EthCC was a culture & tech festival of insane magnitude & depth. Perhaps the most diverse participation I have ever witnessed at such a gathering as a longstanding member of the Ethereum community- the meeting erupted into physically sprawling breakout rooms around Brussels in a way reminiscent of the darkest yet most online hours of the pandemic.
Many called for less “fragmentation” of the community by hosting less side events. But personally, I don’t believe that more events with more variety is a net negative in the same way you could argue that bridging UX or centralized sequencing sucks because of X or Y. This is the infinite garden after all, and it wouldn’t be so if there wasn’t almost something for everyone, or at least the freedom to create whatever the hell you want (whether that’s an app, or an IRL experience).
The question on my mind was chiefly;
“Is this the beginning of something truly huge & world beating?… Or the frothy point of a local maxima?”
I still don’t believe I found the answer. Of course, the optimist in me wants to recognize a supercycle, but I’m also beaten up by the previous times such a mindset cost me everything & sent me to zero.
It’s hard to imagine that free drinks at large venues with popular DJs in the capital of the EU is sustainable, but I’m hopeful that the influx of newcomers to the space will help us to continue growing the pie in a non-extractive way.
The announcement of the next EthCC taking place in Cannes was truly a surprise to me. We should be focused on giving new entrants fun & meaningful things to do onchain that can positively impact the way we interact with the internet and what that means for the trajectory of our species, not circle jerking at expensive parties & celebrating exit liquidity.
Study infinite games, and long live freedom dammit!
Fresh off the hot changelog
Despite attending more than 25 events in 4 days - our team managed to deliver v2 of our product during the event & we created fun markets about EthCC. Particularly things like “Will there be an orgy?” or “Will David & Cami’s wedding be legitimate?” went down really well.
We also had some live football betting during the Euro 2024 semi finals, as Ethereans flocked into nearby bars to spectate the action, which was extraordinary fun!
For the first time since we went live, odds on Limitless achieving $10M volume in the first year starting spiking. This is a very interesting market created by one of our community members on Warpcast!
It was also interesting to see the Degen community responding in real time to teasers & hints about the economics of Season 6, which went live last week. This helped us to build an accurate picture of what was coming next as a community, producing valuable insights & showing the power of prediction markets.
Having boots on the ground & talking to users was refreshing. Most seemed to know what prediction markets are, and some showed eagerness to participate. We talked at length about their pain points, gathered feedback on the current state of the product, and aggressively validated / invalidated some of the assumptions we had in the pipeline.
We decided that whilst conferences can be useful, we should make a small number of concentrated bets each year & prepare extremely well for those. So you most likely won’t find us on the road again until Devcon, where we plan to run some intriguing experiments!
The user response so far to EthCC & the v2 launch has been promising. We have seen:
+110% in weekly active users (396 vs 189)
+100% in amount of trades (42 vs 21)
+40% in traders in July compared to June (24 vs 17)
+25% to average session length (4min vs 3min)
v2 itself is a culmination of features we have been delivering recently. Multi-token support was introduced to the platform, every market link renders as a trade frame on Warpcast, & we completed a full redesign of the entire platform to give you a bolder, more unique experience that blends brutal old web with modern finance & web3. Catch up with the full changelog here & stay tuned for what is coming next.