People's Choice | Joshua Lapidus - Azos Labs

Howdy. Uh, and welcome to the third annual edition of the people's choice. This is a segment where, uh, we put the decision to the spork voters on on who is going to come up and present. I'm going to be very brief because we've got a few lightning talks. Um we split the segment into uh two different sections.

The first 20 minutes is going to be our lightning talks and then we're going to change the people's choice slightly um because people's choice has to do with uh elections and we have a spork election that is happening right now. The snapshot uh was earlier today. Uh the end of the election I think is on the 26th. So you'll have a week hear from the candidates uh and all that stuff. um you're going to get a a chance to hear from them in a little bit and if we've got time uh you can grill them with questions.

Okay. Uh let's dive right into the the first lightning talk. Uh Adam, we'll let you just take it away.

Thank you.

Thanks. Woo. Let's go. What is broken with Dows? What the [ __ ] is broken with Dows?

We loved Dows. A few years ago at ETH Denver, we were literally all walking around, what DAO are you starting? You want to join my DAO? We were so excited about Dows. And uh what's broken with Dows is the laws and regulations about how you distribute ownership and equity, right?

So in the United States and Europe and most of the world, you're not allowed to just make a bunch of tokens that represent ownership in your organization and then sell them. You're not allowed to do it. So, every DAO forever has been using these workarounds, pretending to be a nonprofit, being a nonprofit, having a nonprofit and a for-profit, having the tokens over here, but the DAO over here, using Cayman Foundations and Marshall Islands entities and all these different things so that you can be a DAO, and there's kind of a way to make money, but we're not allowed to pay you dividends. We're not allowed to just give you ownership rights like every other company in the history of the world. Um, and so we deal with it by doing these, you know, these uh these loopholes, these gray areas.

The way to fix this is by actually fixing securities laws, right? We need to actually change the way the SEC works in the United States so that organizations are allowed to distribute equity through tokens and not follow all these ownorous, ridiculous rules and regulations. What's broken about stable coins, right? Why does stable coins suck today? Because you give your money to the stable coin issuer, they take your money, they invest it, and they keep all the interest in the returns.

It's ridiculous. USDT and Circle take your money, put it into US treasuries or other things, get paid 4% interest, and you get none of it. It's supposed to be your dollars. You get none of the interest, they get all the interest. And so, how do we get around that today?

Well, there are these stable coins where you're you can pay interest, but then you have to KYC if you want to hold it or only institutions are allowed to hold it. Or Coinbase says if you keep the Circle token in your Coinbase account, well, now we'll pay you a marketing reward that acts like interest. It acts like yield, but it's not interest. You won't get that interest if the coin is anywhere else, if it's in your real crypto wallet. And so, basically, there's no way for people to make uh money off of uh their interest on their stable coins.

So, how do we fix that? Well, right now the government in the United States that was supposedly fixing stable coins put it into the Stables Act that stable coins are not allowed to pay interest. Who do we think that benefits? It benefits Circle. It benefits Tether.

It benefits the US banks because the banks are allowed to pay you interest and stable coins are not. This law that was supposed to be like bringing stable coins to the world just ruined stable coins for the world or at least in the United States. What's broken with crypto taxes, right? We all seem like, oh, we're okay. We're allowed to own crypto.

We pay our taxes on it. If you move your crypto from one wallet to your other wallet, you have to pay capital gains taxes on how that token, stable coin or crypto token, has varied in value between your one wallet and the other wallet. If you've been using Ethereum as the currency, the money that drives your business and now you have Ethereum moving between you and your customers, every single transaction is a capital gains transaction that you have to report to the IRS. And so we build these software tools and every single person in crypto, every organization has thousands and thousands and thousands of transactions. even if you're not doing much business, you have to calculate all these capital gains and capital losses and pay taxes as if these were investment assets, even though they're money assets.

We have to actually fix these rules with the IRS, not just find clever ways of following the rules that suck. I'm here to tell you that I am part of the problem. I help organizations register legal entities in the Marshall Islands where we have slightly better rules for crypto. And then those organizations don't let Americans participate in their business. Right?

If they're doing any of these interesting things, they say, "We're going to geoblock America. We're just going to pretend America doesn't exist because they have bad laws." Right? I'm also here to tell you that I'm part of the solution because I work with the Marshall Islands on innovating in crypto laws and regulations to start fixing the problem. What I really want to find are more people, more organizations that don't just want to find peacemail solutions, but want to actually find out how do we fix these problems?

What's the true solution to the [ __ ] crypto legal and regulatory environment that we live in today that's actually fixing things? Uh my name is Adam Miller. I work at Maido. Find me on X at0x thriller. Thank you.

Thanks, Adam. All right. Next, uh, a longtime friend and steward of ETH Denver, uh, Jonathan Palmer, come on up. Amazing. Thank you, Joshua.

