DevConnect 2025: Inside The Biggest Ethereum Event in History

Transcript

Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. Today we're here with Natan. I've been leading the Devcon connect team this year and I'm very very excited to welcome you at Defconnect. >> We wanted to organize an event that could give a touch and feel experience of what Ethereum could feel like in the daily life. And again, there is no better place than Argentina to do that because people use crypto, stable coins and Ethereum on a daily basis. In Argentina, you can see people using crypto. We estimate that about 5 million people using on a daily basis and 20% [music] in the country own crypto. So you can pay with crypto and everywhere in the venue with stable coins or ETH.

It is the biggest event EF ever organized. In terms of attendance, we've almost now reached uh 20,000 attendees. Hey Nathan, what's going on? Good. How are you? Um yeah, we're here at Defcon. Uh it's been a pretty insane week. Lots of announcements, uh lots of sort of like new directional focuses, I think, and narratives. What's your main What's your main takeaway from this week? What are the things that kind of struck you as most interesting and most surprising?

>> All right. So, I I guess I'm biased towards the take of an event organizer deep down into the weeds of organizing an event. So, I've been focusing on well organizing this event and making it as good as possible. So I'm less into like I don't know so much about the side events even though I know there are like a few hundreds happening inside like inside Buenosirus. I've seen quite a lot of announcements. So I think there's a um a lot of great things happening currently these days right like every day there is a big announcement. I've seen Polygon I think Trustless announced something um the privacy wallet by EF got released. I mean there is a lot of new releases new a lot of new products coming out. So this is what I feel. But against again like I'm deep down into

the weeds of organizing death connect which I think is a success for now. You tell me. But uh but yeah we now more than halfway through and uh yeah a few days left. But yeah this episode is brought to you by Nosis. Building the open internet one block at a time. Nosis was founded in 2015 and it's grown from one of Ethereum's earliest projects into a powerful ecosystem for open userowned finance. Nosis is also the team behind products that have become core to my business and that of so many others like Safe and Cow Swap. At the center is Nosis Chain. It's a low fee layer 1 with zero downtime in 7 years and secured by over 300,000 validators. It's the foundation for real world financial applications like Nosis Pay and Circles.

All this is governed by Nosis DAO, a communityrun organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, fund new projects, and even run a validator from home. So, if you're building in web 3 or you're just curious about what financial freedom can look like, start exploring at Nosis.io. C can you give us a um a an idea of the scale of the event because it's an absolutely massive venue. How many people are here? How many talks? um what kind of percentage um of Argentinians and and so on.

>> Okay, so it is the biggest event EF ever organized uh in terms of scale of what we've been doing, in terms of attendance, in terms of complexity and in terms of I think visibility in the country and in the area in terms of scale of the events. So we're doing within the mail building which is very central to Buenosares we are doing 40 events in Paris. So we're coordinating between 40 different event organizers. We're organizing a few events ourselves but most of the events are independently organized. Um we also have a co-work inside the main venue indoor outdoor and we organized a massive fair the Ethereum world fair where we have about 100 applications getting showcased. So it's

been a lot of coordination with all the apps the creation and so we have three main pavonian and again lot of things happening. Um so in terms of operation it has been very big. In terms of attendance we've almost now reached uh 20,000 attendees. So wow ticket claims >> thousand >> 20,000 um >> that came through the doors here at Defconnect. >> Tickets claimed. Yeah. >> Uh and I think we are now more than 60 70% on day four of attendance. So people that claimed the ticket that showed up at the venue. Um something that that is cool is that every event that is happening inside the venue require defconnect ticket. So it's also like a uh you have a def connect ticket as a as

a pass to enjoy the fair to go to the fair you enjoy the food you enjoy the free spaces you go to the event. Some require additional sign up but most of them are free. So it's so the dev connect ticket gives you a lot of things and we've been coordinating all the AV the production um and many things for these events. So in in addition of these events plus um plus all the world's fair with applications we also have like a football pitch meeting rooms a CMS stage um and many things happening inside of so yeah the the biggest today >> walk walk me through the decision to kind of make this a a world fair because kind of like that's a new format right kind of like we I mean we've had boosts before and we had talks before and

