The ETHDenver 2023 Experience

thank you Bagels Nation we are at shelling point which is a part of East Denver and I got this other microphone so we're gonna go around and talk to all the people who are at this amazing conference you know the deal I've been talking about East Denver ever since banquet started it's a really important conference it is the biggest of the East City conferences that are out there last year at in February of uh 20 which what was it 2022 East Denver attracted something like 13 000 15 000 people and we were totally

over subscribed for the sports Castle so we are in a brand new venue and even though we're in a bear market and all of our token prices are down bad uh the energy and excitement at East Denver is up only 8th Denver has always been up only I think I haven't gotten any official quote but we are somewhere between 15 and 20 000 people here in Denver Colorado for what is what has become much more than just East Denver uh East Denver has always been a two to three day conference but this has been an entire week and he's never has got so big that so many one day off events have

happened so really the week started on Monday and today is Thursday and it is the start of the canonical East Denver conference but really it's been going on all week we were at the axelr interoperability conference on Tuesday we were at wallet con yesterday but now East Denver has officially started here in the Denver Convention Center so like I said I got the second microphone let's go see who we can talk to foreign

what's up Hudson hello how's it going good uh we are at how are you I am David Hoffman who are you I am Hudson Jameson what are you up to today Hudson well um speaking later at shelling point and uh I'm also just kind of meeting people giving a lot of hugs uh and so this is your how many selling points have you gone to these days oh all of them all of them uh and this is uh the first one that's at this new East Denver yes new East Denver how's this new East Denver for you it's been really good this one is like so big it's like almost overwhelming because I've been to all

the other ones except last year so like it's much smaller the previous years but no no it's still really good feelings around here so yeah what you're talking to me about my talk is about burnout it's me with a few other people who have burned out and uh what we did about it I took a year off I'm coming back yeah I think everyone who's been in crypto long enough kind of knows the gist for people who are sadly going to miss your talk do you want to give them a quick TL DR sure so our talk is about burnout basically how to tell the signs how to kind of find support come in yourself to like take breaks have a healthy lifestyle and

uh maybe even talk about what workplaces should do to support that I think it's pretty ironic that we just started recording and the first person to talk to is talking about bird out uh maybe we'll save this one for the end how do you feel about that one maybe that's a good idea yeah yeah well so what are you looking forward to and any other talks that you're going to attend or anyway speakers Shapiro I think has a talk now and they might be now I have to go check but like uh yeah he's a wild card I want to see that yeah and then there's also um some other stuff on defy uh from some people I really respect from like Euler and uh other things and so you've been

to I think every single east Denver and we're counted the number of conferences I've been to so I've been every Denver uh except for last year and I've been to over 32 ethereum conferences uh that's quite a large number I've been to a large number of ethereum conferences and I'm nowhere near 32. maybe it makes sense that your talk is about burnout yeah for sure for sure yeah no it was it was rough the coolest thing though was Devcon six was in Bogota I was walking around five floors four thousand people there and suddenly I was like oh this isn't Devcon one with 300 people I don't have to like go 100 miles per hour

anymore and it really helped yeah yeah definitely one thing I've noticed at all of these one day off events which is really new for eat Denver is all of these like solo days yeah yeah so many people I don't recognize yeah absolutely there's like a lot of um like young young devs that are just getting into this and I try to find more you know access to them to get with the ogs and like you know make sure that they're getting the right values about being here yeah certainly uh for for people that weren't able to make it to East Denver what's the vibe can you give them a presence the largest collection of

different like companies that are blockchain focused but also like adjacent and like anything from you know gaming to defy D side just everything you can think of the gaming one surprised me a lot because it looks really professional so I'm gonna I've been walking around and I just found you and handed you the microphone and started talking who should be my next Target I thought I saw Victor Boone I did see Victor Boone and if I saw Victor Boone right now I'd be absolutely going after him I think I see him right over there actually so I'm gonna go take this microphone and run thank you so much cheers

we're gonna go get him hi Victor can I borrow you yeah absolutely this is my good friend Victor how's it going Victor hey good good how are you good this is uh you or what number of East Denver have you been to uh 2019 20 21 22 23 5. how is this one different uh let me name all the ways well one I'm not organizing so that's very nice I get to walk around and enjoy um I think everything's the venue's new