So, lightning talk background. Uh what I want to talk about today is uh building consumer applications. Um not to show my product but I build a carars app uh carstars.io and it's a consumer app that enables uh vehicle enthusiasts to create identities for these assets enabling DeFi and other things on top of them. Uh I didn't come here to show my product though.

I think uh what I came here to share was basically the state of today versus where we've come from and the ability to actually provide real value to real humans. Uh I initially found out about Ethereum about 9 or 10 years ago and got involved heavily in the space. And what was interesting was I quickly found out that all of this technology was basically non-existent vaporware just bunch of white papers. And it's basically taken this entire time for us to be able to build the software that actually enables some of the vision that we currently uh that we did have back in the day. I think the arc of trajectory with a lot of the people that I've known in the space for this time is that kind of facing a little bit of a a trough of disillusionment about the space.

And I'm here to kind of speak a little bit of hope from my perspective about where we currently are and what the possibilities look like for the future. I think uh like I said the technology has matured over the last 10 years to the point where we can actually do these things with account abstraction with a variety of different techniques to be able to create apps that don't require a lot of the background information that we have and really focus on the actual value proposition that we're proposing that these humans want to use our application for. Uh the second kind of factor in this technology arc is obviously AI is playing a significant role in uh the last two years or so specifically in software development and I'm sure all of you guys are following openclaw and a bunch of the innovations with the ability to spin out software strictly from prompts with very little domain expertise in the software space. And I think these these kind of convergences of both web3 technology and AI technology empowers uh a new class of builder. So in the past you had to be a technologist you had to have a lot of experience and knowledge to be able to create these types of things.

And it uh similar to other technological evolutions whether it be computer AED design or you know video editing or different things like this these are all primarily democratization tools. so that the barriers they take down the barriers for someone with an idea or something they want to express to be able to create those things uh much more seamlessly and fluidly. I think uh the current status of of where we're at today, a lot of developers probably in this room are questioning, you know, what is the role of a developer, a lot of conversations happening around that. But I would really lean into everybody having a builder mentality is going to succeed in the future. If you have ambitions, if you have a vision, and you have a little bit of determination, the barriers to actually manifesting physical products that solve real needs that you recognize, you can bring them to market super efficiently.

And I think this is going to create a really explosion of consumer applications that are too small to for big tech to focus on, but are utilizing the fundamental principles of web 3 in ways that humans really value. I think uh anybody who's on the internet right now recognizes the slop uh hitting all of the channels at scale and I think that this is really a pivotal kind of moment for the internet. I know we talk about web 3 but this is the internet like we break it down a lot of times but it's really humans experience and connections with community through this technology and fundamentally I believe that web 3 is community tech. This is about humans. It's human technology and all of the barriers are currently dropping at a rapid rate to the point where the proliferation of all of these types of community tools.

Think every in the first era of the web all of these communities that had a forum that had these places to engage with other like-minded you know individuals. These I think are going to start to uh implement web 3 principles because of the identity reputation all of these primitives that we have at our dis at a disposal are going to become table stakes for real communities having trust on the internet. So the the vision that I have for today is one of excitement and hope and really expectation to see some amazing breakthroughs in applications that real people use and uh facilitated by all of the advancements in technology.

Thanks Jonathan. All right, next up we have Matt from Hydrax. Round of applause. Let's do it.

Hey guys, my name is Matt and I'm from Hydrax. How are you guys doing today?

Good. Good. All right. So, um I was told to deliver a spicy talk. So, I have a very short uh reflection on the AI space.

So, um firstly, I'm a liquidity buff. This is outside my uh domain of expertise, so to say, but they can't stop me from thinking about this. Everyone's very concerned about AI and where it's going to go and is it going to displace us? And I think that we're obviously on that path, right? We're creating intelligent machines that are more intelligent than we.

But what does the road look like there? I've noticed from being in crypto since 2017 that people always overvalue what they have in this moment and they always discount what the future will provide. Uh this is an economic principle uh sometimes known as preference for now and what we have right now with large language models. This is an incredible development. It's an architectural development towards the vision of AGI.

But I don't believe that it's the architectural advancement that gets us all the way there. And the reason behind that is because I believe that reasoning um is fundamentally not predictive. I believe that reasoning is fundamentally structural. And I believe that reasoning um fundamentally requires symbolic AI, not uh connectionist theory, right, with LLM and predictive theory. And so my and so this is nothing new actually this is very old um until 1986 I believe the symbolists they were the people who were saying we need to create structural um intelligent systems that can reason not systems that jump to a conclusion not some intelligent autocomplete um and openclaw and these developments they're fantastic they're beautiful right they're steps in that direction um but but we lost something and we need to go We need to think about structurally how can we find our way towards reasoning systems in my opinion.

