EthCC 2024 Recap

Brussels, conference etiquette, technical findings and more

I want to start of by saying this is my favorite crypto conference each year and I loved the work the Ethereum community members put in to make this event the best it could be in the location they chose.

Brussels

• The city had a mix of charm and danger

• There were plenty of historic parks, landmarks, sites to see throughout town

• It was clear though that not everyone was safe; people dressed nicely, women, lanyard wearers were mugged, harassed especially at night

• When I was walking back to the hotel, there were a couple corners I had to puff my chest

• Food quality in the tourist center near the event was very low; outside of that area and north east of town the food was much better

• Belgian beer & waffles are that much better here, everything else, meh

• Taxi drivers were sketchy on payment and dropping off at locations; I had two try to scam me

• Tram was convenient to get to and from side events and felt very safe

• There were two days of flash foods around the conference which ruined some activities and side events

• I would not recommend hosting a large tech event in Brussels again

Conference Etiquette

• People wanted less side events in small crowded cafes; more spaces that allowed people to breath and have deep conversation 

• Location was #1 factor, if the venue was more than a 10 min drive, many didn’t attend

• Attendees wanted less panels, more open forum discussions  

• Felt more positive energy towards fitness and early morning events than late night raves

• Vitalik took public transportation, walked in the pouring rain, with no bodyguards the whole time and just impressed everyone with his insights; for having so much wealth, he never flaunts it and I love that

Attendees

• Less developers attended than in 2023; more BD, DevRel, Marketing

• Institutional attendees (asset managers, family offices, traders, VCs, etc) mostly came from Europe or Asia, rarely did I interact with many from the US

• Less of a political crowd than at Consensus, politics rarely were discussed

Liquidity Providers

• Seemed more jaded than they did during ETH Denver in February

• Believe no new token models, distribution or mechanism design has been tried in over a year and don’t want to invest in the same old

• Many LPs are in raising funds mode than in deploying into startups in the near term, but believe some interesting projects will come in Q4

• S-tier VC's are writing checks, but other firms need the market to come back to 2021-22 levels before they deploy more capital

Airdrops

• Protocols hate doing them, but still do it because users expect them, which creates an entitlement issue

• New strategies are emerging where LPs guarantee to buy x% of tokens post TGE after their initial investment pre-TGE; seems like a wash, but shows commitment

MEV

• I felt more MEV fatigue here than ever before

• Users are tired of MEV searchers making all of the products tools in the space as they believe it profits those builders more than everyday users most of all

• Personally I believe the better mechanism design and principles haven’t been built yet, but was refreshing to hear that faster block times are encouraged to mitigate some of these risks

Chain & Account Abstraction

• Third party providers abstract the complications that protocols & wallets provide; enabling a more automated user experience

• Still unclear if abstraction creates more fragmentation 

• Wallets seem to be doing a better job of collaborating, easing friction of user onboarding experience than chains are at the moment; ERC-7579 is a great example of this with ecosystem-wide account abstraction modules available with Safe/Rhinestone

Chain Tribalism

• This is the first year that I have experienced negativity from competitors in the vertical I was working in. This year that happens to be high performance blockchains

  • I want to be clear, none of this was malicious and 95% of competitors were gracious to chat and share notes. But some team members at high-performance L1, L2 or rollup chains spread more FUD, denied invites to side events and collaborated less than I have ever experienced before 

Chain Interop 

• Teams like Polygon “AggLayer”, Omni “Liquidity/Rollup Integrator”, zkSync “Elastic Chain” all came out heavily on incentives and are making strides in the narrative. I believe one of these wins in the next two years, but it is still anyone’s game

Now that this year’s event is over, I am PUMPED to attend EthCC 2025 in Cannes, France. I believe it’ll give the community a location and region that will bring a different crowd than in years past. Looking forward to seeing you there!