Anett Rolikova, David Hoffmann, Joseph Schweitzer & Nick Johnson: Devcon Recap – From Bogota #465

Transcript

welcome to epicenter the show which talks about Technologies projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution I am Frederica Antz and I'm here with a whole host of people live from Devcon 2020. my guests today are Nick Johnson from ens Annette Raleigh cover from nethermine David Hoffman from banklers and Joseph Schweitzer from the ethereum foundation and we will talk about uh Defcon 2022 which is just finishing up today but before we do that um let me tell you about our sponsor this week our sponsor this week is Omni Omni is your new favorite multi-chain Mobile Wallet that puts the power of web

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um I want to highlight their transformation they rename from State wallet to Omni and if you want to get in on that now join thousands of users on this next Generation wallet by downloading it today on iOS or Android at omni.app and on another note we as epicenter are hiring we are looking for a community manager to help grow our audience and take a percentage to the next level if you are passionate about crypto and creating great content we want to hear from you full details can be found in the link on the show notes um and please also share with anyone who you think might be a great fit for this and without further delay let's go to the panel

hi this is Peter vika I'm coming to you from Bogota on the fourth and final day of Defcon Defcon 6 that is I am here with Joseph from the ethereum foundation a net from nevermind Nick from ens and David from bankless cool thank you guys for joining this is uh been a pleasure maybe let's talk the big picture first how have you been enjoying the conference Joseph as the person who's um who's been wearing the Hat of organizing this I'll I'll give you tips on the answer I would say I'm very glad to see how much the focus has been on the substance as an organizer it's uh uh

first of all giant shout out to Schuyler Weaver and the whole Devcon team who thanks to uh a multiple years of covid uh sat through three years of organizing and trying to improve from one year to uh the next to the next to the next um but conferences I think tend to break down on lines of either hyper substance and as something grows larger you know from where it was at 50 people in 2014 to over six thousand it's hard to hold on to uh providing value to an ecosystem at a conference so when you see lines outside of uh uh every talk call and side stage um waiting to get into the next sessions rather than lines for the next party although I'm sure those were there too it's uh um it's always heartening to see

the people are making productive uh uh movement to an ethereum ecosystem growth I'm very happy actually that Defcon turned out very educational I was not expecting it to be like this very much like Builder [ __ ] use them very much like technical talks um definitely impressed by all the high level and like high educational Talks by like whether that's like such uh so many talks on like ZK evm and Mev which I am really impressed like how the technology grew up since like they've come in Osaka when uh we've been like the topics were like a little bit um less Technical and

um now is that that is like the whole blockchain and the research and all that progress so much so it's very uh very cool to see like how the talks are being like different and how much more Technical and even like almost Academia academic alike talks uh were on the schedule as well and it's very cool that those talks were even full and you people enjoy these are not even not only the like a low level or like the social talks as well yeah I've been having a great time there's so many talks that I haven't made it to because I keep running into people in the halls and and people I haven't met in three plus years and

talking to them and catching up which I kind of view as the right way to do a conference almost because the talks recorded the people around um and so you know it's been great and I've also been super impressed with how well organized everything is how there's a great mix of technical talks and like breakout spaces and workshops and panels and it's you know there's opportunities to like go somewhere and decompress a bit there's opportunities to find somewhere quiet to chat with people um it's been really good so this is actually my first Devcon and the thing that's really sticking out to me the most is that if you call Devcon a Tech conference you're kind of missing it um and there's a reason why we Devcon goes to all of these weird cities rather than just like San Francisco or New York

uh we're in we're in Bogota Colombia uh and I think that's a part because ethereum is one part technology but also one part culture and so we have to find these different communities all around the world that uh you wouldn't otherwise you know find in the the typical conference city like New York or San Francisco and uh because ethereum is a social technology and so Defcon is a social conference and so it's uh just not about the tech it's all about just the ways that ethereum and local cultures all around the world integrate with each other uh and we've just been having a fantastic time uh connecting with everyone that hasn't been able to connect in the last three years because Defcon hasn't happened since 2019 uh and so just seeing the soul and the spirit kind of emerge out of this conference has been just a fantastic thing to

