Devconnect Buenos Aires, Invisible Garden Residency, and winning at ETHGlobal Hackathon

After attending last year's amazing Devcon I knew that I would be attending this year's Devconnect. I was much better prepared this time around, and had planned to do some form of residency before the gathering itself. Last year there were several great residencies in Chiang Mai before Devcon which I was bummed out that I had missed out on. Lastly, I had decided to attend my first real life hackathon at ETHGlobal.

I looked at a couple residencies, including Edge City, Funding the Commons, and Invisible Garden (IG). Invisible Garden seemed like the most dev-focused of all three, so I applied and was accepted.

Invisible Garden

After ~30 hours of flying from Vancouver, I finally arrived in Buenos Aires on October 27 and went straight to the IG venue in the heart of Palermo. Over the next three weeks, we had daily lectures by a number of mentors on a variety of zero-knowledge subjects, data analysis, crypto protocols, etc. There were a bunch of social gatherings also scheduled both within IG and with other groups in Buenos Aires that made the networking aspect of the residency quite valuable to me. I met a ton of interesting people and made lifelong friends for years to come. I opted to get my own apartment but dorm-style accommodation was also available to people who needed them to bring down the cost barrier.

This was the second year of IG and from what I gathered from repeat participants they somewhat preferred the one the year before. I think a lot of it had to do with the choice of location. In Chiang Mai IG was for six weeks with a proper 24/7 co-work, but in Buenos Aires given the elevated prices the program was only for 3 weeks and smaller given that Argentina is much harder to get to and into than Thailand.

Nonetheless, I think it was a worthwhile endeavor for me and the main value was meeting the other builders in web3 which I am sure I will continue to run into and maybe even work alongside.

For the final projects, my team built a ZK-version of the classic rock-paper-scissors game. Nothing ground breaking about the game itself, but ZK tech is evolving at a rapid pace and I wanted to try my hands at a ZK implementation of something I am familiar with. The ZK circuit is written in Noir which I found pleasant with a fairly smooth developer experience. Overall, it was a nice learning experience to build something familiar using new tech.

Devconnect

Devcon is a top-down gathering where the Ethereum Foundation (EF) does most of the planning. Devconnect in contrast in usually a bottom-up loose collaboration where the EF provides a space but the vast majority of events are community organized. This year it was a bit different with the ETH Day organized which I think as result of the latest much-needed shakeup at the EF and orienting itself to be more product and market focused.

I attended a lot of side events, including DSS, FtC Day, Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress, and Sub0. You can find most of the talks online. The real value of attending in person is networking and soaking the incredible energy of other like-minded attendees.

I have to say I enjoyed Devcon quite a bit more last year. I think I found the structure of Devcon and quality of talks higher last year, and maybe it was my volunteering experience that made it so much better. In Bangkok also it was far easier to make it to the events given the general proximity of venues and ease of getting around, but in Buenos Aires it was much harder to go from one event to another one which usually required almost an hour-long travel.

One particular event I really enjoyed was meeting all the friendly faces at Kernel Community. I was part of KB11 and really enjoyed meeting other fellows from all cohorts.

ETHGlobal

I have long wanted to attend an in-person hackathon. When I used to work as a corporate drone, there was a blanket ban on any form of participation in outside activities which is one of the main reasons I don't think I can ever work a corporate job in tradfi again. I couldn't write a blog, contribute to open source project, or participate in community events even as myself, not representing my employer. It has been a breadth of fresh air to be able to participate in community events and go deep in open source projects and even make a couple myself.

ETHGlobal is normally right after the main Ethereum conferences and runs for just about two days giving just about 36 hours to hack something together. You are meant to build during those 36 hours to either become a finalist (top 10 projects) or win some prizes from the sponsors.

After I arrived at the venue, initially I was quite taken back because I realized that many people had showed up having worked on their projects beforehand. For instance a couple people showed up with hardware which clearly had taken them at least weeks to put together. Recognizing this, I realized there is no room to experiment with new tech if I want to have a shot at winning. I took a look at the list of sponsors and narrowed down which tracks I can build with.

I am a huge fan of crypto payments, so after some planning, I figured combining Privy + Circle I can make some form of gas-sponsored payment app via one of my favorite EIPs, EIP-7702 that went live earlier this year in Pectra. Crypto has a huge UI/UX problem and a higher barrier to entry for most people. When it comes to payments, one of the major issues is that you need some form of native token to spend what you already have. This is an unnatural experience, to say the least. It is like you wanting to spending your USD, but somehow you're required to also have some Euros if you want to spend it. It doesn't make sense to the average user and before Pectra gas sponsorship was a lot more difficult than it is now.

Thus, my idea was to build a gas-sponsored payment system using USDC where your stablecoin is, you can spend it on any other chain, including Circle's Arc, seamlessly and without needing any native token.

After two back-to-back all-nighters of solo hacking, I finished ArcBeam and presented it to both the judging panel and the sponsor teams themselves.

There was a six-hour gap between when you submit your projects and when the closing ceremony happens. After I took a two-hour power nap, I started going around and connecting with other hackers to meet them and see what they've been up to. I love the creativity and grit of the people I met. The energy is the room is simply infectious. This is what happens when the corporate horse blinders are not in place and souls haven't been crushed into obedience in bullshit HR training sessions and corporate bureaucracy. Just watch the projects presented during the closing ceremony and that should give a fair feeling for it. One of my favorite things I didn't know is that you were encouraged (via an additional prize) to make as much noise as possible if your project won. It was hilarious to watch sleep-deprived hackers yell at the top of their lungs which got progressively louder as the closing ceremony went on.

I did win prizes from both of the sponsors I had targeted, which felt amazing at the moment. I feel like the energy of the other people I was hacking alongside had given me extra motivation to push through and get something viable going in the 36 hours that I had.

You can watch all the workshops and closing ceremonies on the ETHGlobal YouTube channel.

Buenos Aires

I've stayed back in Buenos Aires till my 90-day visa is up in January and will likely head to Brazil to kick back on a beach and surf a bit. Argentian has a lot to offer and I think I'll be back to experience the rest of the country, most certainly Patagonia. That said, for now I have a lot of work on my plate and Buenos Aires has been fairly pleasant, so I'm enjoying it. It is a country that seems to still be in semi-crisis mode, with signs for 20-30% discounts on cash payments everywhere. Crypto payments are fairly commonplace. Inflation that used to be 200-300% per year is now down to 10-30%. That said, for a country that has a GDP per capita of ~ 14k USD, it is more expensive than the vast majority of European countries. Without getting too deep into the politics of it, it is an unsustainable situation where the government has propped up the peso to keep the price of its imports under control and effectively subside the cost of living. I don't think that's sustainable situation with the peso overvalued by at least 2x in my opinion, but that's a deeper conversation for another time.