panels and so on but the world fair element is is that decidedly new >> right so there are a few things I I think for in terms of timing journey of the ecosystem, we felt that showcasing more apps, more applications of Ethereum where like this is a year where we had to showcase that like last Devcon, I think that was the main if not the only criticism we got out of the event that we were missing applications, concrete stuff that people could use in the in their daily lives. And so uh it of course helped us to select maybe we can talk about this but also um this is what sparked the idea of the world's fair inspired by the first world fair Chicago that demonstrated the the use and the

power of electricity. Um we wanted to organize an event that could give a touch and feel experience of what Ethereum could feel like in the daily life. And again there is no better place than Argentina to do that because people use crypto stable coins and Ethereum on a daily basis. So we felt again it was a great timing for the ecosystem because we now have hundreds of apps live on Ethereum but also in terms of um um yeah in terms of um applications ready and uh and also in terms of doing it into Argentina which is a a great place to do it.

>> What was some of the kind of reasons why Defcon connect landed here in Argentina? So, we've been scouting Argentina for many years. As a matter of fact, we almost organized it in Argentina in 2022 when we scouted South America. We went to Bogota instead because at the time we wanted to organize Defcon. I was not part of the team at the time, but we wanted to organize Defcon, which is more like a classic programming that EF owns and classic talks and workshop format. And in we did not found find the venue actually that it was really a matter of venue that could fit this style this style of event. So we went with the the great venue at uh at Botaa. Um and we

but we visited Larural um some people at the F at the time in 2020 I think or 21 visited this place and wondered this is going to be one place for an event one day and today is I mean this year is a is the year and yeah I think it's a good format for something that is more decentralized more open air more of like festivalish vibe and so I think this is again this is what led us to do to organize these kind of events. Yeah. >> And um compared to say organizing you know dev connect in um in Amsterdam or like in a European country like we organized an event here and like there's a particular set of challenges to organizing events in in a place like Argentina where you're coming from

Europe where you there's language there's culture uh I found one of the things that was particularly complex was payments uh which sort of led tough well to you know to doing a crypto event here. What what did you how did you overcome those challenges? >> So I can so Amsterdam for the record was also organized right after COVID. Um, so it was even possible to organize it in Amsterdam because well all the venues were super cheap and available like no one crazy enough was kind enough to organize an event right after COVID and it was the one of the first big event happening and so the initial idea came out of um of Devcon came out of COVID because we could not simply organize like a 5,000 uh people event and so we decided to the team at the time decided

to set up a co-work and signal toward the place and invite other event organiz organizers and teams to organize their own events. This is how it started. >> That was the genesis of of of Dev Connect. And then there was Istanbul. >> Then there was Istanbul where we sing all the same towards a city. We did a bit more ourselves like we had a bigger co-work. We had more events inside the same building. We we already had the idea of trying to do a bit more ourselves like having one place where we centralize a bit more the people and people could go from one event to another. Uh so that was the first trial and we took that to the next step with an even bigger venue and running 40 events in parallel and having even more events like outside like uh external parties organizing their own events

inside the main building. But yeah, this is the main spirits the main idea. We added on top of the events the world fair which is also very new. We experimented a little bit with that at Defcon Bangkok because we had the supporter spaces. you could walk in the hallways and see the uh some projects but now it's really about the apps. The focus was really to showcase applications. You could go at the booth try and try the apps and that was the idea of the of the the event. But yes, so the shift uh changed a bit. We also doing much more oursel and it was more about side events and inviting people to go to like visit the city. So we we helped like with um with bikes in the city. We uh help with guides and creating a map etc. This year it was

really the focus was on the core events as we call them internally the core events inside the main building and we we've put a more like a bigger focus on on the venue and everything that's happening here because we're doing so much ourselves. It's also a question of focus. That's the main difference. >> Tell us about the attendees. What percentage of attendees are local and how many have flown in for this? We have about now 20,000 attendees and about 50% of them are locals. Mhm. >> So, we've put a lot of effort into inviting local attendees and we're about 20 between 50 and 20 in the team and we have five local people and so we've been working very hard in involving local communities on all fronts and we have