observe I would definitely second that I know the ethereum foundation has come under a lot of lack for um the choice of location uh I I know um a couple of people who deliberately didn't come because they had security concerns and so on but um I think um it's been a fantastic choice of location in terms of accessibility um I mean in South America right so basically everything's far away from where most people are in South America but bogota's by uh by quite a stretch um one of the more accessible cities um the vibe is fantastic so I think uh the the Latin American Community has

been strong from the get-go and um usually it's them making the 13-hour flights except for Nick Nick's always on 13 hour flights but everyone else is uh sometimes uh uh you know gets to do this on their own turf and this is never the case for South Americans so I think this this has been um a fantastic signal I am low-key obsessed with the venue I think this is the best venue yet I love the venue basically you see how many people there are but it's still um it's it it doesn't feel crowded because I think the way they've done this architecturally with um like this really high open space in the middle absolutely fantastic and uh I love the bathrooms I know that this is a really

weird thing to compliment but I uh I absolutely love the bathrooms on this is the first time that any epicenter listener who have heard bathroom related comments in the 400 some odd episode history of epicenter um so I can learn a little bit of context to this because there's a question about um you know what the ethereum ecosystem is what um what it you know what it couldn't be could be should be um coming off of also coming off of the last Devcon there are these funny things about it where uh it's it's known and almost revered for the things that go wrong uh you know that's uh uh uh and

this time we tried to go ideology was probably uh up there tied at a number one with um making sure that things just work so you know was there uh uh uh was there catering was it accessible from the airport was it accessible to a downtown into a city could people get around the city fairly easily but skipping over the venue things for the most part the um the ecosum is big ethereum as uh David often says is it's people all the way down and um but who are those people so we have this very large community in say Berlin or in Denver or San Francisco or New York and in Buenos Aires and uh uh what will make it all relatively

Unstoppable unkillable on whatever else um is these communities continuing to grow and pop up and create new supercells kind of everywhere and if we only hit where they uh have already existed then um we failed to kind of foster that growth now there's a line right uh we're in Bogota and that means that there are a lot of people from Venezuela that can come over be at the conference in a way that they would have never been able to experience uh uh elsewhere but of course we can't cross that line and go over there because of political concern right so where can you get where you might want to where can you go or you might want to create impact and further growth because regionally it's in an area that might be

a great fit um you know we've seen there's eth Medellin next week in Panama the week after and Quito was last week and uh so you can maybe start to create a supercell in the northern half of South America just like there is one in in uh ourselves by playing in a Buenos Aires in six hours North by plane in New York City and once you kind of have people building from everywhere and for everywhere it really starts to become the worldwide community that we want it to be so I hope that that's something that comes from this there's also and then I'll I'll be quiet but there's something to be said for bringing all of these people that might have had misconceptions and preconceptions about South America and seeing how that's

changed in a four day span uh you referenced people who I'm coming with security or something you know or not going at all and I've been around people who in the first day said I'm not okay leaving this hotel but by day two they're at the Street Markets and by day day four they kind of like get to know a neighborhood and it's it's quite nice and then I think somebody said to me I wouldn't have ever come to this region let alone the city if the event didn't bring me here and I'm used to it being in places that I know so I hope that's something that we can learn from um actually what you just said I feel like that's why conferences are being even organized or hosted like I feel like that like the whole ethereum Community is like a full of digital Nomads that basically

just travel from a conference to a conference and it just allows us to explore the world and opens up uh possibilities and options to like where to travel or like visit the new places get to know new cultures and I love the Vibrance of the Latin American Community especially as they've been like getting ready for this for like two years three years um and seeing the progress and the energy of the Latin American community and like the Spanish people uh at Defcon it's very interesting and especially like the people that are around or like translating notes or like you know even like talking to your Spanish um or like doing a bunch of like Spanish

programs um I love that um especially as Spanish language in general uh so many people speaking Spanish um so it's kind of cool to see uh ethereum itself like transforming into like a more more of a bilingual bilingual bilingual yeah bilingual um like a world where people don't need to know only English in order to navigate through the web 3 ecosystem but also the Spanish as well and I'm very grateful for everybody who put any sort of like work into bringing the Consulate in America and I'm very excited uh about the growth and the energy uh that uh

