Crypto Conferences: Mindshare vs. Substance

Last year, some of us at Moonlanding attended Solana Breakpoint in Singapore. This year, I attended Ethereum Bratislava in Slovakia, Ethereum Prague and Ethereum Pragma, as well as ETH Pragma + ETH Global in New York. 

Additionally, this year, we can also give insight into academic blockchain conferences, which may frankly, surprise you. 

Last year’s conclusion from Solana Breakpoint was that the event was very user-oriented. People were cheering during announcements, and speakers walked on stage like pop stars. Many projects announced expansions, new partnerships, or even entirely new launches out of the blue. The atmosphere felt like something between an Apple Keynote and a mid-venue concert.

Ethereum conferences, by contrast, are more developer-focused, which explains the emphasis on hackathons and technical workshops. Ethereum Bratislava was excellent for meeting like-minded people interested in crypto and development in the area. Big kudos to the organizers for hosting the event and keeping the Slovak blockchain space alive. However, most of the talks lacked technical depth and barely scratched the surface.

Ethereum Prague similarly featured some interesting presentations, but much of it boiled down to protocol showcases, giving out merch, and farming X follows. Both Gavin Wood and Vitalik Buterin gave talks, but neither offered anything particularly new. Gavin demoed Quake 3 running on JAM, and Vitalik addressed various topics while dodging  the elephant in the room: L2 revenue models. ETH Pragma in Prague marked a slight step up in technicality, notably Zircuit delivered an amazing talk, and Vitalik’s focus on DAOs was quite engaging. The overall feeling, however, was that nothing groundbreaking was presented to truly excite existing developers or attract fresh talent. Compared with Solana Breakpoint, the event felt more like an annual meetup than a moment of revelation meant to spark new ideas.

ETH Pragma in New York shared a similar vibe to the Prague edition, though the quality of discussions was strong. Particularly memorable were the exchanges between Hayden Adams (Uniswap) and Phil Daian (Flashbots), as well as Ben Jones (Optimism) and Robert Miller (Flashbots). David Hoffman’s keynote from Bankless was refreshing, more entertaining than deeply informative, but enjoyable nonetheless. Especially the whole audience nodded while their ETH thesis was being validated on stage and further reinforced by Ether nearing all-time highs at that moment. Some speakers, however, were pretty underwhelming, most notably Sergey’s from Chainlink.

To gain more direct insight into the builder community, I also participated in the ETH Global hackathon. This was one of the most inspiring experiences as nearly 700 hackers of all age groups, from pre-teens to older veterans, came together to build in the Ethereum ecosystem. Some of the finalist projects were remarkably impressive, even more so considering they were built within just two days. Talking directly with protocol representatives at their booths and engaging in deeper technical discussions was exactly what I felt was missing from the previous conferences.

Our team didn’t make it to the finals but won two prizes. If you’re curious about our project, here’s a short article by Zircuit, whose main prize we won. Overall, ETH Global was outstanding, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone interested in Ethereum beyond “number go up.” Even though many participants were beginners or entirely new to the EVM ecosystem, that never became an obstacle, since there was always someone willing to help. While it can feel intimidating to tap a locked-in hacker on the shoulder, most of the time they were happy to lend a hand or there was always some mentor available as well. 

Now, onto the part that may make some folks mad: academic conferences. These are often dismissed or made fun of by crypto-native communities, but my experience presenting my research at two this year suggests otherwise. Although some presentations and papers were mediocre, the majority were highly technical, novel, and insightful.

The first event was the International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies (ICBC) in Pisa, which featured papers on blockchain architecture, zero-knowledge proofs, DePIN, trading strategies, price prediction models, and more. The second was the Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE) in Athens, which leaned even more heavily into DeFi strategies, tokenomics, economic attacks, arbitrage, and related topics. All very in-depth and rigorous. You can also check out my paper about gas price options and token allocation and distributions.

Alongside the peer-reviewed papers were keynotes from protocols such as Walrus and Chainlink. While there was no merch, the intellectual output was far richer than what we saw at many of the major Ethereum conferences. This is not meant as a critique of Ethereum events per se, but rather a reminder that conferences should allocate more stage time to newcomers with fresh ideas (whether good or bad) since these spark genuine discussion. Major protocols understandably pay for visibility, which helps cover costs, but if attendees are also paying for tickets, they deserve not only merch and narrative validation but also substantive insights and concrete conclusions. Depth matters.

The truth is that builders capable of creating transformative projects already understand the jargon and technical details. If keynotes are optimized for the uninitiated, much of the takeaway becomes: “Cool … can I buy the token? No? Okay, let me know when.” Conferences should commit to being either deeply technical (like the academic ones) or entertainment-driven spectacles (like Solana Breakpoint). Having multiple stages can be a solution, although, it can mean that the visitors might be constantly running between stages. I firmly believe that having a dedicated, academic or fully open stage for anyone to share their ideas can not only attract more visitors, but also stimulate the exisiting ones even more.

Once again, big kudos to the Ethereum conference organizers, these are vital community gatherings. But moving forward, we hope to see a more technically demanding stage where prospective ideas can be aired, just as Vitalik’s talk at Bitcoin Miami in 2014 introduced Ethereum itself. On the other hand, making the events more entertainment focused can attract even non-technical folks that want to enjoy a show and have great time. Let newcomers learn, have fun, and engage with the basics, but also give crypto veterans and long-time builders something genuinely exciting.