someone fulltime here who's been very very active in onboarding all again the universities the companies the um the government officials all the local committees that are very very active in Argentina. We can also talk about this like Ethereum Maratina, Silatam, Iskipu, all these organizations that have been also that are organizing their own events here like there is today an Ethereum Arantina Katon like there are a lot of things happening and um and so yes so about 50% of of attendees are local um we've also put a lot of um uh discounts for locals for students as always but the locals could come very easily. It was very accessible. Uh it was $20 for the

tickets and we did a lot of partnership with universities. So you can often see waves of students coming inside the venue like out of like school bus. That's very cool to see. We had uh tracks of universities with 10 of the biggest universities of Argentina every day twice twice a day. So uh content for newcomers uh happening always. Um, also something we've done is that we've been able to set up a streamlined process with the immigration office of Argentina directly in line with the government where we issued more than a thousand visa uh to people all around the world that are normally blocked from attending this event. So you can see inside the venue a lot of people from from India, from Nigeria, a lot of people from Africa actually and as a result we also

have more than 130 countries represented. >> Wow. >> So it's it's I mean we're only missing like what 60 countries like. All right, next step. We need to get them. But I mean this is this is amazing. And um it is also far from a lot of places. I mean it's some people flew for 45 hours doing three five four or five stops like it was a concern that we had at some point. Um also let us double down on involving local communities in Argentina also LATAM but um but we managed to get people from all around the world and it's very exciting to see. So yeah, making the event as accessible as possible was a big big focus and also involving local communities at the same time. Um I think it is always a focus of Defcon and Defcon connect. That was the

case also in Southeast Asia. This is what this is why we're organizing Defcon and Defcon connect in these places. We're going to places where uh others won't uh others organize conferences in Europe. At CC is very big in France. I've been involved for many years with this event. Uh now you have um like um events in in the US with the eastcon by global east global is going on in a lot of places. East global is also going to many places where it's been harder like they're going to places like Africa, India, many many different countries. Um but yeah, so this is uh about the diversity. We had a lot of it and yeah, we're proud of it.

>> Yeah, the visa thing is huge. Uh I mean that's that's a a big undertaking I think to have like the government involved and making sure that like people can come as yeah I mean even FIFA can't do this right like apparently apparently they can't get fasttrack for for people to go to the FIFA World Cup. you know, people in crypto, there's there's this narrative about like South America being a very fertile place for crypto innovation because of people's monetary sovereignty, because of the state of the payment rails and the financial system and um this has been something that you know we've been hearing for years in the in the crypto community like people Camille Rosso have talked about it extensively written about it and um

what's your sense of how impactful it was to have Dev connect here and um what are some of the really interesting kind of use cases that you know you've seen or or emerged here at Dev Connect that uh validate this thesis? >> So there is a hard thing about what we do is that we often don't see the ripple effects of our events for many many years. I can tell that our event in Bgotaa had side effects and an impact like from many years and now we're also harvesting the seeds that we've planted in in Bgotaa 3 years ago because a lot of the communities that are involved now in all over LATAM were born around Boota. Uh so it's it's hard to put numbers on the impact that such an event

has but years later we can we can tell because for example in Bangkok last year we had many communities coming from South America all the way to Bangkok because they saw Defcon uh they went to Defcon they saw the impact and so they they wanted to to be part of it. Um so the impact is always hard to to evaluate. Uh we have a financial direct financial impact by with tourism obviously with all the money we put but all the side events put um that uh the companies that will come here that will invest into uh into the country that will hire local pro local talents that um will probably set base like a conbase is getting approval to like got approval

to like financial regulated to they have like PSAV PSA like a uh vast regulated entity to be able to uh to deal with finances here. Um so people are getting companies are are getting established and uh you me also a few uh use cases. Uh payments are definitely the biggest ones. I mean in Argentina you can you can see people using crypto. Uh we estimate that about 5 million people using on a daily basis and 20% in the country uh own crypto. Um 5 million using on a daily basis it's 10% of the population. It's it's huge and so they use crypto obviously for

several reason but for uh for payments because it's convenience. When you pay a merchants they often don't get the uh the money into their bank for 20 days. It's very common here. And also when they're paid into pesos, well the the money fluctuate, right? Like the inflation is very famous in Argentina, like infamous I would say. Um and so the pesos have been crashing for the last many many years. Um and even this year like I was here earlier this year and now my dollar is 70% uh more powerful.