Defcon and the whole Community is especially like people travel uh to Defcon to Bogota from all around the world and now seeing all these like energies and different cultures at one spot creating like a huge Synergy of like um that connects like the technology the ethereum itself connects us all together and now we are making something more like bigger and like connecting together and like thinking how to like help the ecosystem and how to like grow it even more and how to make it more decentralized and especially as Latin American countries have troubles with their own like banking systems and seeing

blockchain help with that is very very useful and very cool and I'm very grateful that even ethereum Foundation or whoever else decided to host Defcon in Bogota and this is amazing venue and I'm very grateful to be a part of Defcon as well yeah you said earlier that nickelweights has to travel 13 hours but the sad truth is it's more like 30 and if I have to travel 30 hours to somewhere uh it's nice that somewhere new and interesting that I haven't been before where I can experience new cultures and stuff at least the time when I'm not at the conference center and um yeah it's been a really fun location to have it in and and I've had a great time I think the thing that stuck out the

most of me about this conference so far is that not even the ethereum app layer has too much Focus here uh we're beneath the app layer with a lot of the content and the talks here that's layer twos there's post-emerge ethereum eip4844 dank sharding uh it's taking infrastructure uh like nfts and D5 don't really have too much uh of uh exposure here uh and I think that's kind of emblematic of where we are in the ethereum world and what Devcon really is to ethereum is it's this very deep in the stack conference uh and I I haven't been to any of the other Dove counts before but you know I've heard stories like I've listened to the other epicenter post uh Devcon episodes just to get the recap and it seems to be that this Devcon uh also seems to be

emblematic of where ethereum is at large where early devcons were small and chaotic and uh you know a little bit of uh needed some polishing and so was ethereum in those early days and now we're at this Devcon where the city was well there were some concerns about danger I don't really think anything anything has actually happened yeah and I think if you just put on your common sense hat you actually don't really have feel exposure to any danger in the city and then uh it's been the perfect intersection of the culture of Colombia the culture of Bogota uh but also the very polished and well-crafted uh conference center and organized event and so uh you know vitalik said that post-emerge ethereum is like 50 to 60

percent done but also that we're good at shipping now we're good at coordinating the developers are coordinated uh and it seems to be that that is also expressed in uh Defcon as well cool yeah let's dig into the content uh what what has uh what have you have you uh I mean I assume most of you haven't gone to that many talks because there's tons of people here and basically you just kind of note which talks you want to catch up with later on YouTube so uh what which kind of talks would that be for you so for any listeners that have or haven't read some of these published books on the history of ethereum what's

interesting about them is they tend to mark their timelines by going Devcon to Defcon so you know it was Defcon 2 the DDOS attack is underway you know all the crazy things that kind of happen from one to another we're in Prague it's Devcon for all of the core developers call an emergency meeting on state rent where they come to believe that you know statelessness is no longer uh or the state bloat could become a huge issue in time and what should we do about it um and there are things that came up here too that are quite interesting you've got um Carl did his presentation on something that I hadn't heard of previously which was this whole uh uh sort of Randomness ceremony that they're working on um while we were here one of the major uh uh organizations behind a layer two

solution uh uh obtained a major client team so that was kind of interesting and I guess it it's one of those things where I saw a tweet yesterday and it might have been yours it might not have it it's a Walking The Halls of Devcon is like being in crypto Twitter and uh uh it's it's they're you know FCC is great at Denver is great uh they're all the the events that you know the community organizes that are thousands of people are cool but it's it's interesting how it's this event has some gravity around it and it's fun to see um I feel like um this Defcon is way more like proof of stake has been a huge

thing a specialist merch happened like a month ago so now seeing like all these like post-match dogs and like the technical talks like how ethereum can work in like post-match world or like how ethereum can run even on like proper steak and what kind of dabs we can like build and propose stake and even like improvements on like uh in like evm ecosystem or like solidity improvements uh or like a bunch of like ZK knowledge that's like whole new world that emerge recently I feel like the whole like ZK um CK and the layer twos which has been like blowing off as well uh pretty much um and also just the fact of like how we are connecting that with whole like the

cultural uh Vibe as well as uh downstairs on like the bottom floor we have the community hubs which is kind of cool to see like a different communities as well taking apart uh and bringing like different by to like the whole like developer nerdy kind of builder-ish vibe um it's very cool to see all that emerging and like sort of like even like you know putting like puzzling together and uh creating this like whole new ecosystem um yeah I think uh you know probably the talk I've seen that I like the most which is I guess easy because I only saw one but it is an excellent talk