obviously so it fits a ton more people uh the bathrooms all work so far very nice so far big blow up yeah um I think one of the things that I love is that like you have room to breathe and walk around like talk to people the thing that I don't love is that I'm not used to the layout of it yet yeah we're gonna know where the stages are so I'm just kind of like Meandering but I feel like Saturday and Sunday will get a lot better yeah are you giving a talk or what's going on with you no I am here uh I'm not maternity leave yeah I'm on Daddy Duty and so I'm your baby super

cute yeah yeah so I'm just I'm just hanging out it's kind of like I haven't committed to any events having moved to any panels is there any subject matter that you think is really standing out here at East Denver uh here it is Denver I haven't gone to any of the talks I haven't uh but I think there's anything that I would that I would love for people to talk about it's like one I'd love for people talk about liquid shaking yeah and I think that's part of that is just talking about the regulatory climate but also how do

you make intelligent choices as a project in order to set yourself up for Success so when it comes to dealing with regulators and so it's like what do you name things right and so like recently people stopped using LSD and now everybody's using LST right right that's an essential choice and like that's project stuff for Success why is that so important why is that UST versus USD choice so important so LSD uh the d stands yeah so uh the d stands for derivative right and derivative has a very specific connotation a security space around exactly what it is and so it's actually not descriptive of what's

happening and so you're taking tourists so one you're not describing the thing as it actually is and two you're like calling your derivative when it's clearly not and it's you know derivatives file under regulatory framework that clearly do not apply here and so switching over to LST is more descriptive liquid singing token is always descriptive to what you actually have and what's happening and it makes it clear that this is not a derivative and that shouldn't fall under that regulatory framework right okay so people should start instead of using the words LSD which sadly is like really fun it's like use LSD not LSD you know what

I mean yes yes okay but you're we're saying use LST because it doesn't trigger the ire of regulators and we can perhaps push them at Bay keep them at Bay a little bit more yeah yeah and I think that like people have a little bit of a naive view sometimes where they don't realize that words matter right but if you actually look at like the reason a lot of projects get into trouble it's like how do you Market things how do you like talk to community how do you like position stuff and it's just like a lot of it is just your shot as your own comps yeah so the Shanghai upgrade coming pretty soon uh and I know you're you're you're working with coinbase Cloud coinbase staking so this

is very very relevant to you how is coinbase thinking about Shanghai what does it need to do what are you guys planning for is there what's the conversation like yeah I mean you know a big part of it just making sure that we're ready from the technical perspective uh and so you know withdrawals going live we have an e staking API which is how our partners integrated with our saving product on ethereum and so just make sure that we have the records upgrades there that all the withdrawal accusers set correctly everything's good to go other than that I think it's gonna be kind of a non-event to be perfectly honest I think there's a lot of like Midwood takes on Twitter of like there's all this eat something yeah so pressure I'm like you

guys are dummies and I'm not gonna respond to anything because I I don't have time for it um but I'm excited I think it's just the latest step and then uh you know eth road map and to me this feels like the culmination of the efforts for um so many different teams and core devs and contributors and this is kind of like the merge was done this is the last step and then you're like okay it's done everything's done and now it's like let's look to the future I know this wasn't your project but bass is you know capturing the Mind Chair by storm and I know CBE the the liquid staking token from coinbase yeah is another

decentralized uh you know crypto project offered by coinbase how are these things gonna get married how are they what's the overlap between these two things um well I think the first thing is that um you know there are parts of the coinbase ecosystems that are centralized and like you're part of the carbon stack right it's like if you're using usdc if you're using CBE if you're using bass these are like Central those things that are run by coinbase and then you know coinbase is responsible for you know making sure that they're integrating to defy and have like all that stuff and so you can have that like first party ecosystem but on the other hand you can

also have like the more decentralized aspects and so you know for CPE there's also LLC right which part of alluvial in the liquid Collective that's gonna be launching soon TM and then on the base side as well like you know it's on the road towards Progressive decentralization and so you have a choice about do I want to use it now when it is it's centralized off or you don't want to wait until it becomes more decentralized uh Victor uh who should be my next victim that should put a microphone in front of uh having a walkie walking very fast away from me which makes me very sad yeah yeah I mean you you can chase them down uh do you

