I don't think I have ever felt as much of a "corporate rat" as I did last weekend. I somehow got myself into a totally new world in which working for a "corporation" is regarded as, let's put it nicely, NOT so cool. It was a really new and strange experience for me, kind of life-changing as well, so why not share it. Knowing all the "time is money" thingy and how busy we "corporate people" are, let's start it in a proper "corporate" way with some key takeaways and tips for all the crazy non-hackers who might have a nice idea of attending a hackathon, as I did last weekend. So there we go with my little survival guide, which actually ended up way longer than planned, and turned into some sort of a sociopsychological analysis of the Ethereum community and a marketing plan on how to potentially sell a crypto-revolution to the mainstream. Enjoy.
Key takeaways and tips for non-hackers attending hackathon:
1. It's okay to ask for a wifi password - hackers don't hack it but are provided with it (silly me).
2. Only idiots pay for tickets to hackathon (&) conferences - the proper way is to register as a hacker and get a free entry or share the event wristband with your mate.
3. If you're a "corporate rat" like me, better don't brag too much about your job. Best not to mention it at all.
4. Nation-states are dying and blockchain is the natural evolution of humankind.
How the hell did I end up there?
To be perfectly honest, I am a complete newbie to the whole blockchain, Ethereum, Ethereum community, hackathons, and hacking thing. Well, my only experience narrows down to pretty much writing a calculator program in C++ when in high school and buying a few ether tokens on eToro. I don't remember how and why I ended up on the Ethereum website a few weeks ago, but when exploring, it really appeared super fascinating to me - I was so lured by all the slogans of openness, freedom, and transparency that this technology can offer. So this is how I found out about the different Ethereum events taking place (well, mostly hackathons), and the one in Prague aligned closely with my interests in the topics of society and the future, therefore decided to give it a go – I sometimes like to get out of my comfort zone. And oh boy, what an experience that was...
Paralelní Polis
ETHPrague was hosted in the Paralelní Polis which I would describe as a bloody amazing hackers' headquarter. Paralelní Polis refers to the socio-political concept of parallel and alternative structures, as described by Václav Benda in his text published in 1977 - a great ana
logy for the concepts of crypto-anarchism. The building with the black painted façade really stands out on the street and you can enter it through Bitcoin Coffee - the world's first coffee shop where you can actually only pay in cryptocurrency to get yourself a drink. There is a Bitcoin ATM on a staircase, the Institute of Cryptoanarchy study space on the top floor, a conference room, a bar, and even a patio with food trucks! Overall, a pretty amazing setup – this was actually the first thing that blew my mind.
"You hack?" - then maybe you shouldn't ask for the wifi password
The second one was the question: “You hack?” which I guess is a kind equivalent of the "what do you?" or "where do you work?" when meeting new people in the corporate world ;). I mean, of course, I went to a hackathon and a conference, but I just did not expect people to think that I could be hacking there – let’s say I don’t look like a typical suspect. On the other hand, it’s super nice that the stereotypes did not kick in - not so common in the "corporate" world ;). I learned very quickly that I probably shouldn’t mention my current job and expose myself as one that is part of the “evil forces”. And it didn’t take long for others to realize that I am a complete outsider as well. Most of the attendees knew each other from the previous events, and if they did not, at least they had a “common language” which I was not speaking. I felt so out of the place that asking for a wifi password seemed silly – come on Bella, you’re on a bloody hackathon at the end of the day... Only during the second day, I did spot that the QR codes and passwords were taped to the tables in the Bitcoin Coffee (yeah, silly me). So the first lesson learned – hackers are provided with the wifi password during hackathons and it’s okay to ask for it.
Only idiots pay for tickets...
The crowd, as you can expect, was pretty chilled. Thank god I did not change from my “train journey activewear” to heels (!!! - don’t know what a demonic idea crossed my mind when packing) – this could be a little risky, or at least would definitely double my feeling of dumbness there. But the culmination of dumbness, and a second lesson learned, was the opening speech during which it was mentioned, basically (I’m paraphrasing here), that only 100 idiots, out of 600 participants (400 registered to hack), paid for the conference tickets, and that the proper way is to register as a hacker and get a free entry, or simply to share the event wristband with your mate. This did bloody hurt… Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating here slightly, but I realized that 2 years of living in Germany and 2 years of German Ordnung took their toll. So again, the second lesson learned – if you want to attend a hackathon conference, always register "to hack" and never dare to pay for it.
...and it's easy to identify those idiots - they're the ones attending the talks.