is Eric walls talk about social coordination around slashing censoring validators and I think that sort of thing is going to be a really interesting conversation to have because you know we we decide our social norms and the best time to decide the social norms is before the disaster happens not while it's happening you know the the reason the Dow was contentious is because we hadn't had that conversation beforehand of what will we do if something like this happened um and so I think it's amazing that people are bringing up topics like this at devcom so that we can really get that conversation kick-started uh what I'm looking forward to watching afterwards is all of the talks about base layer evm improvements and you know components like ZK snacks and and stuff like that

and how we can evolve the base layer to better support them because ethereum ultimately survives by being the best infrastructure for a variety of applications rather than trying to build the applications in and then also just reading about some of the listening to some of the projects that are being built on those sort of improvements uh you know so so that Forest is near and dear to my heart I think it's an amazing game I love that it's uh not you know paid paid to earn and or play to you know earn or whatnot it's just a game that's fun legitimately good it happens to be built in an entirely decentralized fashion and I love seeing those sort of things evolving like the non-financial cases on top of ethereum and on top of

new improvements we can build the VM and so forth the talk that's now living rent free in my brain is definitely uh Carl flourish's talk about uh bedrock and the op stack and Carl Flores first off is a fantastic presenter uh he's just exudes like this vitality and this energy and this optimism and uh the haha optimism um and uh and Bedrock is all about this uh what is like simply defined as like the erc20 standard but for layer twos uh and so as ethereum has become more modular uh the layer two teams are also learning that layer twos also need to follow in ethereum's first steps and also become modular as well uh and so the op stack and Bedrock is this infrastructure for uh you know plugging

in in different parts of what makes a blockchain so like what do you want you want an optimism fraud proof or do you want a ZK approver uh where do you want your data you want to put your data on the ethereum like one or you do one of the validium but it's like the skeleton to produce any layer twos uh but he connected in the way that he presented it in the slides that whoever made those slides knows Carl flourish and a very personal level because they know how he like presents and talks and the story that he tells where he talks about the first ideas of optimism to where we are now and how every single time like they all come together they all realize that they don't know they don't know [ __ ] about what they were talking about six months ago and they actually had to go

back to the drawing board over and over and over again and this is something that um all layer two teams are doing and also how ethereum has done uh and and so the the agency the evolution of optimism and the philosophy I think of it I think is really really strong especially as uh 2021 was the year of cross-trained bridge hacks and what they're really building is a system without Bridges uh in a single single shared network of many many chains and so that has lived different free in my brain set a comment on this and I'll pass back to Frederica but um this is one of the things that I think the ethereum ecosystem does best especially when they're all in one place is they're allowed to throw stones at one another and at rapid speed so whereas in a lot of other ecosystems you end up with a

bottleneck as there is somebody that is legitimately smart and doing legitimately good work but we all wait to see on what the figure does next in ethereum World you'll have you know Carl might disagree with Calvin might disagree with Proto and that's just optimism and then you know the whatever the off-chain labs does and now Prismatic with them that's just optimistic Roll-Ups and then there's the matter Labs team starkware folks whatever fuel is doing and you've got the you know three different uh ZK VM you know projects going at it with one another the rapid iteration and constant competition yields the best results in a way that simple competing roadmaps can't and it's a really cool feature not a bug of uh uh real decentralization

yeah absolutely and that's totally also reflected in the Boost space right so basically booths often they are just you know tables you know it's Swag dealers essentially like can I get a t-shirt inside them sort of thing um but there were so many outstanding conversations at the Boost and maybe I passed to Nick first because uh Nick you had like uh you had one of the most popular boots people queued up for longer than an hour to actually uh engage with you right yeah it's been it's been exciting uh for those who don't know what we did is we we did this integration where uh you can come to the booth we recommended people pre-register because we know not

everyone brings a wallet um you prove your ens name and you get this card that shows who you are visually but you can scan it with any phone and get a poet that says I met nick.ether divcon sex or you know whoever whoever you are and then we also put together a leaderboard showing who has met the most people at divcon sex uh and it's been wildly beyond our our expectations popular we got 2 000 cards and we were like well we'll use a thousand fifty of con and we'll save a thousand for the next event no day one we went through like 1100 cards day two we used almost all the remaining ones and by beginning of day three we were out and I've been blown away by by how it's gone but I think speaking more generally I really love the divcon 6