want to do Lisa she gets flustered easy yeah this is the perfect time yes yes right there I'm just gonna give her the mic and be like Lisa you're on camera yeah let's do it let's do it hey Lisa hey you're on camera now how's it going good to see you uh tell me a little bit about who you are hi I'm Lisa I am Victor's better half I'm uh the mom to Alexander Boone um I'm also the CEO at Aztec which actually this is our booth right here and my team um and Aztec is building an encrypted ethereum yeah right okay so that is a

very hot topic these days yes uh with all of this like regulatory pressure about other things that aren't adjacent to privacy but I'm sure you guys are like I have to have been thinking about this how is that climate impacting what you guys are doing at essec so we're actually really excited about the interest in ZK that developers have right now there's a lot of people that are building ZK applications and Aztec built a product called Noir which is a universal ZK language that people can use to like build all kinds of applications where they can do things

like you know compliance checks for example which can feed into things like okay how are we responding to like you know regulatory um requests or like enforcement across all different jurisdictions so I think the point is that it's going to be very flexible and up to the developer to kind of like adhere to the jurisdictions that they're operating in okay so give us a description of a world where nor is like maximally adopted all the developers know how to build on it what does that look like for ethereum yeah okay so today Noir can actually be used across different proving systems and around different ecosystems so Aztec is going

to be one of them but Noir can also be used across like starkware and across polygon and all the other kind of ethereum ecosystems just like a development kit um it's a language a language so it's basically like providing the syntax for people to real build like uh ZK proofs really easily and the goal is to get web 2 developers building with these EK proofs and ultimately deploying across all these different uh ethereum systems whether it's darkwear or Aztec or polygon or any of the other ZK ecosystems that actually have the Integrations with Noir does it do we

need it to be a ZK roll up for that to work or how what are the limitations on who can build using Noir um I think in terms of the limitations it's like there's technical limitations today so we're building things like recursion to make it faster right um but I think the limitation is really like is that integration built with Noir and that proving system and so we actually have a grants program with Aztec right now where people are building out those Integrations so people that are in like the starboard community that want to use Noir are like building the integration so it can be compatible with software okay so if we if there's a bar is it

zero to 100 and zero is there's zero privacy on ethereum 100 is everything on ethereum is private yeah where are we and where will we find equilibrium So today we're probably at like I don't know less than 10 okay um we have a product live it's called azteconnect and it allows people to interact with layer one D5 using Aztec so users deposit their funds into Aztec and then they can interact with protocols like Lido compound Ave element Etc and what they benefit from is gas savings because they're participating in our roll-up but also privacy because all

all users see on maina is that you're interacting with Aztec is interacting with the protocol but you don't see the individuals that are interacting with it so that's kind of where we are today the future state is being able to build any private smart contract so you can have private variables private functions private State and so that's like the hundred and like the idea would be basically enabling this new use case or lots of new use cases that require privacy and do you think we'll ever get to 100 or you'll find we'll find an equilibrium before that point um yeah I mean I think there's probably always going to be like examples of things that should be completely public

but we're just seeing so much interest in people that are doing things in a public way right now that want to have privacy so an example of that is nouns Dao has a request out there right now with um ZK projects to build private voting for their Dao so that they can allow their their participants to like vote privately without being concerned about like their identity being revealed or being persuaded because of their identity and so this is like the way democracy works right you go into a voting booth and no one is like oh what's your what's your vote known over there that's like how it should work right right exactly so like I think there's a lot of things that people are

doing publicly today that ideally they would do privately and that's a good example of one sure uh what okay what's gonna be first is an example of things that uh governance is going to go private first or what other like utilities you think are going to go private uh identity identity ones like people being able to like share aspects of their Identity or information with a ZK proof rather than sharing the underlying information like super excited about that we have a team building with Noir right now out in order to do that for student Anonymous contributors um we also are seeing people that are

you have to kind of like rethink a little bit how D5 applications are built with privacy because obviously like the way that uniswap is built today probably doesn't work as well with privacy and so I think future D5 protocols that have privacy are going to have like you know private order books and stuff like that so I think there's going to be like new mental models and new um kind of ways that developers will be building with privacy so if we just Peak to the interests of bankless listeners and they want to go down this Rabbit Hole how should they find the top of the rabbit hole aztec.network or go to Twitter and follow us at Aztec Network