So while I am concerned about the future of uh you know what what labor and what work and I'm concerned obviously about some of the impacts that artificial intelligence will have on people. I'm a little bit more laid-back than most people because I think we still have one maybe even two architectural advancements um that we need to fully realize that state where AI displaces humans. I have one conceptual model here that I I took from the crypto space and this is why I have this opinion. I noticed that uh bare markets, they always produce the tech that kind of fuels the next bull market. And you have this um this cycle where what gets built in the bare markets creates the hype which creates the interest which creates higher token prices which attracts new attention which attracts better talent.

Um and AI has these cycles too. Uh, I think I think these cycles have been going on since the 1950s and I think it has a cyclical nature. Um, that's very similar to crypto. So, again, name's Matt Pharaoh. Uh, and that was my short spicy reflection on the state of AI.

Thank you, Joshua. Thank you. Oh, forgot my laptop. Uh, and last uh for our lightning talks, uh, Jacob from Coinfellow. Yeah,

that's for you.

Hello everybody.

We will do a technical setup before I roast you all. Hello everyone. Uh so let's uh let's kick this off. Um how many of you claimed the ETH Denver Buffybot PO app? We have like not enough of those.

Uh you should all go and claim the ETH Denver uh PO app. Uh Buffybot. You can go to this QR code or you can go to app.eenver.com.

chat with chat with Buffybot and it will uh introduce you to the concept of this PO app. This PO app is not just uh just a cool PO app. Um it is part of encouraging people to try what we are hoping will be a proof of concept to inspire builders at East Denver to build the next generation of user experiences that will help onboard people into Ethereum. And uh so part of why I say that is um so my background I come from MetaMask. I've spent many many years uh working on wallette tech and um in the wallet space and I think the reality is uh today we we're faced with a situation where the vast majority of us are either uh uh many people in our ecosystem are pivoting to institutional capital uh prices may be they were going up uh they're not so much right now uh but uh or uh we are building the same thing that we've we've been building for for many moons.

Um there is an opportunity right now with Agentic user experiences to remove the DAP from the user experience and to make something that feels much more native to how people use the internet. Uh the DAP itself was a rapid stance band-aid that we used to onboard people to smart contracts. we have the opportunity with user agents and and what we've been doing in this uh proof of concept that that we've shown from CoinFellow uh here at ETH Denver is that with uh with uh AI agents we we've built an AI agent that can uh do any onchain action a generalpurpose agent it can do any action on behalf of the user or automate any action so anything that you can do in DeFi um any smart contract that you want to interact with this agent will give you access to that it will allow ow you to uh have your laptop go to sleep. Um and um uh and um it will uh it it is um creating an entirely new way to use smart contracts. Uh for for us this is a new beginning.

Um we've built this one general purpose agent. We're trying to work with developers to build many agents. Um our agent can interact with other agents using 8004. If you haven't uh learned about 8004, it is a registry for agents to uh to register themselves uh for other agents and to uh transact with each other through microp payments. Um we think this is a super awesome opportunity to build an entire new agentic economy.

Um we are uh quite fellow. I um I'm gonna uh I'll leave it there.

Not my best.

That's all right. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you.

Okay.

Oh jeez.

All right. Hang on. We do have a What is Heat. Heat. nonsense that's going on.

And right now, we don't really have time for that anymore. It's time for crypto to grow up. And I am going to uh put my money where my mouth is and vote for someone I feel like that really deserves it. But I did want to get up here and say hello. My name is Brady McKenna.

I've actually been here for every almost every ETH Denver. and I used to help run the maker space. And I am just I this this place actually has saved my life. And I I don't have enough time to actually go in and explain why. But I just want to let you know that this is one of those special places with a lot of special people and some of my best friends.

Some I see in the crowd right here. And I just wanted to say thank you all for letting me speak for a moment. But I I am actually going to withdraw my application for the board of stewards. But I did want to it's it's uh it's because I actually love all of you and I feel like someone else deserves it more than I. So, um thank you all and I'm going to keep it pretty short, but if you do want to chat and uh learn, I am a mentor.

I am a teacher and I am happy to uh let you pick my brain, dive in, build apps, and tell me what you're building. And uh yeah, that's about it from me. Uh, my name is Brady and I hope you all have a great day. You'll probably see me performing music though, uh, because if you remember the old maker space at uh, the sports castle, that was my jam and it still is and you'll probably see me jamming.

Thank you. Okay. Uh, I found my statement. the uh second well I guess first candidate uh Mitch Valentine. Listen up Sporkdow.

I should do this in his voice, right? Listen up Sporkd. I'm here to tell you why Mitch Valentine is exactly who we need on the board of stewards. Oh, this is in third person. Okay, I guess I'm giving this this is not an endorsement from the person overseeing this.