So I lived it myself coming here three times this year. Um it's very like it's um the need for crypto and Ethereum is uh obvious. Um you have the system of quas. I'm not sure if you've experienced that, but you send a message on Telegram or WhatsApp and you send a crypto transaction with USDT on Ethereum or other other network and the guy shows up with a bag of cash in front of your door. It's uh I think uh not really legal but not really forbidden. uh uh everyone is doing it and it's that common like we've paid many service providers doing the same like the guy send you just an address you need to send $500 there and hope for the best

but then the thing happened and happens and it's quite surprising it's very common and it's happening with crypto because it's simply better and it's amazing to see and this is also why we're we're here >> you know that's fascinating and um did you guys encounter any uh uh real issues with like currency fluctuations at least when organizing. >> Yes. Yes. Because we are planning this event we for a year. I mean we're working for more than a year on this event and so quotes vary. Um we need to be careful about what currency do we use how like split the payments in time so that it doesn't fluctuate too much. We had often had quotes getting plus 20% because of currency valuation. The

biggest impact we well I mean the biggest sort of thing that struck us was that contracts don't matter. They want the money in the account. And so we've had at least one one service provider cancel our contract after a very short period of time just several days because we hadn't made the made the payment. And we didn't realize just how important that was for them to have payment. Then we sort of felt that throughout you know the entire process of working for service providers is that they don't care until the money's in the in the bank. Yeah. And you can you can understand I mean you can understand that they've they've gone through tough situations uh they they've gone through situation where banks were closing their accounts like where they could not access the money into their banks and so I mean we've been talking about this

like you know censorship resistance in Europe and in US and we talk about it but we've never experienced it ourselves. I mean, I have never been bankless. Um, and so I don't understand the same way. Uh, I don't understand or I don't feel it feel the same way as an Argentina that gone through the Kadito crisis in 2001. Like feel about crypto. Like it's not it's not the same. They really they've been through it and not all of them obviously. Now we have a lot of young people that are into it, but but their their parents have lived through it and so they understand. Um, so so yes, they they Yeah.

>> Cool. Maybe let's loop back to the event. So, we're almost we're more than halfway through. Um it's a little bit early, but what are your preliminary take uh take-home learnings? So, kind of like what what worked well, what didn't go so well? Um what what will we be seeing more of in the future? >> All right, I I'll start with what did not go well? Um >> the internet, >> right? >> I think that's the entire city of Buenosares. I mean I found the internet to be very shoddy everywhere. Yeah. >> Right. Wi-Fi situation is not great in Argentina. Generally Wi-Fi situation in this building is very well known to be catastrophic. Uh and so what happened is

that we built the whole system from scratch and it was a huge endeavor. Um and on top of that there are there were many many uh things that we did not control like cloudfare outage and and other things. I'm not blaming external factors but uh it was a huge endeavor. Uh we we hired some of the best uh companies, private companies to set up the whole thing from scratch. I can send you the pictures of the the 50 luggage that we brought like huge luggage of uh material that we brought to build the whole thing from scratch. You'll see all the setup everywhere if you look. Now it's now it's set up. It's back. Um it's working. But uh we had a rough time uh at the beginning. I think that was the

main criticism if not the only that we received. Probably coffee fixed. Uh but uh but in the end I think we have not received too too much complaints. Cloudfare helped maybe a little bit but I think it was also a good occasion to to disconnect. So >> I think it was actually so kind of it was actually quite nice because kind of like we were planning kind of like on our noses booth we were planning to kind of onboard people and show them the things and none of that worked but it didn't didn't just it didn't. >> Sorry about that. No, no, no. It's all it's a kind of like I I I'm I'm drawing the silver lining here. So, kind of because it also didn't work for anyone else. People were forced to make conversation, right? It kind of like they actually got talking about the

things and kind of like and I I often I I think kind of like often we kind of jump in and say, "Let me just show you." And then you show show people and kind of like um you that kind of often lacks part of the narrative of why you're actually doing it. And I think not having the app to show I'm I'm if I could if I could choose kind of like a future setup which please please have the Wi-Fi but kind of like if the Wi-Fi doesn't work it's not that everything doesn't work anymore. It's kind of like that kind of that you you find different levels to kind of connect with people on.

