The brisk and sunny weather provided the perfect landing in Amsterdam’s airport, flying over the tulip fields complete with watching a rabbit hop around the runway. Unlike other crypto conferences, events take place at various eclectic venues around the city, like converted and enclosed courtyards and Pinterest-worthy storefronts. It feels like the whole blockchain industry moves to a central location for a week every month.
DevConnect is a spin-off of the CONNEXT conference and is part of the Ethereum Foundation’s official calendar of events. Its mission is to act as an all-inclusive community space for developers and entrepreneurial technologists to surface future tech needs, promote open innovation and the idea that truly decentralized systems are necessary in order to build better products and services.
Unlike other crypto and blockchain events, the content has been curated to target developers/engineers, data scientists, and various DeFi folks. A lot of the panels were about the future of the blockchain and what’s next and what everyone that is building some kind of tooling and product should consider… at least these were the events I attended. Conference-goers were served lengthy discussions about Zero-Knowledge rollups, Layer 2s scalability, and various modular concepts that I’m still researching the basics and where to begin. Ethereum OG Dani Osorio organized a day-long event called The CatWalk Society, supported by Celestia, CONNEXT, Nomad & Entropy. Full disclosure, I only caught the last panel which included a whiteboarding session where builders’ debated and strategized how to move from layer 1 to layer 2. The audience participation was a nice touch of people talking on panels about the same NFT ideas. “The CatWalk” is the name given to a group of young international people, who are passionate about bringing the Ethereum blockchain to everyday life. The organizers of DevConnect conference and ETH Amsterdam have created a platform where we can discuss and share our point of view on the future of Ethereum and blockchain technology in general.
We don’t just talk about it, we do it.
Meanwhile, The GirlHaus gathering took place on the ground floor of a storefront gallery space, with natural sunlight and ornate potted plants, and a long table filled with charcuterie boards. Founders Lauren & JoJo greeted guests with beet, ginger, and apple juice shots upon arrival. I happily helped myself to two glasses in between exchanging content ideas with fellow community members. “I rather teach a Web2 writer about Web3 content production because they are already buttoned up,” one builder in DeFi told me. Then we all started talking about the latest Elon Musk tweet. Later on that night, MakerDAO hosted a party at the Supper Club.
The next day, Celestia hosted their much-anticipated Modular Summit, which focused on the flexibility of existing and forthcoming blockchains. Celestia’s COO Nick White (pictured above) introduced the panelists in an atrium-style room. There was a research track where scholars were invited to discuss the latest statistical significance of on-chain data and how to maintain.
Lastly, my team at ApeWorX hosted a digital and IRL demo for our first Layer 2 Plugin with Starknet!
Le sigh… It’s been less than 48 hours, and I already have a weekend wardrobe of swag, including socks and two face masks. If this post goes viral, I’ll think about riding a bike to the Amsterdam Cathedral. However, right now, I’m focused on crossing the streets safely without getting hit.
Happy Earth Day!
Glossary
Zero Knowledge - Proofs: According to the Ethereum foundation—
Zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) bundle (or "roll-up") hundreds of transfers off-chain and generate a cryptographic proof. These proofs can come in the form of SNARKs (succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge) or STARKs (scalable transparent argument of knowledge). SNARKs and STARKs are known as validity proofs and get posted to layer 1. The ZK-rollup smart contract maintains the state of all transfers on layer 2, and this state can only be updated with a validity proof. This means that ZK-rollups only need the validity proof instead of all transaction data. With a ZK-rollup, validating a block is quicker and cheaper because less data is included. Source
Explain To Me Like I’m 5: We use technology to make a rollup of lots of small transactions. This rollup is cheaper and faster than sending the small transactions, so we can use it on the Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum blockchain is more comfortable to work with because we don't need to transmit as much data and spend as much time.