Twenty-five thousand enthusiastic fans from all over the world converged on the Mile High City last week, but murmurings of a leadership vacuum at the Ethereum Foundation persisted.
Breaking Down ETH Denver: The Good, The Bad, and The Weird
Even before flying into Denver, Colorado last Wednesday, I fully expected the fractured morale in the Ethereum community to be reflected in ETH Denver’s attendance numbers, but a record 25,000 people showed up, with an additional 5-10,000 fans only attending side events, according to public relations firm Yap Global.
The conference, originally started in 2017 as an Ethereum hackathon event by John Paller, acted this year, as a barometer I used to gauge the extent of simmering tensions between supporters and detractors of Ethereum Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi.
Although there was a hint of reduced enthusiasm, especially with the network’s archnemesis Solana recording its best year in 2024 while Ethereum floundered, the average ETH Denver attendee I spoke with neither knew nor cared about Miyaguchi’s “infinite garden,” and how her critics have blamed her for the platform’s technical lethargy and ether’s (ETH’s) dismal price performance.
“I actually don’t know what’s going on with Ethereum,” said Natalie when I asked her about the foundation’s issues. But after explaining the situation to her, she suggested more decentralization and less focus on a single individual.
“We should have decentralized leadership,” Natalie said. “I don’t think there should be power in just one person.”
But occasionally, I would run into a disgruntled attendee who would not only articulate what was at the heart of Ethereum’s woes but would also offer solutions to put the network back on track.
“Maybe if the developers were paid in ETH they would care more about the price of ETH,” said Ethan Baker, referring to the Ethereum Foundation’s policy of paying its staff in fiat versus ETH. “I think the incentives should be a little bit different,” he added.
It quickly became apparent to me that most normies and casuals were oblivious to the political storm that had been brewing at the Ethereum Foundation months before ETH Denver, and so when Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang were announced as the foundation’s new co-executive directors, and Danny Ryan joined Etherealize as co-founder, the news seemed like a blip on the radar.
Essentially, my observation, based only on the ETH Denver crowd, was that there is a small vocal minority of heavily invested members of the Ethereum community who care deeply about the technical direction of the platform and the price performance of ETH, while the vast majority, mostly normies and casuals, don’t even know who Miyaguchi is.
Builders Keep Building
When I walked into the National Western Complex on day one of ETH Denver, it was exactly what I expected from an Ethereum conference, rainbows and unicorns abound, a band jamming to my left, and armies of giant “bufficorn” balloons scattered all over the conference floor.
Despite the hippie vibe, I got the impression it was business as usual for the builders as I went from booth to booth. Innovation was still happening and there was no shortage of brilliant ideas being implemented.
For instance, I had a fascinating discussion about potential use cases for a protocol dubbed “RandAO” that claims to offer decentralized random number generation (RNG) in a way that ensures randomness integrity “as long as at least one participant remains honest.”
I learnt about the importance of high quality RNG a couple of years ago when I covered a vulnerability on a Bitcoin client named Libbitcoin which at the time was using a weak RNG to create private keys. An attacker was able to brute force the system, regenerate multiple private keys, and subsequently drain the wallets linked to those keys.
Another interesting project I came across is MatterFi, a security firm that not only builds wallets, but also offers a unique feature called “Send to Name,” an innovation that cryptographically identifies a recipient’s address, assigns a unique human-readable name to it and allows users to reliably send funds to that name across multiple chains.
There were fun, weird and whacky things too: a six-foot-one woman in 4-inch platform heels who confessed to being completely clueless about Ethereum but loved the attention she got for her height; a dogecoin-themed Cybertruck and McLaren, both rumored to belong to Paller; at least three robots, including a canine robot from Coinbase that turned out be a smash hit with the kids; and the colorful Eva Blaisdell or “Lady Rocket,” who wants to put the first bitcoin wallet on the moon.
Upon reflecting on the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership debacle after ETH Denver, my position is that the drama, while resulting from legitimate concerns, is more of a distraction than anything else. Ideas are flowing, builders are executing, and the crypto curious still find the platform fascinating.
I tend to roll my eyes every time Miyaguchi uses her infinite garden analogy, which I believe is just a euphemism for being a jack of all trades and a master of none, but she nailed it with a different analogy that describes the current state of Ethereum.
“Culture endures far beyond market cycles, sustains us through winter, and propels us through spring,” Miyaguchi said.
I think she’s right, Ethereum will endure, even if it won’t be in the form of an infinite garden.
Source: Bitcoin