>> It's interesting. So for us it was like one of the biggest learning as a event organizer that uh we we clearly understood the impact that no Wi-Fi no Wi-Fi means that like uh on the live streams on the user experience generally it's not great on many many items the ripple effects were huge um but surprisingly we have not received that many complaints I mean that was the main one but we we saw that like people connecting more people not so many people complain surprisingly we were For us it was the end of the world but uh at the end of the day it was not too bad and we fixed the situation and so so now it's okay but uh but yeah it won't appearing again. Uh that was the biggest

challenge since day one organizing this event as this venue. We knew it. We took all the measures that we could possibly uh take but uh we knew some outage would happen and it happened and we did our best. We talked about the internet. Um the the coffee in the tea bags that was a little bit weird. Yeah, I I saw I >> kind of I kind of like I kind of like the tea bags myself. >> There you go. >> Indian push for getting more people to drink mate because the mates were so kind of like I kind of like they were making the the the coffee deliberately shitty so people would kind of try try the thing they was on purpose. It's the kind of elements when you organize an

event that you know it's the kind of details that you have to go into every detail and check oh you serve coffee at the space how is the coffee show me the coffee show me that it's not powder coffee that you put water into right so it's also a learning um like if you want high quality events you need to check all the details and uh also with the scale of what we're doing it's it was sometimes hard to to go so precisely into all the details but >> but well we fixed It's uh is a good learning. Te >> tell me about um the the boots and kind of the the fair element of this, right?

Because that's new and kind of um if you go to talks, it's actually a little bit sad because there's almost no one there, but people love the booths. All the booths are crowded. So kind of like it seems like you kind of like hit the hit the nail on the head here, >> right? Uh so I guess the the experience shifted a little. The idea of the warfare was to showcase the apps. So to have more of of like country concrete showcases. So we put a lot of uh focus on that specifically. So we had eight districts with like DeFi, AI, hardware and wallets, collectibles, layer 2s, what am I missing? Privacy gaming. So I think that was it. Um and we want we wanted to experiment with a new format, have a more concrete way for people to

interact with the event. So I think people loved it. uh it's new for the EF especially like we usually we were like very like showcasing projects but in a plain neutral way and now we went into like full mode into selecting the best projects or some of the best project including like the the biggest international the biggest projects also the the best local ones. So you can see the exchanges like Bellow Ripio Lemon and you can experiment with them and we were also able to showcase some licensed one. So you have unramping stations with repo where you can uh buy crypto on the ground. So that's also something else that we've done is that we've allowed and we've worked with merchants to have crypto payments. So you can pay with crypto and uh everywhere in the venue

with stable coins or ETH. Um, we've also facilitated an with the app a way for you to connect any external wallet or if you don't have a wallet with an email create a wallet and get into the Olympic station or claim a pinet link so that you can uh have $2 to buy a coffee or something like that. So, we really wanted to give a concrete experience of like what could a city living on Ethereum could could be like. I will not agree with you that all that the rooms are empty. You have some rooms like >> No, I I was I was kind of like I I I was I was exaggerating a bit, but there's one room that's absolutely massive and I think it would it would take probably like 2,000 people at least kind of like put to actually fill it up.

>> So, we we organized a big room for the biggest events. Ethereum day was really packed. We had the Ethcon the massive event organized by all the local communities with like the mayor of Buenosarees that cameapia the head of like the football organization in Argentina that came the room was packed from from like from the beginning to the end. Uh so yes the the events coming afterwards with smaller capacity feel the uh the difference obviously um we're reducing a bit the rooms arranging the setup a a little bit but uh but yeah but I invite you to go see some of their events with the hackathon that is completely full of

hackers right now happening middle of the week. So I think kind of like talks is actually very specific thing, right? Because kind of like if you have a talk somewhere, it's mostly the endorsement that you you can have the talk there and I would I would always assume that kind of like 98% of people who watch my talk actually watch it later on YouTube. Um and so so and I also take that that stance when I I'm at an event kind of like I depprioritize going to talks because I know I can watch them on the way home. Yes. Right. So, it's uh and I think that's that's generally kind of uh >> do you really do that though? Cuz everybody says they do that, but I I don't actually watch them on the way home. I usually sleep on the plane >> 100%. So, kind of Yeah.