This I'm reading a statement. Mitch is a true Genesis OG. He's been at every single ETH Denver since the doors first opened back in 2018. He's witnessed our entire evolution from a scrappy castle hackathon into a global cooperative. And he holds that vital institutional memory in his bones.

But Mitch isn't just a legacy member. He's an execution machine. As our merch steward for 2024 and 25, he was deep in the trenches managing the complex logistics and revenue streams that keep this ship sailing. He knows the operational plumbing of this DAO as well as anyone. As a Buffcorn Ventures founder, uh he's a founder, he's one of the port portfolio companies.

He's also proven that web 3 can drive realworld impact for Colorado companies. He knows the founders's journey because he's walking it every day. Mitch is the bridge between our big tent soul and the strategic rigor we need to scale for a board that actually delivers. Vote Mitch Valentine. And that ends the quote from Mitch Valentine.

Thank you, Mitch. Uh, okay. Uh, who would like to go next? welcome to the stage. Dan,

hello everybody. Hello. Hello. Okay, got to get used to my voice. Uh, my name is Dan Hendrickson.

I'm the founder of a company called Broken Reality. I'm a developer, designer, and an artist. Uh, I am a self-taught professional who's been building websites and apps for 20 plus years. And in by some stroke of luck, I found myself at ETH Denver in 2024. And it it really changed my life.

It changed my attitude and it changed the way I build. And the spirit of this place is immensely magical. With that said, one of the things that I think is my duty is to actually help builders build, help them ship, and do everything I can to make them successful. So, having gone through a few years of ETH Denver, gain their support, and what I've really dreamed to do is essentially pay it forward, make sure that the next generation of builders has everything that they need, that they are confident, and that they know where they're headed. So, my name is Dan Hendrickson.

I um very grateful to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks, Dan.

Do we have any other candidates in the audience? Come on up,

sir.

All right.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Um, my name is Justin Taylor. Um, I'm a full stack blockchain engineer with over nine plus years experience.

I've been around since the birth of Ethereum. Um, I really I' I've been building here for the past I would say four years and uh participating in all the hackathons, buildathons. Um, I can I contribute to open source protocols uh for many apps uh Coinbase base other other projects in here driven so forth and I really really have a passion for teaching and building. So when I came in here and I've seen with the judges and everything kind of coming in went to the board meetings um I'd like to bring some of my skills across the table to be a judge one year instead of partaking in the hackathons give that technical feel in the backgrounds um anywhere I can really help really around the event uh with the staff and anybody that's on the board um and this is my happy place you know my wife's over there and uh I get to escape every week once or for a full week every year and just come down here and be surrounded by all these amazing builders and people and this year I feel the it's smaller and the energy is way better though and I feel like the builder energy is just is just there. Um and when I met with Jesse he and talked to him he was saying the same thing.

So um and uh I really want to help with sponsors as well. So I have a lot of connections to other companies and sponsors that I think that you know as we discussed it was you know we can definitely get a little better on um and so I have many areas of expertise and I'd like to be you know use them in any way to help the sport D grow and uh get bigger and bigger and keep this thing going every year. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Do we have any other candidates here?

I know one is coming here from another side event that he's hosting, Kaba Joseph. We'll see if he makes it. Um, and then we've got uh John Porer, Justin Moscowitz, and Hannah Arasco Loud who are at an an event in the other building, so they might be able to stop by uh to give a candidate statement or answer questions. In the meantime, Dave, would you like to say a few words? Buy me like two minutes.

Uh, welcome to stage, Dave. Uh, one of our board members.

Well, I'm just helping Joshua out. But yeah, I I was very uh inspired to run for the board a couple years ago being a bit biddler and I'm really pumped that the bidders are the ones that are coming up and in and running. Um, it's, you know, putting the bidding the middle was kind of like I I wanted, that's something that I tried to champion this year. Um, I got a lot of steps in last year going between the middle hub and the the main floor. So, my steps are down this year, but conversations are up.

And I love the ability to run into people five times in a day. Sometimes you just nod at them. sometimes you share something cool. So, uh I I I'm really glad that everybody's here enjoying this. And again, um I am personally very excited to see what comes out of the Biddle this year.

We're obviously in a new era and the bidders are always on the cutting edge of tech and now we've got better tooling. So, um I I don't know. I I'm I'm really excited to see and and these are the years where the bidders really step up. you know, it's it's less distractions. Your own creativity comes through more in these years instead of kind of and there's nothing wrong with surfing a big wave, but you know, we're having to paddle a little bit harder this year.

So, that's where the good stuff comes. So, happy to answer any questions if anybody has questions. So, oh

okay. So, what are some of the challenges that the board has worked on over the last year? Um, you know, from my personal perspective, just, you know, like I was helping with I was a bidd last year and getting all the payments out, you know, getting people, you know, the bidders who won money, you know, like a lot of them hadn't done KYC, which is a requirement. So, that's something that wasn't automated. And so, that was a lot of hours to do for me, like personally.

