Original: Odaily Planet Daily
Author: jk
September of this year is the peak period for blockchain summits around the world: 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 Wanxiang Blockchain Week in Shanghai that followed closely. The blockchain summits in Asia have taken all the limelight for a while, and it seems like “everyone is in Singapore” in the circle of friends. At the same time, the United States also held three significant summits: Permissionless in Austin, Texas, and Mainnet and ETH New York in New York. Odaily Planet Daily’s correspondent in North America also attended these summits, and the following are the summary of the experiences:
Token 2049 steals the show: why are famous companies all in Singapore?
Permissionless, organized by Blockworks and Bankless, was held in Austin, Texas, which is the same venue as the Consensus in April. However, the visible number of participants in this year’s Permissionless was much smaller than other conferences. One reason is that this year’s Permissionless conference was scheduled for September 11-13, coinciding with Token 2049 in Singapore. Our correspondent met many staff members from well-known companies at the venue who said, “Many people from the company are in Singapore because the conference there is more significant.” Looking at the lineup of guests, the number and quality of Token 2049 are also significantly higher than these two conferences. Moreover, many guests at the Permissionless venue were just participating in the conference online and did not actually attend. Some of them even connected from Token 2049 in Singapore.
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Guest lineup of Permissionless. Source: Permissionless Official Website
In contrast, Mainnet organized by Messari and ETH New York organized by the Ethereum Foundation were relatively better: firstly, because the city is larger, many well-known institutions (such as Uniswap) have their offices in New York, so the staff members basically attended the conference, and the company’s premises could also be used for off-site activities. Compared with that, the reputation of these two conferences in New York seems to be better. At the same time, because ETH New York itself is a Hackathon, it attracted many developers and students to participate in the competition, which in turn attracted funds to observe projects. Therefore, the atmosphere at the venue was very active, and there were many comments that the atmosphere was much better than Permissionless.
Booths and off-site activities: unable to match the prosperity of ETH Denver/Consensus
Looking back at these two conferences, the number of booths and side events was significantly reduced, which pales in comparison to the thriving scenes of ETH Denver and Consensus. Previously, booths and side events have always been highlights of industry conferences, providing more opportunities for communication for participants and a platform for startups to promote themselves.
As for booths (institutional exhibition booths in the venue), the number of Permissionless and Mainnet booths is much smaller 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, the Consensus booth occupies the entire hall, with a main aisle leading to different zones. In contrast, the Permissionless booth occupies only two-thirds of the Consensus booth, and participants clearly feel that “there are far fewer participating institutions compared to April.”
Compared to the more than 400 off-site events throughout the week at Token 2049, the number of off-site events for Permissionless and Mainnet is not many, with about 10-20 events per day, mainly organized by well-known institutions.
From the two industry conferences, Permissionless and Mainnet, held this year, it is evident that the presence of Token 2049 undoubtedly took away a lot of attention and heat from the industry, which to some extent reflects the popularity of the Asian blockchain community. Compared to the economic bear market and a lot of regulatory pressure in the United States, participants’ choice to attend the conference also reflects their bets on future development.
Many institutional practitioners and strong lineup of guests
Although some of the above phenomena are regrettable, judging from the lineup of guests attending the conferences, these two conferences still have a high industry influence. Especially the large number of practitioners from major institutions, and the high quality of speakers. This not only brings high-quality content sharing to participants but also demonstrates the attention of high-end experts and institutions in the industry.
In terms of this year’s US conferences, LianGuainel’s discussions mainly focused on L2 solutions and institutionalization. With the development of blockchain technology, L2 has become the hottest topic in the industry this year, attracting a lot of attention for its potential to improve transaction efficiency and reduce costs. At the same time, as more traditional institutions begin to enter this field, how to combine the existing institutional structure with DeFi has also become a focus of many discussions. These two directions of discussion provide participants with an opportunity to gain in-depth understanding of the latest industry trends and future development trends.
The LianGuainel booth for traditional institution entry. Source: Permissionless official website
Invisibility of Chinese projects: Lack of presence
Another obvious phenomenon is that in Permissionless, Chinese projects have a very low presence. In the venue, it seems that only OKX has a booth, and only a few scattered local Chinese projects in the United States have organized off-site events, with few Asian faces at the scene. On further investigation, many projects that were originally planning to fly to the United States for the conference chose to attend the conference in Singapore due to the time conflict; many local Chinese projects in the United States also chose to fly to Singapore for reasons such as conference scale and fundraising difficulty. This phenomenon is an interesting reversal: unlike the general perception that Web3 is concentrated in the United States, Chinese projects have coincidentally chosen Singapore this time. In contrast, the participation of Chinese in Mainnet and ETH New York is much higher, partly because a considerable number of projects are headquartered in New York, and also because this conference takes place after Token 2049, so many project teams have flown back to the United States.
Over-saturation of Summits: The Inevitability of Survival of the Fittest
After comparing the buzz generated by these two conferences with the earlier Denver/Consensus event, we may arrive at a bold conclusion: the blockchain industry’s summits and conferences are experiencing a state of over-saturation. Like in other industries, as time goes by, more conferences and events will emerge, but not all of them will be able to maintain their original intentions and vitality. Eventually, industry conferences will undergo a process of survival of the fittest, where only those conferences that truly bring value to participants and the industry will be able to persist and succeed.
Currently, there are already dozens of well-known global blockchain-related conferences: apart from the Ethereum Foundation, which organizes events in different locations, the well-known conferences in the United States each year include:
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Stanford Blockchain Conference
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Harvard Blockchain Conference
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MIT Bitcoin
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ETH Denver
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Consensus by Coindesk
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Bitcoin Miami
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Permissionless by Blockworks
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Messari Mainnet
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NFT LA
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NFT NYC
In addition to smaller-scale conferences and the diversion of conferences in Asia and Europe, the industry buzz during the bear market may not be enough to sustain the organization of dozens of conferences in the United States. And due to the flywheel effect, people who felt that a certain conference was not worth attending last year may not necessarily attend it next year. Bold speculation suggests that before the start of the next bull market cycle, a considerable number of American blockchain summits will inevitably fade away from everyone’s sight.
In summary, although this year’s Permissionless and Mainnet conferences differ from the past, they still provide valuable information about the dynamics and future development of the blockchain industry. Looking to the future, we hope to see more in-depth and valuable industry exchanges and collaborations.
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