>> All right. I need to I need to maximize my plane time. That >> kind of I'm also I I I don't know whether kind of like we've known each other a long time. Don't know whether you know this, but also patience is not one of my virtues. So kind of like and and kind of feel to kind of fast forward someone on YouTube is way less offensive than saying just speed it up. [laughter] >> Um I think so that's an interesting one. Uh for years we've been saying that the conference model is broken and no one is attending the talks. I still think that when you're passionate about the topic that you want to be the first one to see attending a talk is different like like going to see obviously Vitalik or any person that you really enjoy like you will you will sit here you will not take

your phone and you will listen to the to the talk and you have the experience and the immersion like the same way you would go to a concert and enjoy the experience it's a small fraction of the talks right >> probably but I I I do think that's when you a topic matter I think it's Uh it's a personal question. If you really care about a topic and you like the speaker, you would go to like in the room and then speak to the person or I agree it's a small fraction. I think that's um I mean we have to think about it as event organizers like how do we manage this uh the speakers still want uh a place on stage. They want to showcase >> 100%. I I'm I mean I also gave a talk and kind of like I'm I'm happy I gave a

talk because kind of like the the curation is part of the service, right? So uh have having the talk up later and kind of like linking linking it for to kind of give people an intro what you're doing. I think it's it's it's super valuable. >> So I mean nowadays all the talks are also live streamed and recorded. We see a lot of people in the live streams actually. So even when the room is half half full um you can like you all often times have three four or five times the people like watching in the stream. So I think we should be low ego as well as speakers or and do not feel uh bad because the room is have >> 100% 100%. But I I think like one of one of the things that's really important to

recognize as event organizers is that, you know, your your content is not just who's sitting in your room, but it's also the reach. And, you know, if you're marketing that content well, you're going to get lots of eyeballs on on those ideas. And I think at the end of the day is what really matters. Um, I I do want to talk a little bit about like some of the main themes this week, not just here, but all the side events. And there's been a few that have struck me. Obviously like stable coins have been a massively important topic in the last few months but also this year at uh uh at DevConnect. Um but privacy seems to be the main thing and we yesterday we were talking to Peter Van Vulenberg about this and uh my my question to him was you know is the interest in privacy

driven by the market or is the market reacting to the interest in privacy? Is it it was sort of like a chicken and egg thing. Um my question for you would be like why do you think now Ethereum seems to be like taking privacy very seriously and you know like >> the sunglasses metallic will be like a meme that will live on forever and I think like is going to solidify this idea that Ethereum needs to be private but like why why is it so important now >> I think pragmatically the ethereum system been solving one problem after the other we've solved uh the merge right we've we've moved to proof of stake we solved scalability now transactions are like fast and cheap. Uh we're solving fragmentation. Uh we are

solving UX. I think this is ongoing that has been ongoing for many years. Like what are the next big topics and privacy is one of them 100%. If we want credible credibly neutral um technology, permissionless technology, censorship resistant technology, we need privacy. And when you think about it, if we don't have this, like if we don't have privacy, then you can identify the person or the the network or the tool um and just kill it. So privacy is just a need. It's a human rights and I think so that's on the tech side. If you don't have privacy, the tech is just simply limited. Uh and you you cannot fulfill the promise of what Ethereum aims at, you know, achieving. So that's one on

the tech side. And I think currently like nowadays with the rise of uh far right or like extreme parties in both sides and um nationalism and media control and things like that you need and just uh surveillance tools that have been widespread in and for many years now but maybe increasing a bit. um we need even more um privacy technology and privacy implementation of privacy generally um when you see regulation like chat control potentially coming into Europe I mean that was crazy I don't go into politics often but when I looked at that I show that to my family

