The Mint courtyard moments before the opening ceremony

The Decentralized Web Summit started in 2016, led by the Internet Archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle, with the mission of creating a better Internet. The second summit was hosted this past week, so Kai and I packed our bags and headed off to San Francisco, California. Through this event, I met some of the greatest minds working on a truly free and open Web for all.

Day 1: The science fair

The Konjure team checked out all different kinds of projects hosted at the Internet Archive. Kai and I met people from all over the world working on software, hardware and even crypto art within the blockchain. We also ran into Juan Benet, Founder and CEO of Protocol Labs.

Kai and Ben with Juan Benet from Protocol Labs

Day 2: Opening ceremony

The day started off with the opening ceremony at the Mint. Afterwards, we participated in an exercise with other attendees involving multiple colored string to reenact how complicated networks can be when they’re always moving and changing.

Ben working with other participants to ‘build’ a complicated network

Kai and I also attended different programming sessions throughout the day, including lectures about IPFS and the Internet Archive, which displayed peer-to-peer systems in use today.

Protocol Labs explaining different features in IPFS

Furthermore, we connected with all different kinds of blockchain enthusiasts who showed us different projects and technologies in the space.

Day 3: Speeches, round table discussions and closing ceremony

In the morning, the Konjure team listened in on speeches by Jennifer Granick and Brewster Kahle.

Jennifer Granick speaking about government and commercial intervention within the Internet

Jennifer’s speech was about the end of the Internet of our time as we move into this “decentralized era.” She underlined the issues we’ll face in the near future with government intervention, data giants, and other entities trying to control this new technological revolution.

Brewster Kahle’s speaking about new technical innovations

Brewster Kahle had an empowering speech about the revolutionary technology being developed today that’ll help develop the infrastructure of the Decentralized Web in the near future. He also showed us a live demo of the decentralized version of the Internet Archive. Link here.

After attending the speeches, we joined a discussion group with other projects, talking about the problems with reputation systems currently in place for a lot of tech companies. We also hosted our own discussion group to talk about future applications of the Decentralized Web and how Konjure fits into it.

Kai and Ben in a deep discussion about current reputation systems

We also had the honor of meeting Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web. It was pretty damn awesome to say the least.

Kai and Ben with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

After this we attended the closing ceremony. We heard a great speech by twitter.com/doctorow. Leaving the event afterwards, we said goodbye to all the great new people we met and friends we made.

In conclusion: Overall, Decentralized Web Summit 2018 was a fantastic event. I’m happy to see how fast the crypto space is growing, from the projects building real infrastructure for this new Internet, to curious individuals genuinely asking more questions about what is going on with blockchain tech.