There is some magic in a hackathon. You see, a hackathon exists between worlds, in a special place that is simultaneously here and there, simultaneously real and surreal. Real because it’s full of real people experiencing real sweat, real tears, real hopes and fears, making real connections while they build real things. Surreal because the ordinary rules do not apply: build whatever you want, just because you think it’s cool, without regard to whether it will actually work or make anyone any money. Stay awake for 36 hours straight because, well, time is limited and it’s just one weekend, right? Talk to absolutely anyone, anywhere, at any time and you will get a friendly, supportive (if sleep deprived) response.

ETHDenver was no exception. Add the surrealism of the hackathon to the weird, wacky idealism of the blockchain community and you have a potent combination. A world in which anything is possible and, by the way, we are reinventing social structures and redefining gender roles and rethinking capitalism, all written in Solidity and running on the Ethereum world computer. Get your head around that.

Oh, and the event was held in a massive, faux-gothic former car showroom built in 1926 called the Sports Castle, full of dangling wires, abandoned rooms, hidden nooks and crannies, and no shortage of hipster hideouts — I honestly cannot imagine a better, more authentic venue for a hackathon. On top of two stages and plenty of hacker space there was a relaxation room, a chill-out room with a DJ spinning electronic and vaporwave music all weekend, and a VIP lounge.

Hipster hacker paradise at the Sports Castle in Denver

On the surface ETHDenver had a lot of normal, hackathon-y things: there were workshops on technical topics ranging from Solidity to state channels to scaling. There were the edgy, new age Etherean ideas such as decentralized file storage, decentralized governance, and decentralized finance. There were also completely un-hackathon-y workshops on topics such as Art and Games, User Experience, Social Coherence and Connection, and “Power, Decentralization, and Diversity.” As if all of that wasn’t enough there were also multiple workshops and panels on social impact and “Blockchain as a Force For Good”, a diversity dinner, the Denver Kids x CryptoKitties mashup called CryptoKicks, and last but not least, the maker space. Oh boy, the maker space — more on that in a moment. (Videos of many of the workshops are available here. Sorry, I don’t have links to individual talks.)

But what’s really important, what’s essential if you want to understand hackathons and Ethereum and young people today and why it all matters so darn much, is everything else — the things happening just below the surface.

How many coders does it take to debug Solidity?

Above all else, a hackathon is a social experiment, a safe space, a chance removed from the ordinary, hectic flow of life and time to ask important questions such as:

Why are things set up the way they are?

Do they have to be this way?

Can we do better? How do we do better?

What am I capable of?

Here’s the kicker: Ethereum is precisely the same thing. Ethereum itself is a big experiment, a chance to take a step back and reimagine and rebuild things in a better, fairer way. That’s why the combination of these two ideas, the synergy of these two experiments, is so powerful. That’s why amazing people showed up and built incredible things.

If you’re a person whose job depends on seeing the future — an innovator, an investor, a venture capitalist, an educator, a technologist — you simply cannot afford not to know what’s going on in this space today. And if you’re a human being who cares about the world and about building a better future, if you’re in any way excited by the promise of technology and new ideas, there is no better place to spend a weekend.

Okay, enough with the new age jib-jab, here is my concrete list of highlights and takeaways from the event.

Takeaways

1. #BUIDL. Surely you’ve come across the #HODL meme. Enter #BUIDL. My interpretation? There is a strong sense in the blockchain and especially the Ethereum world that “you are what you build.” This is partly a reaction to the “price wars,” which grabs the headlines, and to investors who are viewed by developers with skepticism for not adding a lot of value to the ecosystem at this early stage. But most of all it’s recognition of how much work remains to be done, of how much infrastructure remains to be built, of how much cool stuff is already being built, and above all, of the leading role that developers and builders of all stripes are playing in this space.

Google doesn’t get it 🤷‍

2. Ethereum is eating the world. Okay, I know it’s still early days. Our banks, our hospitals, our schools, and our governments don’t yet run on Ethereum. But the sheer breadth of projects being built on the platform even at this early stage is astounding. Wilderness preservation, land ownership and asset transfer, crypto-collectibles, voting, carbon trading, blood donation, political lobbying — and that’s just the first of 11 pages of submissions to this hackathon. As Marc Andreessen famously and presciently wrote seven years ago, “software is eating the world.” Extrapolating based on present trends, the future will be written by decentralized applications.

Taking the floor at the diversity dinner

3. Diversity is awesome. As mentioned above, blockchain is all about building a better, fairer, more equitable, and more diverse system. Diversity comes in many forms and means different things to different people. I was excited to see teams from around the world (one of the winning teams traveled all the way from Egypt), many non-engineers, every age group, and folks with every conceivable ethnic and gender identity participate in the hackathon. There were diversity panels, a diversity dinner sponsored by Maiden, and projects focused on diversity. I don’t believe in diversity just for warm, fuzzy feelings. I believe in diversity because there are decades of real scientific evidence which suggest that diversity makes us smarter.

4. Crypto-collectibles. One of the hottest topics at ETHDenver was non-fungible crypto assets, a.k.a. crypto-collectibles. Non-fungible crypto assets are collectibles like CryptoKitties, each of which is unique. “Fungible” means “interchangeable,” e.g., my 1 ETH is exactly the same as your 1 ETH is exactly the same as the next guy’s 1 ETH and they can be swapped or traded, whereas one kitty is not like the next and there will only ever be one Genesis Kitty. There was a panel on ERC721, which defines a standard protocol for non-fungible Ethereum assets.

Who watches the watchers?

5. TCRs. Another hot topic was TCRs (token-curated registries). Essentially, a TCR is a decentralized list where participants, who hold a particular staking token, are crypto-economically incentivized to collaborate in the curation of that list. Imagine decentralizing the system of university accreditation: stakeholders such as universities and companies that hire university graduates would hold tokens, and could stake them to vote particular schools onto or off the list, or to challenge others’ proposals. (In a sense, The DAO was a TCR which curated a list of group investments.) Check out this article and this article for more background on the topic.

Decentralizing a workshop

6. Design is so critical. The projects that impressed me the most, such as KeySplit and Cache, were unsurprisingly teams that included professional designers. This isn’t just because of pretty graphics and animations — although they do help — but more because I believe blockchain UX needs a lot of work, and because hard problems like key management are fundamentally UX challenges. (I gave a talk on why we need better UX in blockchain.) Check out how elegantly KeySplit addresses the key management challenge in their final interactive prototype.

These kids have a bright, Etherean future

7. Blockchain for good. One of the most exciting, powerful aspects of blockchain is the fact that it’s an equalizer. Old or young, wealthy or poor, north or south, everyone has equal access to the Ethereum network and no one needs a license or permission to use it. This combined with censorship resistance and several other unique properties make Ethereum an ideal platform for applications that could have a huge degree of social impact. Team FeelGood built a blockchain-based blood donation tracking system. Denver Kids teamed up with Apprentio and CryptoKitties to bring local kids from at risk, underserved communities to the event to mentor them on Ethereum. Robby Greenfield and Ben Siegel of Blockchain for Social Impact spoke about their work on a panel called “Blockchain for Social Impact.” That’s a heck of a lot of impact for a hackathon! Check out this article from Amentum on “Creating Social Impact Through Community & Technology” for more on this topic.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t share my experience in the maker space.

The Maker Space