San Francisco is famous for being the heart of big tech. The city is a testament to the potential of new waves of technology, and what can happen when an ecosystem is able to combine talent, technology, and capital.

But San Francisco has also become a symbol of what can go wrong when too much power is concentrated in one place. The most recent wave of “unicorns” that made San Francisco what it is today were built by exploiting users — by spying on them, by controlling their data and identities, and by selling that data to third parties.

What better place to hold a hackathon dedicated to building a radically different future — one where power collects at the edges? One where the companies that control the web today are made irrelevant?

ETHSanFrancisco, like all ETHGlobal hackathons, is dedicated to #BUIDLING a more decentralized future: web 3. We’re bringing 1,000 developers — from the bay area, from across the US, and from around the world — into one hall for a weekend of hacking on the technology that will ultimately unseat the large companies and venture firms sitting just down the road.

We want to show the bay area that there’s something interesting — something weird — happening in the ethereum community. We constantly hear from engineers and developers who are tired of optimizing clicks and selling ads, and are looking for something that excites them. We want to show San Francisco that ETH isn’t just a cryptocurrency — there is technology being built here that is worthy of your weekend project, and that there’s a good chance that your weekend project could turn into your next startup.

We believe the future looks more like Waterloo, Denver, Buenos Aires, Bangalore, Berlin, and Singapore — a global network of hubs of talent, building on globally-available technology, united by an open financial system where capital isn’t limited to any one jurisdiction.

San Francisco can be part of that list too — not as a single central hub that dominates the others, but as one of many nodes. But only if it acts fast — frankly, the city is already a bit behind…

We hope you can join us — either as a hacker or as a volunteer. Come join the global ethereum community and show Silicon Valley there’s a small army #BUIDLing a decentralized web without centralized gatekeepers.

(And we’re doing it right under their noses.)