Feels like a couple of early chapters in this book – the stage where we have been working so hard and long on a demo for our Hamza ecommerce multi-vendor marketplace on web3 – and are ready to showcase it to all the early adopters and users in the world.
And realizing – either we are too early or they just don’t want it, ha!
What an eye opening experience – my first Ethereum conference – this one I am told is the second biggest after DevCon (which this year will be in Bangkok this November after the Cross Border Summit).
Tons of staking, re-staking, liquidity tools, dexes, stable coin issuers, and all kinds of fancy financial terms and jargon.
Beau and I arrived on Sunday morning July 7 (after an epic time at Euro Cup in Düsseldorf!) and immediately went into meetups and side events.
Thousands of people all over the world are coming together to network and learn. Never felt so overloaded with overlapping events and sessions as I did here.
One of our integration partners Martin and the team at Mass Market (data layer) was speaking about doing commerce on chain – and the room was not busy at all! Felt really that we are too early and that was the resounding feeling over and over talking to booths, speakers, investors – ecommerce on ethereum doesn’t seem to make a fit.
Most at this event were talking about and interested in defi (decentralized finance) and all the tools and systems for that.
Which makes sense, this is what I also think of Ethereum as.
So we had our “decom dinner” which was overloaded with 150+ applications – but we had a “black swan” event and just before our dinner it was heavy, HEAVY rain. At one point it felt like hail! Flash flood in the terrace we had set up for the dinner.
Really felt like some kind of sign – because the rain stopped right after the dinner – and for the entire week of this conference that was the main time it rained so hard. So about 12 people came out of the capacity of 35 (and the 150 applicants).
Very interesting, very interesting.
Still, this is all part of the story. And all part of the motivation to push this ahead even more and harder.
Have made some decent contacts, one of the most exciting is a few discussions with Circle (issuer of USDC) and their grant program. Also various people about helping us with vendor services and bridges.
Yet, this was not a conference tailored for me, as the non-technical co-founder of a eCommerce marketplace using Ethereum tools. Ethereum is simply a technology we are using – maybe I don’t need to be as active in the community.
Onwards and upwards.