Even though the conference agenda was fully packed with mostly 20 min slots from the morning to late afternoon, the speeches were not really attended by many. Most of the crowd, as you could expect, went all around the building to work on their projects that were supposed to be submitted in 2 days’ time to the jury for a chance of winning a cash prize and a trophy in 6 different categories. So yes, I was part of a very small group that actually attended the different presentations over the 3 days of the conference. "The tribe of idiots", as I called us, could be described as the group of individuals who are Ethereum-curious, willing to learn and explore what this tech has to offer, not skeptical but rather excited about the possibilities of the blockchain. However, you could easily notice additional groups among the attendees other than my tribe of idiots, and I think this categorization could be applicable to the global society. There are the pure ones - developers, those running nodes, and any others that have been part of the Ethereum community for some time now, knowing all the jargon and the "current affairs". Get rich quickly, so all the investors, fintech, "corporate people", and any others riding on the current hype and rising trends around blockchain and crypto, have the shared goal in mind, and that goal is money. Basically, the bad guys, you don't want to stick around them. Another group, the critics, are not the biggest believers in the potential of "bollockchain", especially in the potential of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. They sometimes change their approach over time (as many banks did), sometimes they still openly criticize them but support the introduction of their own digital assets (as Madame Legard did), or sometimes they stay true and loyal to their skeptical opinion about them (as Mr. Bill Gates does). Finally, we have those in the dark - all the unaware, unconscious, unenlightened, and ignorant poor souls that have no idea of the mysteries that are taking place in the web3 space, and what kind of potential revolution is coming in the future. For obvious reasons, they were not attending the conference ;).
Which one are you?
Idiots Tribe
Pure One
Get Rich Quickly
Critic
Again, the crowd at the event was overall very friendly, and despite being in the idiot tribe, I met many cool people, exchanged contacts. One of them shared on Instagram the below work of Sir Joan Cornella straight after the event, which I felt was slightly targeted at me, but this also summarizes quite well the approach of the pure ones towards the others. This is the third lesson learned. Amen.
"Always wash your hands after meeting corporate people"
"Sociopsychological analysis of the Ethereum community and its parallel structures"
Oh boy, what a new world did I discover there. It was so great to learn about the Ethereum universe, the upcoming merge, the different problems developers are facing, and how they try to tackle them, but most importantly, about the Ethereum community and about those who form it. And it’s an interesting creation. Very smart, chilled, a bit “specific” or “special”, rebellious (read anarchist), but also very open, helpful, and led by the joint, greater aim - the freedom. Truly fascinating, and just so different from the “corpo” mindset. Imagine working in your company on some project, product, or a new approach that massively improves everyone’s life (= could make you very rich), and then posting the detailed success recipe all over your social media so that anyone could replicate it. Quite unthinkable. Not that this happens 100% there, it would be too beautiful to be true, but it is definitely encouraged to share the code for others to fork it.
The idea of freedom and free society and economy is the driving force. Something that sounds so utopian and unachievable to many ("corporate rats"), is the guaranteed future reality, the upcoming anthropological change, and the natural evolution of the human societal structures. Sara Polak delivered there a great talk on the topic of anthropology of value and reciprocity, why nation-states are dying, and why blockchain will be the basis for the evolution of human societies. Jarrad Hope spoke about moving from the starting point that was an introduction of cryptocurrencies, to the final step - the emergence of the crypto states - parallel, decentralized and free societal and economic structures. It nearly felt like joining a revolution sparked by the manifesto (there is actually one published on the website), and it felt kind of illegal (again, too much time spent surrounded by German Regeln). What was so striking for me, was this sense of certainty that the change is coming and the overall activism, the actual action within the community, not this pathetic passive approach that many "normal people" adopt. In the Ethereum community, if there is a problem - let's discuss how it can be tackled and let's solve it; if we don't like how oppressed we are by the systems - let's opt-out and create new ones, or at least the parallel structures. You might say this is not possible in the real world, but this is something that is already happening in the real world, and it will grow. But a revolution usually takes place when it reaches masses, when it reaches the mainstream. And there is a little problem here.
How to join the private member club that supposed to be for "all"?
The slogans of openness, freedom, and decentralization sound all so nice and appealing, but if you're a newbie like me, it can be quite tricky to join "the club". First of all, you might not really know where to start. Screening the Ethereum website prompts you to a few steps for new starters, the first one is a set up of a crypto wallet. But there are millions of them, and even though humans like choice, they like it as long as it is a limited choice - otherwise our brains and decision-making processes go crazy. I mean, free market, open competition, and freedom of choice - all are very cool, but we might already lose half of the participants in this first squid game because it all could be so overwhelming to a newbie. Additionally, it is mentioned too many times that it is so important to secure your wallet and to be very cautious - kind of a red flag. However, if you made it through the first game, the next one tests the level of your risk aversion. You need to get Ether cryptocurrency to keep going, and this most likely butchers half of the leftover half of the keen new joiners. Even if Ether is on discount at the moment, the volatility and current PR might not be very encouraging to the new starters.