And you know, like I I think you know, there's no such thing as per perfection. And like the DAO, like that was an example where we I'd gotten 80% of the the bounties out, but like the 20% are obviously upset. And so we iterated over months to get them through the process. And again, this is an experiment, you know, like every company or venture evolves. Is it every year?

Is it every five years? Is it every seven years? and we've been pretty consistent and I think that's being a new board member like I see how much hard work has gone into this and the evolution and it's you know people who are putting this on are the prof like legitimately professionals in this events industry. So I think this year, you know, like the the calendar was full and I think, you know, everybody's shifted to AI. So that was the big challenge and we couldn't predict it.

So we but we got it. Uh would the candidate would the candidates like to come back up and uh answer some questions? Yeah, all of you at once. Then you can you can hand the microphone back and forth.

Okay.

Oh, cool. Did we lose someone?

Yeah.

You withdrew. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Okay, I would like to know from your perspective, uh, okay, let's start with an easy one. Uh, which installation of Eat Denver was your favorite? Like what year and why? And and which one was your least favorite and why?

Oh, man. All right. The e Yeah, the um in 24 it was my first experience at the arcade. Um, that was super exciting. Uh, I found out on the plane ride into Denver that, uh, I made it to the arcade with the product that I had built.

And I almost jumped out of my seat, but I was on an airplane, so that wasn't a great idea. Anyway, um, that was one of the coolest things uh that that I experienced on my way to eat Denver. And that installation was was just, you know, highowered, big screens, great experience, and uh that was awesome to be a part of. Um, let's see. The least favorite.

I think it's it wouldn't be an installation. I think it would just be getting used to the dry Colorado air. Uh, as a guy from the East Coast, that threw me off guard and so that I had to adapt. But aside from that, man, this place is awesome.

I don't know how I'm going to follow that, but uh uh so I would say my favorite uh e my favorite Ember event for me um was I I I think it was 2023 or 2024, but it was when uh I got done building and it was really late night and surprise, here comes Palthia, right? And it was fantastic. It was awesome to be there like seem jam live. It just felt like it was more of a a connection versus a security push back concert. You know, they came off.

I I still have my E Denver badge with all their signatures on it. I was like, "Oh, here's a Sharpie, man. Slide this." Right. Getting photos.

Um I love the I'm a big TCG, you know, player, Pokemon nerd. Pokemon shoes, you know, everything. So, uh when you had all the Pokemon matches, everything kind of going there was was fantastic. Um, I think that uh I think one of my least favorite things that I would say um about that time was and I kind of like a little bit more that's going on with this build, the more confined build that you were just speaking about is that there's not a the DJ was fine with the music uh blaring when we were coding with tons of devs around. Um but if it wasn't your flavor or anything, you know, you're wearing headphones or it was really bassy.

Uh and so I know that I like to jam the heavy metal when I'm coding in certain things. Uh but uh yeah, I would say that was it. Bye.

Okay, next question. Those are good answers, guys. Um if there was one thing that you would like the voters to remember about your candidacy for the board of stewards, what is what is like one hallmark change as a board member that you would try to make over ETH Denver for for uh 2027? I think one of the hallmark changes or reminders in this space is that the space exists solely because of the builders, the people that put their blood, sweat, and tears into their products. And that focus, you know, that needs more attention.

You know, there's there's an immense amount of brain power just over there in that room actually. and so many AI agents running at the same time simultaneously of folks really trying to innovate. It's it's pure art and creativity happening in real time. And if you think like all the sponsorships and all the all the cool people that are here, they're all surrounding the builders. So if if anything, don't forget to focus on those folks who are actually putting in that effort and making this what it is.

Um, I think if uh if I got on the board, one of the things I really would bring to the table is my build expertise. Um, I think I'd be a very very good strong mentor, very good technical judge. Um, and I've I've put a lot of uh background into open source docs. I made the first hybrid web mini app when the mini apps came out from Coinbase. Uh, things like that.

So um and one of the other things that I really would like to see too a little bit more is a little bit on the uh sponsor sides and certain other objects um I I know that we we have a lot of great uh companies like Driven Labo and others and really great um contributors that are coming in and I think it's absolutely fantastic. Uh but I would be really great if we can get some of the other bigger companies to come back in give a bigger push and we all ultimately just keep making this thing bigger and bigger and growing together. Right. Um cuz if they like he said this is not going anywhere next year and if it does I don't know. I guess we got to host a private event because it still has to happen for me man.

This is my happy place. So

it's not going anywhere. There's going to be

uh does anyone in the audience have a question?

