Devcon7 On-Site Coverage: The Best Ethereum Developer Conference Ever, a Web3 Playground with Tens of Thousands of Attendees
#649
GM,
I'm back in Taiwan. While I was in Bangkok, I ran into a friend who said, “So much happened at Devcon, but there’s barely any coverage in Taiwan. We really need someone like you.”
Even for those who attended, the first question everyone asked each other was, "What did you see, and what was it like?" This time, 60% of Devcon attendees were first-timers, and the event was so packed with activities that it was impossible to experience it all. We had to piece together everyone's experiences to get a full picture. But one thing is clear: Devcon7 was the best developer conference ever held. Everyone was full of praise.
In this article, I’ll share my observations and experiences from Ethereum Devcon7.
The Best Conference
The Ethereum Developer Conference, Devcon, is the most significant tech event in Web3. While Bitcoin has a larger market cap, Ethereum is the blockchain that people are actively using. This year, Devcon7 drew 12,500 participants from 130 countries, doubling attendance from the last conference and making it the largest in Devcon history.
Since 2017, I’ve attended Devcon online each year, but this was my first time attending in person. Luckily, Devcon changes locations for every event; last year, it was held in Colombia, which is halfway across the globe. This year, however, it was in Bangkok. As its name implies, Devcon is a gathering for software developers, with a heavy technical focus. Even though I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about blockchain, understanding even half of the content is quite an achievement 🤣. This time, I was fortunate to be selected for the Ethereum Foundation’s Scholars Program, which covered meals, flights, and tickets, plus it gave me the chance to connect with nearly 100 other selected participants from around the world.
Until the conference began, my impression of Devcon was limited to what I’d seen on YouTube—a series of talks. But after these four days, I can confidently say that Devcon7 was the best conference I’ve ever attended!
Confession: During this Devcon, I didn’t attend a single talk inside the conference hall—except for the opening ceremony. It was intentional. With hundreds of activities packed into just four days, Devcon took over the newly expanded Thailand National Convention Center, completed in 2022. At any given moment, at least ten events were happening simultaneously, not counting the side events in nearby cafes and bars. It’s impossible and unnecessary to attend everything. Since I knew I couldn’t see it all or meet everyone, I decided to focus on what I wanted most out of the experience.
So, what did I want? For a long time, interacting with blockchain has been a solitary experience, usually just you, a screen, and some cryptocurrency operations. But Chen Chang-wu, who flew to South America for Devcon6, shared1 on Blocktrend that the last Devcon began incorporating new social experiences, allowing people to easily form on-chain connections. After hearing this, I was incredibly excited and looked forward to seeing how blockchain could enhance real human interaction at this Devcon.
Icebreaker Activities
Sure enough, the venue offered numerous interactive experiences, and the most popular was “FrogCrypto.” The game was simple: scattered around the venue were various NFC touchpoints where attendees could tap with their phones to “catch” a frog. After collecting a few frogs, they could head to the “Frog Store” to redeem an adorable frog plushie. Each plushie had a QR code, and if you saw someone with a frog on their lanyard, you could scan their QR code to add one of their frogs to your collection. It was the perfect icebreaker!
The Frog Store offered a range of frog-themed merchandise, but none of it could be bought with money—it only accepted frogs as currency. The shop had hats, plush toys, bells, notebooks, toy watches, and the most prized item: a frog backpack, which required a collection of 1,000 frogs. Naturally, everyone dove into the game. To gather enough frogs for the merchandise, I wandered around the conference venue multiple times, even approaching strangers with frogs hanging from their badges and asking, “May I scan your QR code?”
Some people came up with clever tricks, like hanging their plush frogs right outside the Frog Store so others could scan without asking. Others went a step further by creating online frog groups where they shared QR codes, making the collection process even faster without needing physical exchanges. While frog collection picked up pace, the Frog Store wasn’t so easy to outsmart. The merchandise prices inflated with the supply of frogs. What cost 150 frogs for a notebook on the first day suddenly shot up to 300 frogs the next. Now that is some classic crypto-style inflation 🤣!
Experiencing this dynamic in a physical space added a unique layer of intrigue—especially for someone like me from Taiwan, who has never encountered hyperinflation firsthand. For some attendees, though, this was a taste of their real lives; in their countries, it’s not frogs that inflate but their hard-earned savings. The frog hunt also wasn’t a simple little game. After all, this was the Ethereum Developers Conference, and behind the game lay complex technologies like decentralized social graphs and zero-knowledge proofs. But users didn’t need to understand any of that to participate.