like this is this is up I don't I'm not sure sorry if I cannot say that on the recording but that was that way >> extremely concerning extremely concerning like >> having chat would have caused signal to potentially stop operations. Like this is massive. This is not only this is not only Ethereum or blockchain related, this is so like a society problem. Like >> it was crazy. it was even considered and kind of like I mean so basically kind of like it failed in the end but kind of it failed because by by just so kind of like Germany was actually the deciding vote in the end and kind of like that it failed because there were some concerns about how it was implemented and I was like what what do you mean some concerns? [laughter] So this is insane and and I think this is something that

the Ethereum committee also take, you know, like take very seriously and it makes me proud to be working in the Ethereum community that cares so much about privacy and that has some of the best cryptographic, you know, researchers and moving like forward the needle of uh uh I mean the yeah, moving forward the cryptography with DK tech and and and privacy tech in general because I feel that this is also how our ecosystem can have a very strong impact in the world like when you again like when you promote censorship resistance you need privacy and this is why I think it matters this is why Ethereum Foundation even is working on a privacy wallet with other uh partners this is uh why the topic is so important today I to

answer your question also shortly I think it's a matter of priority we had to solve things before solving that but now it's it looks like a big a big elephant in the room that if we don't solve like it's just we're not fulfilling the full like um the entire value prop of Ethereum and this trust technology. So we need we need to address it. >> Yeah. I I I think um there's there's also another concern with privacy is that in order for Ethereum to be credible in the institutional space and for businesses, you need privacy because like businesses have privacy, right? And and they they lobby for private I mean they they they have it and they want to keep it u because I think uh you know there's sort of an adage that capitalism works because you have individual privacy and you have businesses that can

have privacy over their transactions and business deal. So it's like constant arbitrage, right? And um and a world where everything is totally onchain is a world where so like the economy sort of comes to a halt, right? Um >> and um >> but yeah, I I do think that Ethereum sort of took this priority a bit late. Um not saying like scaling and those things were not important, but they took a long time. And I I think that privacy just because of sort of the ethos of Ethereum uh and and also like the risk that sort of people in crypto are generally you know so they exist in a space that's more risky to their like their kind of

financial freedom or their in whatever depending on the country where they may be or even their security like we're both we both live in France we know what that's like you know to be concerned about your security I think privacy is kind of become It's a priority that should have been I think prioritized earlier than than later. But it's great that it's happening. But yeah, that's my take. >> I I would actually I think I would counter that. I think kind of I I do actually think I mean privacy is super important 100%. First of all, I don't think um the economy would grind to a halt if kind of like no private transactions were possible. But >> no, but if we were if the economic rails were fully on chain and businesses couldn't do things in a private way, it would be very difficult to go into

business. >> Yeah. So kind of like it would change the modus operandi for sure. But I think kind of like the the um cryptography that kind of like underpins privacy, it's come such a long way in the last five years. So having having had this as a priority five years ago would have set us up for failure. So kind of like if we say we have to solve privacy first and then we do scaling. I I think I I think that would have would have been putting putting the uh horse before the cart. >> I think we I mean we did not have the tech also back in the days. I mean it was not even possible possibly it was not possible at the at the time like now we have ZK that solves bo both like privacy and scalability. So >> and how much it's how much I mean look

at the real real time proving um stats. It's crazy crazy that this now works. Had anyone told us this 5 years ago, we I I would not have believed it. I would not have believed it. So, it's >> great to see. >> Cool. But now, let's look into the future. So, where next? >> Where next >> for DevCon and Dev Connect? What are you going to what are you going to do differently? And most importantly, where is it going to be? So yeah, I'm very excited to announce uh um that Defcon will be happening in Mumbai in India uh next year. So we're working hard on making that happen, but that will be after Defcon connectina. So So yeah,

we're going to announce that at the end of the event. So by the time it's released, it will be it will be live. Um yes, we're very excited to go there. We've never been in that region, in that country. and uh and we have we simply have 1.5 billion uh attendees to potentially tap into. So that's going to be that's going to be big. So go also same following the principles of where can we go first like where others would not and where can we have the big potential impact on the region. Um and India has been at the top of the charts in term of number of developers in terms of crypto adoption uh in terms of usage in general. Um regulations seems to be

