ETH Amsterdam — Hats hits the road
Seven years ago, Amsterdam hosted one of the first ever international Ethereum conferences. One of our team members, Shay Zluf, was a keynote speaker at that event, presenting in front of all those in attendance — all 20 of them.
My, how the times have changed!
Fast forward to last month and Amsterdam was overtaken by thousands of people from hundreds of crypto projects. Running from April 18th to 25th, all day and all night, events were taking place in all kinds of venues, all over the city. People packed into conference halls, offices, bars and boats, most racing from one place to another to keep up with the opportunity of the moment.
For Hats, this was a watershed moment and an extraordinary experience.
On the team front, being in Amsterdam brought us together like never before. Over the last year plus we have been collaborating online, our connection limited to pixels and voices. Suddenly eight core team members were sharing an apartment, going to event after event, and partying until the wee hours.
On the project front, we were able to connect with dozens of reps from other projects. We tested our messages, learnt from others in the DeFi space, and, in the process, validated that we have a unique and attractive niche offering within the security ecosystem.
About EthAmsterdam
The event hosts, DevConnect, billed it as “a collaborative Ethereum week, built by and for everyone.” This intention was spot on and fully realized.
Each day at EthAmsterdam boasted numerous events ranging from dev-centered hackathons, to security specific conferences, to all night parties. No matter your role in the Ethereum ecosystem, there were countless opportunities to learn, connect, and contribute to the evolution of the space.
At the heart of EthAmsterdam was a co-working space that needed to be seen to be believed. The Devconnect team turned the old stock exchange, Beurs van Berlage, into an out-of-this-world hub for people to meet, co-create, and spark new possibilities. Some of our team members turned this space into a second home throughout our stay, even staying overnight when the hackathon kicked in! In fact, Yehonatan Levi, one of our lead devs, won a significant prize for his efforts and found it super hard to leave when the event came to an end.
Meanwhile, all around Amsterdam, one-off and multiple-day events were taking place. We had team members attend events ranging from:
- Best practices in DAO Governance.
- A Solidity summit focused on design and tooling.
- Layer 2 integration.
- Philosophical events such as Schelling Point.
- Personal and team wellbeing within Web3.
- Secureum TrustX, a security event we sponsored.
- And many, many more.
Our Awesome Team
One of the awesome aspects of this experience was learning about the particular gifts of our team. We discovered we have stars who are skilled at creating connections with people from across the Ethereum ecosystem.
Given our tech-dev team has a wealth of experience and high level expertise, they were able to jam it out with other talented people in the field. In the process, they created connections with many talented people, both learning from them and sparking possibilities for an expansion of our talent pool into the future.
Our gamification vault proved a hit with security professionals with many signing on to participate. This will help swell the number of active security experts in the Hats Finance network, further bolstering our project’s objectives.
All our team members proved themselves to be adept communicators of the core project messages. In the process we found we truly have a unique offering. To the best of our knowledge we are operating in uncharted territory being the only project to:
- Offer DeFi projects and their communities the opportunity to invest in their security through staking and gaining guaranteed, high-level yields.
- Enable security professionals the opportunity to gain equitable, high-level returns while safeguarding their anonymity.
- Facilitate direct communication and safeguarded vulnerability disclosure between security professionals and projects without the need for a middle man through our committee tools.
We were also able to engage in rigorous planning and dialogue about our future. This enabled us to identify challenges and opportunities and put Hats in an even more powerful position to go from strength to strength throughout the remainder of 2022.
Looking Forward
With the great outcomes of this experience, we are highly motivated to continue bringing the team together at regular intervals. Over the coming times you will hear news about where and when we will next be gathering. Hopefully, we will see you there!