The organizers wanted to show everyone that these emerging technologies have reached a point where they’re accessible to anyone—no technical knowledge or crypto wallets needed. And this was just one of the interactive experiences. Many booths at Devcon had their own unique activities; you could even call it a four-day pop-up Web3 science museum. You wouldn’t want to just listen to lectures at a science museum, especially with high-quality recordings of every talk being uploaded to YouTube in real-time. For me, it was all about the in-person experience, something I’d never gotten from attending Devcon online before.
But the most significant takeaway from this entire Devcon trip was rediscovering my drive. This connected directly to the media experiment we’re doing at Blocktrend.
Rediscovering Motivation
Long-time members know that over the past two years, I’ve experimented with airdropping cryptocurrency to paying members offering real money2, only about half the recipients claimed it, which was pretty discouraging. Why wasn’t everyone claiming free money? I decided to talk to people about it at Devcon. Beyond the talks and booths, there were also many topic-based discussion zones at the venue. With my doubts in hand, I headed to the Grant/Impact Hub, dedicated to public funding discussions, hoping to find some answers. The outcome was surprisingly insightful!
After a few conversations, I realized that my worries were entirely unnecessary. Having only half of the members claim the airdrop might actually be the ideal situation.
The core of Blocktrend lies in its business model. Initially, I noticed that media outlets and readers often have misaligned interests; when media relies on advertising revenue, it’s challenging to genuinely serve readers. Blocktrend, therefore, adopted a paid subscription model to align itself with readers. Most people who’ve read Blocktrend understand this difference, but some still ask: with so much free content online, why should Blocktrend charge?
Two years ago, inspired by the concept of impact investing, I proposed a unique idea—to airdrop cryptocurrency to paying members3. My hope is that one day I could answer this question by saying, "You’re free to choose free or paid, but only paid members can receive airdropped cryptocurrency and attend physical events. My goal is to ensure that Blocktrend’s paying members ultimately receive more in airdropped cryptocurrency than their subscription fees. Eventually, even those who don’t read Blocktrend would want to become paid members."
The core of this experiment lies in a key question: where does the cryptocurrency come from? I introduced public funders into the relationship between media and readers. Projects like Optimism, Filecoin, and Celo airdrop cryptocurrency to ecosystem contributors. Blocktrend, by writing articles and recording podcasts about these topics, counts as a contributor. After receiving these tokens, Blocktrend then returns them 100% to paying members, creating a triangular cycle:
Blocktrend creates content on relevant topics, introducing them to readers and earning token rewards.
Blocktrend remains reader-funded and aligned with its audience.
Blocktrend airdrops tokens 100% to paying members, returning value to subscribers.
Ideally, Blocktrend would receive a large enough quantity of tokens, and their value would be high enough, that paying subscribers could make a profit. However, public funding mechanisms remain unstable for now; although Blocktrend has distributed a substantial amount, it’s still short of fully “paying back” readers. In fact, even distributing these funds poses a challenge.
Previously, I thought the lack of participation in claiming airdrops was due to low engagement on my part and something I needed to improve. But now, I’m looking at it differently: it’s actually a good thing that only half of the members claim their tokens. This suggests that the other half cares less about the money—they’re the readers who are here to stay, unaffected by financial incentives. One piece of feedback I received was even more direct: “Of course, the amount matters, but what I value more is how many readers who received the OP airdrop would delegate their tokens back to you to participate in community governance.” This insight hits at the core of what I’ve been advocating for—a long-term goal I hope to achieve. Some people, hearing about this experiment, even reached out to offer help, amplifying its impact. This encouragement means a lot to me.
Later, I coincidentally met a Blocktrend member at the venue. He told me, “I’m that person who only claimed once. It’s not that I didn’t want to claim, but that by the time I parked after hearing about it in the car, I’d already forgotten.” But he believes that, even if he doesn’t claim the tokens, they will eventually turn into valuable content. So, it’s okay if he misses out. Initially, I felt uncertain about whether to continue this media experiment, but Devcon helped me regain the drive to keep pushing forward.
Before Devcon, I thought the main highlights would be the latest technologies and new projects that made headlines. But after four days of immersion, I’d say the most important part was the personal experience. Videos can always be replayed later, but experiences are hard to recreate.
After the event, I noticed people online jokingly referring to ETH as “Already-Obsolete Coin” due to its recent price performance. It reminded me of a question that Peter Thiel, the author of Zero to One, likes to ask in interviews: “What is something that you believe is important and true, yet most people would disagree with?”
My answer: these people.
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