moving favorably as well. Um it's always up and down. It's a complex environment but uh but we are confident that it's going to be very very positive for the ecosystem for the region as well. Um and we hope that we can also have an again have a very strong impact and replicate the some of the efforts that we've been doing here and in other countries. So we're very excited about about this location >> just because that's DevCon >> Defcon >> Defcon we'll be in Mumbai >> I can clarify as well that's I think we're move let's see let's see how it goes uh I think we're moving a bit like I think this event has been a hybrid model between past defcon and past defcon we've done much more oursel it's

much more centralized and so let's see how defcon evolved I haven't been able to we haven't been able to work too much on this But it will be closer to Devcon. >> The merge >> probably there will be a merge in branding. Uh we've already been using the Defcon uh X account. Uh I think we'll be remerging the branding. Uh just there has been some confusion in the past. Um the events were very different in the past so it made sense at the time. Now it's no longer really the case. Maybe I think the I like the branding Ethereum was fair. Let's see if we keep that one. Uh Defcon for sure will remain. Let's see what happens with Defconnect TBD. But next year is Defcon.

So are are you saying that like DevCon would possibly happen every year or like some new like uh mutant child of DevCon and Dev Connect might happen every year? >> I mean and that back in the day DevCon used to happen every year. So kind of like this this used to be a yearly thing until kind of Dev Connect stepped into the >> Yeah. Also it's the same team, right? So the I do think though that we're adapting always our events to the to the place to the format to the state of the ecosystem. Um so let's see what what is going to be.

>> What are you most excited about doing uh DevCon in India? um inviting the all the new developers are coming from India like yeah I mean we've we've invited a lot of officials from uh India and Bhutan u to to see what's what's happening in uh in Argentina we've met with the ambassadors and the we've invited the embassy to come here and to see a bit what's like um we're very excited to start working with the local communities um it's very different from Argentina in the way that uh the communities and the projects in India for a long time have been working outside of India. Yeah.

>> So they're based in Dubai, Singapore, other places for mostly regulatory uh reasons. But we hope that it can uh improve. We hope that maybe we can help bring the attention and back into India with some help from the regulatory side of things. But uh yeah, very excited to to welcome all these developers to have a lot of local attendees. I think the focus will be on India for sure. it will not be a region thing. It will be India. Um because it's it's a continent in itself. So >> yeah, I think I think I think one of the things that could be very interesting there like you mentioned is like the diaspora coming back like American Indian diaspora coming to India and inspiring like the local developers there. I think that that would be uh

probably one of the outcomes here is that you just get this uh huge inspiration within like the the local Indian uh developer community to start building things for India rather than like just outside of the country >> right and as a matter of fact we've been in touch with everyone like most of the big companies already in India I mean polygon is an example the folio uh denver from defo has been super helpful we we have some Indian folks in the f we've been talking with and they've been help they've been helping us with local contacts and stuff um and we've been talking I mean for example Mudit from Polygon who's based in like that's um in other places they've been the biggest and yes I agree

it's a great take like you have people from India everywhere in the world working on the biggest project everywhere um the same way by the way Argentinian are in most biggest protocols like a unis swap um all the biggest you have sometimes one super strong Argentinian developers uh Wonderland who is helping with the privacy wallet who's a super super strong dev shop uh which is not I I don't think they like the dev shop sorry Matias but uh so you have so much strong team from so much also strong developers and people from India that's yeah I think it's going to be interesting and we're going to see an interesting momentum so let's see how it goes Mumbai is an interesting city um obviously it's

not so Mumbai is like the financial hub of India. Uh the tech hub is more Bangalore but we there's no suitable venue in Bengal although everyone from Bangalore will fly will take trains like they fully organize a hackathon in a train the last I'm not sure if you've seen that but >> that was insane. I mean the guys are so motivated like um so yeah we're we're going we're excited about this one and see let's see what happens. Um yeah >> well I can't wait to take this opportunity to spend like a month in India >> right >> and uh yeah >> cool fantastic Nathan thank you so much for taking the time during this very very busy uh time for you to kind of uh talk with us and I have to say you look

remarkably well for someone who hasn't slept in a week [laughter] >> doing all right thanks