I don't want to hog all the questions. Come on. We got a packed house here. Nobody's got a question. Dave, hit me with one.

All right, the question uh from Dave is how do you think we could get better participation in voting from the members of the DAO which is basically everyone in this room? So I I think uh one of the really fun things is you know in this space you find a way to incentivized through gamification and enhancing the experience like there is enough technology out there to make a charming voting techn like technology that basically would excite people and participate them and reward them. um be like beyond maybe maybe beyond like spork um you know rare collectibles for those that actually do participate and if they come back next year that is recognized like we know that you voted and we recognize that you participate you know if if in this space I believe that there's a it's it's one of the few places on earth where merit actually goes a long way and I think if you participate that's just a fine example of that.

Yeah, not much to piggy back off of uh pretty much everything he said. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but yeah, absolutely. I mean, because everybody in the crypto field, I mean, we have the attention spans and certain things going on. A new shiny object, they go left field. Um yeah, it it they all want to say, "What's in it for me?"

Right? I mean, somebody gets in, you're like, "Buy my project." Oh, well, what's in it for me? Um it's just an NFT right now. We got some utilities coming.

Um and it kind of goes back to a little bit of the conversation I did. It was great that the board I mean they all talked yesterday and I was asking about you know the wallet provider for the app. Ethereum because I've watched it change from little Wii transfers to every year and I was asking about consistency and I think that you know like also giving consistency as well on certain objects uh and certain features uh will allow the user to ultimately flow better and be able to you know go in there and get some objects. What if let's say they they casted a vote and they get rewarded some spork or if it was uh some USDC or like you mentioned an NFT and that NFT could be like a uh uh an SVT, right? It could be an SVT and it's bound to you and it's something that you just carry forever and you're proud of.

Uh a lot of people even go crazy for just a badge, right? I mean, people are crazy about their badges. You give them a nice badge and they're like, I'm in it to win it. Right. So, exactly.

That's a great answer, man. Thank you. Uh the question was in in

IRL elections you get uh a sticker that says I voted. Should there be an equivalent here? And what should that look like?

Is that the question?

It should look really shiny and cool and when people see it as they walk by they go, "What is that? And how do I get it?" And you that's all I got. Like make it look so cool that people go, "Ah, that's how do I get that?" You know, badges are a great great way to identify, you know, those that participate.

It's, you know, it's a reward. It's a prestige. It's a Yeah, I think I would want that badge, you know.

Well, yeah, because essentially it's almost like this, right? I know you're a contributor, right? I know you put in you had the you had the game, right? I mean, we know who's a builder. we know who's sporkwell.

Um, so kind of going back to it, uh, it was nice that, uh, actually it made my day the other day. uh the driven labbo team because they had the sponsor spot. got that really nice card from the memeology I think was was what it's called and the founder gifted it to me cuz I do all their code and I was like it just made my day and you know what to me like that's a status symbol that I carry you know like I'm here and I have that and no matter what that'll go with me to the grave it'll go on anything and I can proudly hold that thing and go this is you know VIP and essentially like okay well it could be that simple right you know I voted and I got a I got the card versus just a sticker or it could be an identifier on your badge that carries over to every year that you kind of go through, right? Um I think keeping that digital aspect more to it than just a sticker carries with them, right? So

yeah, I would agree. You know, the the physical component in in such a you know hyperdigital space, it it makes a lot of sense, I think.

And the reason why I say collectible is because we have the builder codes now, right? We have the new ERC standards and stuff that we're implementing. And so if we think about the builder codes and everything kind of comes, our reputation is following by the the transactions and the volume that we're doing. We're getting rewarded for that as builders from base. And I preach this all the time when I teach people to build on base.

I'm like there's there's these great incentives. So um it can all tie in to their rewards that carry on with their reputation on chain.

Good question from the audience. What was the question?

Innovation. Uh, okay. So, the question from the audience was what type of innovation, what ideas do you have about something that should change for next year?

That is a great question. I think you know, so I'll draw from some of my experience attending other conferences uh throughout my career. I think one of the things that really kept me going as a self-employed individual uh for a couple decades now is actually having attended non-technical inspirational-based sessions, like things that literally put wind in my sales. Like I I leave the room and I'm a different person. Um, there are mentors, creative mentors, technical mentors, people that have life experience that transcend beyond EIP standards and things like that.

Um, personally, that's that's that's what gets me out there. And I remember attending my first Ethereum Denver uh hungry for that. And I found it in little special places. But if you put that forward, it it increases the likelihood of people re working towards their own self actualization like it improves the way that they feel about themselves where they're headed in life and I think that that would be pretty cool.

Uh tough question cuz everything changes so fast in this game and it feels like it just keeps speeding up as a minute goes by. Next thing you know it's tomorrow it's going to be something else in this hype. Um you know I I'm not a I I believe that AI is a tool. Um, I leverage it as a tool to ultimately be a better fullstack dev myself and speed up my time, right? Why why not?