cool awesome Lisa uh who should be my next victim because Victor told you and then here you are who should be next let's see who's around whether you can or cannot see them oh Victor's got an idea oh we're gonna go far we're gonna go follow Victor we're gonna go follow Victor finally so thank you hey I'm kind of hungry for a green pill let's go see if we can find one hey do you have a green pill oh yes I have um I'll take one yeah yeah here we

go oh I'm gonna get green pill oh there's Simona hi Simona all right I'm chewing on a green pill which means I need you to talk uh if you're the one organizing the shelling Point how is it going I mean you know chaotic as usual but it's a probably good so that's good uh how crazy is it that this is a conference about public goods and people actually are here and care about that um it's honestly the reason why we do it um and it's been growing steadily with uh every single trailing point I feel

it's gotten more and more interesting buzzier and buzzier and people are genuinely excited to be part of the conversations have the conversations and also have the space that enables them to chat come up with your ideas make things happen I think there's a lot of people out there in the world that understand at the very least conceptually what a public good is and they also yeah I like public goods but they've never really had perhaps a

shelling point to meet up and discuss that right and that's what showing boys really here to provide right 100 and I think it's such an important space to hold for people and to enable that freedom of expression that ability to collaborate cooperate communicate and come together in this really really authentic really really again I said Buzzy before but you can feel the energy when you walk in here and I think every single selling point that we've done and you've been to kind of all of them now I

have yeah well how many have they done three I mean it's I feel they have organically grown very uh biomimicry style you know like a Seedling that has grown into something really quite special and I think the interest that we saw this time around I think we sold out within a month um the the desire to speak the desire to create engagements the desire to be in

our own conference area in our D size space in the DSi workshops has been incredible so I am so so grateful that I get to not only you know work to provide the space for people but actually like check out some very very cool ideas happening right what is separating this particular shelling point from all the other shelling points that we've had it's grown into its own thing um and it's being so organic and so with so much excitement from people that um

the type of talks that we're seeing now and the type of different areas that we're doing now and the interest that we get from the community about those conversations has just blown up so um it's been beautiful to see because at the end of the day we've been uh banging on about this public good stuff for a good while and some of us are a little bit tired um and you know speaking from experience wait what no never um but yes it's it's really good to see and it makes it all worthwhile so if uh bankless listeners are out there

watching this at home at YouTube they sadly weren't able to make it out to shelling Point describe some adjectives or some emotions that you are feeling that they might need to feel in order to be present here you're asking me about feelings that's what I just told you about being tired um optimistic um definitely the regenerative and at this point really really looking towards the future and being able to

recognize how many of us there are thinking about these things working towards these things and I think being able to recognize and again be together whilst talking about this stuff whilst working on the same stuff together is really pulling us together together together you know it's really um motivating us all to keep you know public goods good uh I think the the thing I like you about you the most is not not the most there's plenty of

things to like about Simona first off your eyes are as green as the actual green green of the green pill your initials SP are shelling point which is just so fantastic I mean come on I should just mic drop right now absolutely I've been I've just been hounding people at selling point giving them the microphone who should be my next victim being why should it be Kevin owaki over there I mean because he's right there because he's right there proximity always be efficient about that but then you know there's so many new people

coming up into the space and so many interesting ideas that we should definitely give them uh a pass of the microphone as well I think that's absolutely right and we'll get to them right after I get to Kevin owaki thank you again so much for doing everything you are doing making public goods good my pleasure thank you see you later cheers hello with me yeah I would love to chat with you David Uh Kevin how's it going I'm good I heard you're a VC now are you a podcast host or a VC now uh I'm a little bit of both because I'm here to do one thing which is to

promote going bankless and that includes financing the explorers of the frontier who are exploring that Frontier yeah wait am I being interviewed I don't know we're both podcast hosts so maybe like we both assert our hostness um I feel like we're two AI it's just like bouncing back questions at each other yeah well I think you're projecting a little bit of you and Ryan on me and you but okay Uh Kevin did you ever think that something like today shelling Point number four would happen when you started get coin in the first selling point and the green pill movement just

