A portion of my and many people’s investments depend on it so by all means, dance away Ethereum Foundation team 😂

The Event

I’ve been to Warriors games and sold out comedy shows at Chase Center. This was not it.

Honestly, it was jarring to see this stark contrast. But we were here so it’s time to perk up and listen up.

By the way, who’s this?

None other than Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum. He is known for being in costumes for speaking engagements.

Here he is earlier this year at ETH Denver, another conference.

Takeaways from the EDCON event

It felt a little weird

Chase Center was pretty much empty and there was a lot of chatter in the back areas that made it hard to hear if you were trying to pay attention. I will admit, I was one of those offenders towards the end of the event.

That said, I don’t think I was the target market for this event. The topics and presentations were technical, though interesting. I’m glad that I’ve poked more into the world of zero-knowledge and rollups, as those topics were heavily discussed throughout the event.

These guys are smart…and humble!

Like smart smart. We’ve established that Vitalik is quirky, but I don’t think that’s the main reason he has 4.2 million Twitter followers.

In addition to being a gigabrain, the Ethereum Foundation team seems to be pretty humble. During one of the panels moderated by Vitalik, the conversation went towards how Ethereum could improve and the panel went over various topics on that front.

Not something your average panelist would want to discuss or answer.

Also, when the core team came up for an AMA (Ask Me Anything), they were missing a chair. What did Vitalik do while the panel started answering the first question?

He just sat on the ground lol. This guy is going to determine whether I am able to pay my mortgage next month, and he’s sitting on the ground like it’s no one’s business. This picture could be used in two ways that couldn’t be on further ends of the spectrum:

• As a meme (duh)

• In some LinkedIn post about leadership

I’d like to see it used for both 😂

BTW, this was the first question of the AMA sourced from Reddit.

I don’t know whether or not these questions were filtered or this was meant to be an opening question to loosen up the crowd, but it happened. I'd say the team answered the question gracefully.

Fun fact: I realized I didn’t know how to pronounce Vitalik’s name. It’s pronounced

I met a 13-year old developer

During a break between sessions, I noticed a kid out of the corner of my eye wearing a MAYC shirt that I hadn’t seen before.

Being the curious person I am, I asked him where he got the shirt from. Turns out he was one of the top 500 scores from the Apes vs. Mutants mobile game earlier this year.

He’s also a game dev and working in Solidity (a blockchain programming language mainly for Ethereum).

🤯 You go kid! Being TPan, I had to ask him, “What do your friends think about NFTs?”

He responded with the simplicity of a 13 year old, but the wisdom of a 31 year old:

“You won’t get it until you participate.”

In conclusion

Am I happy that I attended? Yes.

Would I go again? No.

It’s worth attending, especially since it’s free and if they show up in your city. This conference is held in a different city every year, so it’s a treat that doesn’t come often.

That said, I’m not the target audience for this event.

I was surprised at the lack of ops and logistics. They had a snack table that reminded me of childhood soccer games for goodness sake.

But then I realized…if this event went flawlessly with a stadium packed with ETH maxis, I’d be concerned.

The strengths of Ethereum Foundation are technical and they are heads down focused on the Merge which is in ~2 weeks. It’s not creating hype and running sold out conferences.

If anything, I would be worried if the EDCON event looked anything like this:

Spoiler Alert: Bitconnect shut down in 2019 and the company was sued by the SEC.

Godspeed Ethereum Foundation, and thanks for the experience yesterday!

See you tomorrow folks.