Um, I can put out things faster. I understand it. Um, but uh ultimately I'd really like to see a lot more uh I'd really like to see a lot more like kind of things that we're seeing here now. Um, as we kind of flipped it and when we were when I was talking with the base team, we look at it from the builder bringing the builders to the coins and we should be bringing the coins to the builders and we kind of see it happening around here right now with the tokenization over here. There's lots of great projects in here that are currently doing that.

Um, and so I think that, you know, if we keep our our, you know, our our our vision straight and everything else, I really want to see the builders and the traders come together because ultimately they're going to win together regardless. Uh, so not chasing no AI hype or anything else. I'd really like to see more collaboration even between some of the other um bigger companies. I know that they got, you know, more revenue in certain things than other people, but it'd be great to see a lot of this tech kind of come together and the tokenization start taking effect on IRL items in our daily lives.

Nice. Thank you.

Yeah, I had one question for you guys. Um, in terms of buffocorns, I feel like they're underutilized for governance. What are your thoughts on that? Where can we go and can we brainstorm?

Man, after my own heart.

Buffacorns for governance. Oh man,

there's two questions in there. Uh, what more could we be doing with Buffacorn's

and Princeley's governance? You know, the buffacorn is is quite a magical creature. The my my first exposure to the buffacorn kind of blew my mind. I think, you know, I love the NFT collection. You guys, if you know me, you know, uh my love for artwork and NFTTS.

I think one of the things that was promised about digital collectibles in this space is the idea of interoperability and and actually having something to do with the collectibles. Now, ha having buffacorns is is basically a way of showing support, you know, and this year, you know, I made it a point to actually grab a few extra bufforns and gift them to friends that I knew were coming. And there's so many new creative ways that you can actually leverage the artwork and and potentially the rights to this artwork so that people want to almost self-identify and push it forward in a way to where they they they truly own and believe in their Buffacorn because it's like a really like a really magical thing and it's it's pretty charming and and fun and I got to think about that a bit more. But that that's a great question. Thank you.

Okay. I mean, as a developer, um I don't want to get too technical or anything, but where my mind runs to is I think of like instant value and all these EIP standards start popping in my brain and I'm like, okay, well, if I had to take the buffer corns, um why not wrap them, you know, give them more value in other senses? Uh why not even take, oh, I'm going to mint this buffer corn. 50% goes to uh I'm just going to throw it out there because I I don't know if there's one on Polygon or not, but Morphov, right? uh it's bringing back 13 14% that can be passed down to the holders everything kind of going through there which will incentivize them to come in and actually partake and give more um and that just creates an ever growing pool even for the treasury that we have you know have for uh the sport dow itself uh because ultimately that's how we have to start thinking we're building businesses on chain and I talk about about this all the time coinbase space and I say in spaces and everything I say you know we we're building real companies on chain now so we have to approach it just like IRL and not treat it like it's fake beginner money.

We got to be serious for web two to take us serious and so leverage more fuel vault and ultimately just keep growing and the API will always return. Um there's lots of creative ways now to give value to actually incentivize them to come in and do that.

Nice. Thank you. We had a tw a question come in on Twitter. Um the suggestion has been made that ETH Denver relocate to Miami. What are your thoughts?

It's too hot in Miami, man.

I I like cool weather. I'm like an office plant. I need cool temperatures and um that's it. But I mean, Miami's cool, but

Okay. So, no, Dan would not move it.

Um well, I was born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida, so I live two hours from Miami. But, um so I would say the same thing. Um ever since I moved here, I go back home, I'm good for two days. I don't know about a week down there, man. I don't know.

It starts pulling it out of me. Um, and honestly, I live here in Colorado, so for me to take an hour drive. I mean, it's like, hey, it'll stay here because it's convenient for me, no matter where it is, I'll fly. I don't care. Uh, my wife supports it, lets me go, I'm out.

Um, but I would say I would love to see it stay here. I just feel like the energy that comes here, people around the world, the air is fresh. Um, I just feel like there's a little bit more things to do and opportunities. Um, and uh, yeah, I mean, that's again my opinion.

There's a uh, that was a trick question. Um, anything but no, we're not moving to Miami was disqualifying from the ballot.

Yeah, pretty much.

Uh, I see Justin walking around in the back. You want to come say hello?

Give us your 90 seconds on why you should be reelected. Hey, what's up guys? I'm Justin, one of the co-founders of ETH Denver. Uh, you know, basically here from before this was an event and it was just an idea. Uh John grabbed me and said, "Hey, you want to help us figure out how to host a hackathon?"