If you're however a bit of a YOLO type and you got yourself the crypto, then the level of difficulty increases. Not only do most of the apps feel like they are at the very beginning of the development stage, they also are not so user-friendly. You need to deal with these long, confusing, cryptographically signed transactions that just appear as such black magic to the new "idiots", and most of the time you probably have no idea what is going on, especially when executing your first transactions. The execution time is also way slower, not comparable to the "instant transfers" on e.g. Revolut (talking here about how it appears to the user and about the user experience, not how this works in practice).
Additionally, when you find out about the environmental impact of the mining, and the preventive and incentivizing mechanisms on the network, meaning that each transaction costs you a bit of a "fee" (a bounty that you need to offer), this might feel totally outrageous. We "peasants" don't like to pay for something when other alternatives don't require it, or at least when they are not so obvious and open about it. We prefer to be exploited in other, "more sophisticated" ways, like e.g. handing in our personal data to others so that they can monetize it in numerous creative ways, or believing in the beautiful corporate tales of sustainability and ESG practices - this feels more legit in our peasant reasoning.
But yes, I outlined just some starting steps that each newbie needs to get through in order to join this "private club", and when you're completely on your own, I would say that no matter how excited and hopeful you are about the Ethereum universe, this can really be quite overwhelming and discouraging at the beginning. So dear Ethereum community, I know you're already working on tackling some of the above "problems", but please, talk to us peasants, listen to our pain points, make it a bit more peasant-friendly, and please adopt us - we really want to be a part of your community.
"Speculation, scam, and a worthless, dangerous hype" - MaNy ExPeRts
The newness of Ethereum and blockchain overall, user experience, economic and technological barriers are just some of the factors that slow down wider adoption and switch from web2 to web3. I mean, at first, I didn't even know how to "find" web3, or how to access it. This might sound super silly, but as of 2022, there are nearly 8bn people in the world, and I am definitely not 1 out of 8bn that is getting a bit confused. And this is indeed another problem that the Ethereum community is tackling at the moment. The web3 development is happening more on the backend. If I understood correctly during my learning journey at ETHPrague, currently there is no decentralized web browser that was created by the Community, and even the deployment of e.g. dapplets doesn't fully solve the problem. So yes, a new, own, and separate web3 interface could be a massive game-changer when it comes to mainstream adoption.
The next one is marketing and PR. Let's be honest, the story that reaches the masses and the image of blockchain and cryptocurrencies is not really the reflection of the Ethereum universe, vibe, and philosophy. We, peasants, are getting it wrong because what gets to the media are the ape NFTs and the rollercoaster of Bitcoin price, and we are too lazy to dig in a little bit on our own to educate ourselves from the "golden sources" which are not so peasant-friendly.
One of the talks during the conference, delivered by Dobroslawa Gogloza, aimed exactly at the problem of how to reach the masses. One of the discussed approaches was to advertise not your why (Ethereum's community's why), but the mainstream's why - and this is just so true. I understand that a free and stateless society is the aim, but even though it sounds attractive, I guess escaping the data surveillance and exploitation from the big tech sounds a little bit more attractive to the average human being because it refers to the more tangible exploitation. I know that Rousseau's social contract is far from reality, but as some say, taxes are guaranteed, therefore we kind of accept this fate, but, at least in my modest opinion, escaping data capitalism is the more appealing "why". So it's just the way of naming things, at the end of the day it comes down to freedom and free society, but getting the peasants' why is the key to onboarding the mainstream.
And the opportunities that blockchain offers are really great, not only for tech and finance, but for the new societal structures. DAOs, quadratic voting, and exploration of ways of game theory implementation are just a few examples, and the use cases can really be mind-blowing. It's just so sad that what gets the publicity is the Bitcoin up and down ride and the ape NFTs. We, the mainstream, are getting it so wrong.
1995 - when radio and tape recorders seemed impossible to be replaced by the Internet...
What automatically comes to my mind is the episode of David Letterman Show from 1995 with Bill Gates as a guest. Watching it gives you such a cringe (or at least that's the feeling I'm getting). "This Internet thing, do you know anything about it? Is this the next big thing?". People were not getting it at first, and for me, it's the same case with blockchain, at least when we talk about the mainstream. It will take years, but these will be very exciting and challenging years. It will be interesting to see how the fight with the regulators will go, and what kind of defence mechanisms will be deployed. I will be definitely watching closely, learning, and keeping my fingers crossed. Even though I am still part of the idiots' tribe, I feel like the conversion into the purist has started. And if I can have a little tip for you, my dear reader who managed to get to the end of my little post, I would just encourage you very strongly to watch it closely, get an understanding of the blockchain from those that actually build it, and try to meet the Ethereum community, you won't be disappointed. Maybe in 20 years from now, we will be cringing exactly the same way as when watching this episode with Mr. Gates. I really do hope so. But maybe, this will be one of the first "next big things" that actually fails. Let's see.
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