approach to booths which is you know it most conferences being a sponsor buys you a booth and then the booth is like Chill Zone Central kind of thing you know you know whereas here that the two are decoupled and there's these boots and there's the um the the other ones upstairs and they're rotating through the event and it's a mixture of you know organizations like ours you know public goods of of companies and of like you know Grassroots projects um and they're all bringing people in to talk about their projects there's a lot of cross-pollination in some ways the most valuable conversations we've had have been since we ran out of cards because then we have more than 20 seconds to speak to each person before that we have to move them on to get the next card out uh it's been it's been

really amazing yeah vitaleck tweeted that uh at Vatican it's two popes per square mile and at uh at Defcon 6 it's two poabs per square meter and I think this was just about right so yeah congrats on this uh this super cool uh way of engaging with the community and getting them to use stuff um what about all of yours uh Booth experience so I I I know that I mean usually I mean how did you select sponsors right I mean so basically it's it's it it seemed incredibly curated so uh you know devconnect taught us a lot of lessons and um the question when

organizing that event was what would it look like if you just called everybody to town to build with one another for a week because too often uh uh the events are um sensory overload and it's harder to be productive um also the wrong groups can sometimes get featured so we decided to four go sponsors all together this year there was there were two separate tracks one was impact hubs which is what Nick did I'll walk through that in a second and the other was uh um supporters where there is a swag Zone and I'll explain why we thought about foregoing this all together but the supporter track was fairly simple there's no real you know set of benefits you brand the room you get the VIP stage you know after party

for these people it was more of we just held the public goods around um so people could contribute toward um uh get coin CLR fund East Colombia or um uh uh uh it was a Bitcoin around there was one other but uh protocol Guild of course uh this is Trends project and those funds go directly toward a lot of the core developers um but uh uh we also wanted to keep the venue clean so um the folks that were aligned and that participated um have a smaller space upstairs in which they can give away the swag but it's not the same as the impact booths this way at least you know we're we're we've all been able to kind of like pass

through without kind of floors and piles of t-shirts the impact hubs are this is where you specifically go this is the big area meet the layer two teams meet the client teams meet the ecosystem leaders meet the solidity team ethereum.org the people doing the educating meet the grants folks and it's meant to be in Impact space and not just a shell space I like the idea of a dedicated you know chill space on occasion because we all like to walk away with bags and bags of things but um it shouldn't just be pay for play and we tried to reflect some of that oh actually um it's never mind has a both as well uh and this is my first time on a conference where actually I'm uh there with a company that has a booth uh and it's been an amazing experience for me

as we are in the impact Hub uh as well um which is amazing to like see all the projects and all the like um yeah like layers uh whether that's like um you know ethereum uh protocol layers and all these like um uh companies that are key infrastructure projects that are supporting the ethereum itself to be on like one floor and where you can like you are able to like even like sort of like a collaborate together or like you know as there were two companies that at some point march to one and had like one booth together sorta uh and it's funny

to like see these uh emerging uh but they also um just like great to like see all the builders and like everybody to be focused on the impact hubs and on the core infrastructure projects rather than just focus on like a D5 or like a you know owner like commercial like projects um and it's it's great to like see that mainly those impacts have uh boots or like those like infrastructure projects uh go to the biggest uh like a light or biggest like highlight space where most of the people are hanging out and it's not only just to grab a swag but it's usually all these conversations that we had at the booth where were very

impactful uh and it was very educational and like people coming into us and asking us like how to run like never mind the client and like all these kind of technical questions which is very great that we are able to support Defcon as well on behalf of another mind and like other projects I actually haven't had much time in the booth so I didn't have much of a booth experience if I could just Institute one more thing going back to the whole benefits of being in Colombia and and events in different locations day one um morning of day one we had a couple of the security staff the venue approached us and say uh the queue in front of your booth was too long uh it's a fire hazard and you know it gets in the way and

we're like no problem we'll we'll you know can we set a limit here we'll put a sign up we'll turn people away they're like great thank you morning of day three they come back and I'm like what is it and they're like where can we get one of those cards and we we uh Kevin showed them how to set up an ethereum wallet like registered a couple of names for them and we printed the cards off and now they're walking around the venue with them so you know local impact that is super sweet um let's talk about the future so obviously this was Defcon 6 and Defcon has evolved a lot over the years can you leak some Alpha about Devcon 7 because I heard Istanbul is that correct so interestingly there's always a favorite couple of cities that are