I'd had experience in esports and other events and you know was interested in blockchain but uh you know building ETH Denver was also my hackathon and uh yeah been hacking ever since and want to keep on hacking with you guys. So uh going for reelection hope hope you'll have me.

Thanks Justin. And we have another candidate that has arrived. Uh, and it is not his fault that he's late. Neither were Justin. There was running around helping make sure this thing uh runs on time.

He had a great side event. Uh, 90 sec uh two minutes to give us your uh statement.

Hey everybody, I'm Cupa Joseph. I just ran over here from the Johnson Rec Center uh where we just hosted a a dodgeball tournament. Um I've come to every ETH Denver. I've participated in the hackathon for most of them. I've run workshops at most of them.

Uh I've run camp B which is the um coding boot camp for the last two years and I've done all the curriculum for that. I've taught thousands of people Solidity. Uh more than 1% of the current stored state of Ethereum was created by calling smart contracts I wrote and uh everything I do is is about ETH Denver and about um about improving Ethereum. My ETH Denver story was uh in in 2018. I really wanted to get better at Solidity.

Um I thought it was a really cool language. I wanted to learn more about this, you know, crypto stuff. Is it real or not? I don't know. Uh so I was still a student at the time, so I skipped school for two days.

Uh I was really poor and I couldn't afford to check a bag or buy a hotel room, so I just had just a carry-on bag. And uh I slept under the sponsor booths after they left for the day uh overnight. because I I just couldn't afford a hotel room then. and learning solidity at the conference helped me get a dev job at consensus. Uh later OpenC um a bunch bunch of other companies that have come and sponsored ETH Denver uh later and that experience being able to learn from people there, learn from actual the experts that understood what was happening and grow as a person not just technically but um also socially and in many other ways uh really has given me the life that I have today.

And so everything that I do, all the volunteering with Camp Bidd um and all the other uh many events that I I run and um helping people with workshops or hackathon projects. I was a judge last year uh at the last minute. All of that is really just a way to to give back to this organization and community that has given me so much. Um there's a lot of things I want to do for ETH Denver uh if I'm selected for the board. Uh I think we need to be honest about the amount of resources that we have and which part of them are helping people and which part of them are fluff.

So you know maybe we don't need uh as large a venue as we had last year, right? And the intimacy of this year is actually its biggest success. I think that there's less people here but they're having a better time, right? Because we know what people actually like and we should we should do those things instead of uh you know promoting fluff just because we can. Uh so if that if that's kind of rings true to you, if that uh you know speaks to you in some way or connects to you in some way, please vote for Cup of Joseph for ETH Denver board.

I don't know how long that was, but

No, you're good. And actually,

uh thank you so much and I really appreciate every single contribution that each and each person makes here individually. Um it means the world to me. So thank you.

Don't don't go anywhere yet.

Okay.

Thank you for running over here to make it just in time. Uh we had a few questions that that these find candidates answered. You get a chance to do it, too. Thank you.

Um, what was the best one? Uh, oh, uh, what what was like your least favorite Eat Denver and why? And what's your your favorite one and why? Uh, and inside of that question is like what is one thing that you'd really want to change? Okay.

My my least favorite was uh 2020 because it was a super spreader event for CO and there were a lot of people waiting in line for bathrooms and then not washing their hands and it was gross. uh it was like not sanitary and I think that there's so much that goes on like in the background to make uh an event successful that isn't just the the front of the house but also like sanitary conditions making sure there's enough food and snacks for everybody like that you know there's a lot of coordination that goes on to actually make those things succeed and the people who do it are often you know not appreciated as much as they should be so um yeah I would I would make sure uh one one thing that I would change is I might uh add kickback back for tickets. Uh so and so char charge people to come and uh if you come you get the money back plus you get a share of the money from everyone who didn't come because ETH Denver has this terrible problem where we have um you know so many people say they're coming and then they don't. It makes it harder to plan. Uh there's also too many side events and they are making millions of dollars that should be contributing to the ETH Denver budget.

So there are there are side events with side sponsors happening all over the city that kind of fragment the experience. One of the reasons that ETH Denver is so much fun this year compared to last year because there's less side events. So we need to be more proactive about bringing them in. We need to have spaces that people can rent for really really cheap even if we're subsidizing it to bring everybody under one roof and and and make sure that everybody's interacting together.

Thank you, Joseph.

Thank you.

Uh okay, one last thing. Um, our chief executive steward, uh, John Peller. Uh, he ran by earlier. He had to go pick up his kids from school. He wanted me to make sure to say that.

Uh, he's also running for re-election. Uh, this concludes the 2026 people's choice. Uh, thank you all for coming. You have a very important duty to vote with your stake spork by Thursday the 26th. That right?

That sounds right. Vote before then. Uh, thank you. Now, let's uh next whatever's next.

Thanks for giving me a chance, Josh. Appreciate you.