Permissless and Mainnet/ETHNYC participation experience: Overload of activities, survival of the fittest
Original - Odaily
Author - jk
September of this year is the real peak period for blockchain summits in various countries: from the Korean Blockchain Week (KBW) at the beginning of the month, to Token 2049 in Singapore in the middle of the month, to the Shanghai Wanxiang Block that followed closely. During Chain Week, Asia’s Blockchain Summit stole all the limelight. For a while, it seemed like “everyone was in Singapore” in the circle of friends. At the same time, there are three comparable summits in the United States, namely Permissionless in Austin, Texas, and Mainnet and ETH New York in New York. Odaily’s North American reporters also participated in these summits. Their experience of participating in the summits is summarized as follows:
Token 2049 stole the heat: Why are all the famous companies in Singapore?
This year’s Permissionless, hosted by Blockworks and Bankless, is located in Austin, Texas, the same venue as Consensus in April. However, this years Permissionless had far fewer visible attendees than other conferences. One of the reasons is that the date of this year’s Permissionless conference is September 11-13, which coincides with Singapore’s Token 2049. The reporter on site met many staff from well-known companies at the conference and said, “Does the company have any issues?” Fewer people are in Singapore because the conference there is bigger. Judging from the guest lineup, the quantity and quality of Token 2049 are also significantly higher than these two, and many guests at Permissionless only accessed the online conference and did not In fact, some people even accessed it from Token 2049 in Singapore.
Permissionless guest lineup. Source: Permissionless official website
In comparison, Mainnet organized by Messari and ETH New York organized by the Ethereum Foundation are relatively better: First, because the city is larger, many well-known institutions (such as Uniswap) have offices themselves Located in New York, staff are mostly present at meetings, while company space can also be used for off-site events. In comparison, the two meetings in New York seemed to have better reviews. At the same time, because ETH New York itself is a Hackathon,It attracted many developers and students to play the competition, which in turn attracted funds to look at the project., the atmosphere at the venue was very active, and I heard many comments that the atmosphere was much better than that of Permissionless.
Booths and off-site events: Can’t beat the exuberance of ETH Denver/Consensus
Looking back at these two conferences, the number of Booth and side events was significantly reduced, somewhat overshadowed by the prosperity of ETH Denver and Consensus. Previously, Booth and side events have always been a highlight in industry conferences, not only providing more networking opportunities for attendees, but also providing a platform for startups to promote themselves.
In terms of Booth (the institution’s booth within the venue), Permissionless and Mainnet have much smaller numbers than ETH Denver in March and Consensus in April in the first half of the year. Among them, Consensus and Permissionless use the same venue, the Austin Convention Center; however, Consensus’ booth occupies the entire hall, and there is even a main road in the middle leading to different sections. By comparison, Permissionless has only two-thirds the floor space of Consensus, and attendees clearly felt that “there were far fewer institutions participating than in April.”
Compared with the number of over 400 off-site events held by Token 2049 throughout the week, Permissionless and Mainnet do not have many off-site events, with about 10-20 events per day, mainly organized by various well-known institutions.
It can be clearly seen from the two industry conferences of Permissionless and Mainnet this year that the existence of Token 2049 has undoubtedly brought a lot of attention to the industry, which to some extent reflectsThe popularity of Asia’s blockchain community. compared toThe U.S. Economic Bear Market and Massive Regulatory Pressure, everyone’s choice to attend the conference also reflects their bets on the future development direction to a certain extent.
There are many institutional practitioners and a strong lineup of guests
Although the above-mentioned phenomena are somewhat regrettable, judging from the guest lineup, these two conferences still have high industry influence. In particular, there are a large number of practitioners in major institutions, and the quality of speakers is very high. This not only brought high-quality content sharing to participants, but also demonstrated the attention of high-end experts and institutions in the industry.
Regarding this year’s U.S. conference,Panel discussions mainly focused on L2 solutions and institutional issues. With the development of blockchain technology, L2 has become the hottest topic in the industry this year, and its potential to improve transaction efficiency and reduce costs has attracted a lot of attention. At the same time, as more traditional institutions begin to enter this field, how to combine existing institutional structures with DeFi has also become the focus of many discussions. Discussions in these two directions provided participants with the opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of the latest developments and future development trends in the industry.
The panel on traditional institutional admissions was packed. Source: Permissionless official website
The invisibility of Chinese projects: lack of presence
Another obvious phenomenon is that in Permissionless, the presence of Chinese projects is very low. Among the venues, it seems that only OKX has Booth, and there are only a few local Chinese projects in the United States that have held off-site events, and there are relatively few Asian faces on site. Looking into the reasons, many projects that would have flown to the United States to participate in the conference chose to attend the conference in Singapore due to time conflicts; many local Chinese projects in the United States also chose to fly to Singapore due to the scale of the conference and difficulty in financing. . This phenomenon is an interesting retrograde: unlike the common belief that Web3 is concentrated in the United States, Chinese projects have chosen Singapore this time. In contrast, Mainnet and ETH New York have much higher Chinese participation. First, because a considerable part of the project headquarters are in New York, and secondly, because this conference ended after Token 2049, so many project parties also flew back. of the United States.
Oversaturation of summits: survival of the fittest is inevitable
After comparing these two conferences with the popularity of Denver/Consensus at the beginning of the year, we may be able to draw a bold conclusion: the blockchain industry’s summits and conferences are experiencing a state of oversaturation. As with other industries, more conferences and events emerge over time, but not all events retain their original purpose and vitality. In the end, industry conferences will also move towards a process of survival of the fittest. Only those conferences that truly bring value to attendees and the industry can continue to exist and succeed.
Currently, there are more than a dozen well-known conferences related to blockchain around the world: In addition to the Ethereum Foundation, which holds events in different places, well-known conferences in the United States every year include:
Stanford Blockchain Conference
Harvard Blockchain Conference
MIT Bitcoin
ETH Denver
Consensus by Coindesk
Bitcoin Miami
Permissionless by Blockworks
Messari Mainnet
NFT LA
NFT NYC
Coupled with more small-scale meetings and the diversion of Asia/Europe meetings, the industry enthusiasm in the bear market may not be able to support the holding of more than a dozen US summits. Due to the flywheel effect, people who felt that a certain conference was not worth attending last year may not come next year. It is a bold guess that before the next bull market cycle begins, a considerable number of US blockchain summits will inevitably fade out of everyones sight.
To sum up, although this year’s Permissionless and Mainnet conferences were different from previous ones, they still provided us with valuable information about the dynamics and future development of the blockchain industry. Looking forward to the future, we hope to see more in-depth and valuable industry exchanges and cooperation.