shield hard online we learned some lessons uh uh most of this is fairly public maybe this will also be Alpha but um in the past we've undergone searches where you pick the city before we picked a venue um and that turned out very poorly when we then chose another city um that uh again this has been referenced in a book but with some incorrect details but I won't call folks out here but essentially you know then just before announcing this when you find out uh what a lot of people ended up criticizing on Osaka had to do with uh distance of time from airport to venue or from venue to City so you pivot again and that's kind of how we ended up with Prague but we had two selections beforehand so a lot of folks like Istanbul a lot of people have started

talking about uh uh Vietnam I've been chilled on places in Greece and in Belgrade usually the way it works is you've got to look at what you want to accomplish whether it's impact work you know then there's venue availability in all the logistics that go into you know uh uh can women walk the street safely as safely as men can um is the government uh friendly and able to help or is it you know a dictatorial space or something that might not reflect what we're looking at you know what reflects the values of the ethereum ecosystem there's just a lot to consider so the truth is TBD but um I think that I really enjoy the Shilling personally because it's just great to

see you get to like imagine the possibilities of it all I mean for a lot of people that might listen you know to podcasts like epicenter may also be in the maker Mafia of Buenos Aires and you know there was also this was a thing when a lot of people had to go look at cities like this in Buenos Aires and then talk about why and what should the event be and so on and so forth and um you know by the way they put on a great iklatan last month too but uh yeah I think it would start to shape up fairly quickly but it's not there yet so I don't have any spoilers for you but a lot of people here you know you hear that ringing from the Vietnam folks and from the itu the uh uh University uh uh

uh Club out of Istanbul as well they make a lot of good noise I hope it's yeah Defcon is for historical purposes tended to rotate Eastward but um uh pest isn't necessarily present also you've got the whole Dev connecting in the mix so we'll see what happens Nick one one one day we'll all come to New Zealand it's like just just this year fantastic so what in terms of size so I mean um the these events they've kind of reflecting the community they've grown and I mean obviously demand has been much larger than actual space to accommodate attendees where do you think we're headed

I would actually pass this question along to you know David knows the community better than most I would pass it along to Nick who interacts with a lot of dap users and that is why you've been a community person for a long time um one of the first things that I said was as an event grows larger and larger and larger it makes it a little bit more difficult to maintain its soul and um so I'm on a little bit of a listening tour the uh you know devconnect was an experiment but that form factor could potentially grow to any size because if you had a 50 000 person gathering in a town people could very easily segment to one side of the street for newer users to another for core research to another for you know uh uh Mev things and another for D5 Focus everybody gets a

stage everybody gets to talk eventually defcon's a very research conference in the in the uh they said on the main stage um in the sense that you might have a 15 20 approval rate for talks you're bound to annoy some people but then you're bound to have some you know side events around the city to make up for it but not everybody can get to those things so my question is what would you guys like to see in a future Devcon should there be should there be you know multiple events should the community own some could it just keep growing to be you know whatever venue size will hold ten thousand or Twenty Thousand because we deserve our Olympic open opening ceremony or our Super Bowl or our World Cup final and it doesn't have to be distributed or would you like to see it distributed so on and

so forth curious about your thoughts I think one of the reasons why this particular Defcon is so magical is a little bit about the timing um recently post-merge ethereum and so now we all feel like we're turning a page for ethereum and so now we all kind of need to look around it's like hey what's what do we focus on next what's the new thing to focus on so this f-con is cool because just we just happened to go post merge six weeks ago or however long it was the other Serendipity here is that we're at the bottom of a bear Market um and so you don't really see any of yeah hopefully the bottom um and that means that the right people are here uh because you don't get any of the fluff that you get at the top uh I would hate to see Devcon the first