reflect on how far things have come yeah well in 2017 I started Bitcoin in my basement with no funding and just a little bit of money that I made off of the bull market in 2017 and it's it was so lonely to get something off the ground and the fact that there's hundreds or even thousands of people here at shelling Point uh and also people who have been impacted by Bitcoin in the work that it's done is really incredible so it feels like we're in a regen movement and uh it's so much less lonely now uh did you ever think it was

possible to get so many people to care about public goods uh well I think that people care about public goods they care about clean air and open source software but they sort of take them for granted once those are withdrawn from you and you don't have clean air uh and you don't have herd immunity and you don't have those public goods then that's when you truly notice and the regen movement is all about building a movement where we don't take them for granted where we fund them and by the way with web3 we can fund public goods way more efficiently than the state can so when you want to talk about going bankless uh

one of the primary functions of the state is to fund public goods and if we can do it efficiently more better on web3 not only does that legitimize web 3 but it helps more people fund public goods in a bankless way so it's an incredible movement and I'm really just thankful to vitalik for really making public goods of value in his community because it's really trickled down to the rest of us here at shelling point and in the get coin community I think uh something that you and I definitely share is that we're never going to get crypto fully adopted until we get it legitimized and the only real

way to get it fully legitimized is by providing public goods better than any other system that can come before can you reflect on that as a path towards adoption yeah so I mean I think the web 3 is the internet of money um the internet of information changed everything in our society because now you can send information across the computer network that revolutionized education entertainment media if you have social media before web one so now we can send value across a computer network so anything that parallel there is anything with value transfer is going to be revolutionized in society by web3

and like I know that we're all hot on D5 and financial infrastructure funding art with nfts but up and coming uses of public of of web 3 I think is going to be uh the internet of jobs revolutionizing how we work for each other and also funding public goods so I'm just placing my bets for that cycle for that market cycle and eventually the market will catch up to that thesis I think so certainly the biggest selling point that we've had thus far and that's largely because new people are coming into this base the regenerative Finance space uh

the public good space What are some of the newer projects that I should try and talk to while I'm here yeah um well I mean I think that I'm really excited about projects that are that are creating impact so impact Dallas uh proof of humanity is creating Ubi and there's thousands of people in the global South who are being funded by uh by Ubi people who are in some cases are living off of Ubi and uh you know crypto we think that 10 inflation in the United States is high but when you have 80 inflation in Argentina holy [ __ ] crypto

is a game changer to be you know be paid in a stable currency Colectivo I think is really good using um carbon-backed currencies in order to regenerate local communities I think is an Incredible use of this technology but uh if you wander around selling point I'm sure you'll find plenty of projects that are using web3 for good which one any of those that I should go after first who should be my next victim um I I think that I should introduce you to Colectivo and proof of humanity and there's a project called git coin you should talk to yeah where might I find

them do you see them around uh well I'm disaffiliated from Bitcoin because bitcoin's now a dow but they're they're everywhere they're wearing these purple uh hoodies uh the hoodies say quadratic lands on them quadratic lens is a world in which we Rewritten the laws of economics in order to fund public goods and to share uh the creation of the commons and so uh if you see someone in a in a purple quadratic Lance hoodie it's a good chance there with Bitcoin all right well I'm gonna tell them that you specifically threw them under the bus when I give them the microphone yeah I think they'll enjoy the attention thanks for everything you do with bankless man I think you're creating a

real movement and I'm happy to be creating a little regenerative fractal on top of that movement so keep up the great work hey we're all going to the same future which is the quadratic Lance Frontier yeah there you go cheers come on down brother oh we're already recording how's it going Angela hey hey man how you going how you doing this isn't your first uh shelling point now uh no uh no no Amsterdam was my first one yeah Amsterdam yeah but and also not your first East Denver it's really great to see you here man how long did it take you to get here uh to get here from Australia yeah yeah like 18 hours of flying yeah yeah and this is probably why you've only gone to three Denver's

huh yeah yeah yeah I mean the last one was 20 20. right yeah and this one's like 15 times as big which is crazy I mean it's actually so big now this venue is 10 times bigger than the sports castle at least right yeah absolutely yeah so like somebody like you skipped I think one or two eat numbers we had covet in the middle of the last last time we saw each other yeah you haven't seen this guy since covid except I talked to him on the internet all the time uh reflect on how how different this is like you keep on going down that road it's not even the same kind of Realm uh just I've been here for a few

