ETHDenver modified by Blockworks
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Yesterday was day one of ETHDenver.
The price of ETH was ~$2,300. People here must be depressed, right?
Eh, not really. I must’ve had 20 conversations yesterday and maybe one person mentioned market prices.
With about 18,000 attendees coming into the city, ETHDenver is still the largest free-of-charge Ethereum-centric event next to Devcon.
The event kicked off with the folkiest of folk songs brought to you by Jonathan “A Song A Day” Mann. Think “feminized wef soyboy mentality” vibes that Solana DeFi bronze age spartans would probably cringe at.
Oh, and apparently people are complaining that ETHDenver is not so “Ethereum-aligned” anymore because there are non-Ethereum sponsors?
So salient is the criticism that ETHDenver founder John Paller felt the need to address it at the festival’s opening.
“95%+ of our sponsors and 90% of our content is ETH, EVM or ETH aligned 😘😘😘,” his slide deck read.
Step into the main conference hall and you’re greeted with large booths representing Uniswap, Arbitrum and Coinbase.
There’s a markedly more professional vibe to ETHDenver this year, founder of Yap Global and ETHDenver’s official PR partner Samantha Yap told me.
“ETHDenver in its earlier years was more scrappy. This year, booths are spending a lot more money and there’s a greater professionalization of the event. The industry is evolving,” Yap said.
There also doesn’t seem to be just one dominant overarching narrative this year.
Unlike last year, where EigenLayer and restaking dominated the agenda, there’s pretty much a sprinkle of anything you could think of: DePIN, AI agents, regulation, RWAs, privacy and — of course — interoperability. Ethereum loves interop.
Conferences are often chock-full of panels and fireside chats, speakers armed with their sometimes dreary PR-approved speeches. Standing out on the day one agenda was a spicy debate between Haseeb Qureshi from Dragonfly Capital and Matt O’Connor at Legion, on the topic of ICOs vs. venture capital funding. Legion is an ICO-like fundraising platform.
Matt: “The idea that VCs are catalyzing growth and the product’s purpose to begin with…this gatekeeping and holier-than-thou attitude of VCs knowing which projects to fund leads to less experimentation and variety of what’s backed.”
Haseeb: “It’s rich since Legion raised money from VCs…and how many individual users using Legion own equity in Legion? I’m going to assume the number is zero.”
Anyway, here are some key launches from yesterday:
- MetaMask is launching Bitcoin and Solana integrations, gas abstraction, a UX overhaul, smart transactions and a MetaMask card.
- 14 teams, including NEAR AI, Coinbase Agent Kit and Eliza Labs announced the Open Agents Alliance (OAA), an initiative to provide permissionless and free AI access globally by combining infrastructure.
- Uniswap announced fiat off-ramping on the Uniswap Wallet powered by Transak, Moonpay and Robinhood.
- BitLayer announced the BitVM Bridge, enabling trust-minimized bridging between the Bitcoin network and other chains like Base, Starknet, Arbitrum, Sonic and Plume.
- Babylon and digital asset insurance broker Native are developing institutional-grade insurance coverage for bitcoin stakers, enabling bitcoin slashing coverage denominated in BTC.
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