Devcon after three years of covid to be tainted by a bunch of people that are tourists that aren't here for the right reasons and are directing the conversation in ways that are unhelpful uh and so this Devcon is magical because of that uh and so for future devcons when it comes to size uh you know I can't really predict what the markets will do but I think all devcons that are in Bear market so probably going to be more vibrant than the ones that are in Bull markets interestingly enough uh however uh the whole idea about ethereum is to scale out to the whole entire world but the way that ethereum does this is through modularity and so as ethereum gets bigger and as Devcon gets bigger I think we do have to lean into a modular design structure for the conference um but there are going to the ethereum

is going to produce ecosystems that people are going to care about one thing and not care about another thing and so there are people like Phil Diane who he's just going to only talk about Mev and eventually Mev is going to be an entire industry uh and that is also going to be the same for layer twos because every Layer Two is also going to have its own network of chains on top of it and that's going to produce entire Industries and I feel like I can say this on behalf of the entire ethereum ecosystem but we feel like we're on the cusp with so many Technologies really hitting their maturity and that's going to produce an industry for every single cohort every single sector of ethereum uh and so I think the the question is like not how do we not have a monolithic

Devcon where we scale out at to 20 000 people and we lose its soul but how do we have compartmentalized devcons where they're all like they're all at the same time they're all in the same city uh but they're more modular and specialized in different areas uh and so uh we have like the Mev the layer twos the proof of stake and we get to be more precise about every single part uh but we also get to have the large large conference that ethereum deserves well we may even see Phil die and host its own death concern uh but no I mean um on behalf of research magicians we hosted the event at the dev connect which was very cool

um and I feel like that was great uh as there was like one Central way uh where everybody could connect which was the co-working space and then it was like scattered all around the city uh but I feel like even hearing from people I feel like they were like oh but we are like confused but also um it was great on another side as there was many venues and many different communities as for me they've connected felt like everybody like every single Community has its own like a hub you know sir you know like a part of the city itself where all the like different communities uh like Vibe together um and sort of like connect together and then like you know you can like go to like one part of the city and have like

a public goods then you can go to like another part of the city and have like let's say the enemy details then go to another city have like the modular blockchain kind of conference and like even like give a space to like different blockchain communities and then you can go to like another part and then you can have like the car development uh and then like everybody connects in the center the heart of the center uh at the co-working space but for defcons um I mean it was great experience experiment with the dev connect uh that way but how we are going to scale the Defcon itself um honestly I'm I don't know but I enjoy that Defcon itself is like a developer Focus conference and that it's very

niche in a sense that we are trying to like focus on like impact like how uh like which country we should bring Defcon to where we can like teach people more about Defcon or like teach people more about like blockchains and like about ethereum and how ethereum can have a real impact on like the country itself or like the the humanity even in the country itself and I would personally even love to see Defcon in like countries like um I don't know like Africa in like a middle of Africa why not um especially I attended the Australia called um a talk about public ads um and there were some people

um I don't remember the name of the speaker uh but he was saying that they are basically bringing blockchain to Farmers and helping like Farmers uh and setting up the insurance for the farmers itself through defy as their Banks don't allow them like um you know issue like any insurance on their like a farming yields or like the farmers itself like the farmer workers not like Farmers like in D5 uh ecosystem and I'm very excited to see like how Defcon will scale in that way uh especially Stephan are bringing together like very unique community and very unique Vibe uh and sorry like decentralizing itself but in a sense

it's still being like centralized it's one location and I really love the idea like how we are all the centralized like everybody like working on ethereum is basically all around the world uh but then we like once a year we connect in like one location which is the Defcon itself yeah absolutely and I would second that basically it's been a rotation of Europe Asia and the Americas Africa has been very notably left out as has Oceania but I mean basically you guys you're smart right so it's like small and far away but um but I mean yeah I think it's time to actually have a Defcon somewhere in Africa

yeah Nick find a comment because we kind of have to wrap up uh I guess I'd just say uh first of all I find hilarious the idea that a prerequisite of con would be like a 50 Drop In The Ether price so we'll just be waiting waiting you know um but I think it's worth saying like also divcon is a Prestige event and as long as there's one div con there's going to be a lot of people who want to come because they want to be at the divcon and if we do modularize then we provide events for everybody and everybody can come to the one that suits them not just to the Devcon because they wanted to say they were at divcon yeah I hear that I I do actually like the the crypto Twitter analogy kind of roaming the halls of Defcon like piece

like being on live crypto Twitter and I think maybe you can have it I mean maybe maybe like in the in the midterm future this will be true but I think for now we can still have like these monolithic events with like satellite events around it and uh I hope we see a another fantastic Edition next year let's keep Defcon Defcon for now fantastic thank you guys for participating it's been a real pleasure