hours now and just checking out like how it's just evolved from 2020 like three years ago it was a tight in it kind of small community where you kind of knew everyone right and now I don't know like most of the people and they know they you know some of them come to me and and kind of say hey but it's just incredible how big the community has gotten and how it's so diverse now as well so much more diverse it feels like everyone from from different backgrounds everyone's from different backgrounds different places around the world uh I I can't even

describe it man it's just crazy so like back here the last December we had was at the Sports Castle it was one single place and this is completely different there was wallet con which I saw you at yesterday yeah the day before that there was DK day yeah there was the interoperability Summit which was a two-day conference and those are the only ones that I that I went to there was like 10 other things that I've gone to you were at ZK day for a very long time talk about your experience there uh there's a lot of hype around ZK right now uh a lot of hype um and there were it was packed like it was uh it was a

decent sized venue but there were so many people there that you got to kind of like push your way through to get through um I think that everyone's excited about ZK because it's a buzzword right now right but there's a lot of genuine building happening in the space not just a buzzword for good reason for good reason exactly and and it's not just about scalability or and privacy there's so many more applications that people are working on so I I do kind of like have a little bit of concern that it's going to turn into another one of those everyone at crypto thinks that ZK is the coolest thing everyone they're going to speculate on it but that's what we do in crypto right we speculate we see what's

good what's not and we filter it out as the years go on but it's just the amount of brain power in that room was was insane yeah I think I remember in East number of 2020 the last one last time we were hanging out there was like two or three talks about uzike and I was like oh yeah that's UK thing that's kind of like cool attack but like I can't comprehend it exactly now there is a whole entire conference which I think you said was as big as Heath Denver 2020 was yeah in and of itself yep how nice is that yeah yeah it was as big the venue was was pretty similar in size and

the people attending I mean I'm pretty sure it was more than was that eight demo 2020 but you're right like the term ZK used to be just some oh okay that's kind of cool you know maybe that'll be something right and they're relevant later exactly and now it's like at the Forefront of what we're actually building here and as I said there's going to be a lot of noise but there's a lot of signal still as well yeah so as the other big media person in the ethereum space what's it like to like walk around all these events and you I go to way more conferences than you because you're like so far away yeah so was it like people people are sazzle starved so what's it like to actually be

here yeah it's amazing to meet all the people that kind of consume my content and see me on Bank list when I fill in for for Ryan on the roll-up and things like that right it's just amazing to see people getting uh and telling me how much value they get out of my my work and my show and my content uh and it's just like a it's an experience to reinvigorate the energy right you get amongst the people that you see and talk to on Discord on Twitter and you have like a different energy when you kind of leave the conference or you decompress and you think about it so just just meeting everyone has been phenomenal everyone's so friendly right no one has

anything bad to say right it's always just like hey we think ethereum's cool you think ethereum's cool let's let's chat right so it's just great yeah yeah and like there's a pretty cool I call like daily Grant Bank list like a binary star system because like what's it like to be an independent Creator because like Bank was very much a for-profit team we gotta we got employees to pay for that's Luca that we gotta we have to pay this man to hold the camera but you make all of this content you're like no sponsors no funding talk about that philosophy because like we're at Greenville which is all about public goods so like the product Market fit here talk about that a little bit I mean

it's definitely inherited from the ethereum philosophy from the get coin Philosophy from you know obviously shouting Point Greenfield all that sort of stuff it's just my way of kind of giving back to a community that has given me so much and understanding that if we all give a little bit to public goods uh and we can create such an amazing ecosystem of public goods funding not just funding with money but funding with kind of like ideas and and putting the uh the social energy into it and and keep ethereum's mission of I guess like its value admissions of like decentralization uh openness

permissionlessness all of that keep that going for decades to come because I will you know for years now and I think for years to come I'll still worry that ethereum will some maybe at some point forget about those values and people like me and people like you and other people I think we need to remind people and keep their mission going and that's what keeps me going yeah certainly uh is there any particular subjects matter or talk that you are interested in watching today or tomorrow or what are other things about the future of eat Denver that you're excited about yeah I guess nothing in particular I'm generally a