In this issue:

• What the industry thinks of Token2049 week

• Solana’s “centralized” events vs ETH’s decentralized ethos 

• We’re launching a job board

• Builder Highlights

Our frens at ETHMilan are putting together an incredible 2-day event this week. They’re experienced organizers with great connections in crypto.

If you’d like a free ticket, respond to this email!

Our industry is in a love-hate relationship with Token 2049 week

With 700+ side events last week, crypto companies pulled in some big names to compete for attention:

• Steve Aoki on Wednesday

• Diplo on Thursday

• Mario Nafwal’s private penthouse party that got shutdown by the police

• Iggy Azalea’s Motherland Rodeo party on Friday

❤️ The Love

Crypto is growing and what was once seen as an institutional event is now an event for virtually every archetype in crypto: traders, angels, developers, founders, and celebrities.

We should celebrate the volume, the diversity, and the attempt to onboard that one billion people.

💔 The Hate

There’s too many events, the ROI is low, and we should be here for the tech, not the parties. 

The low ROI is sadly true for most companies. Without a proper marketing strategy, many events risk low attendance, resulting in Twitter posts showcasing empty rooms. Large-scale events are not suitable for every company, particularly if other marketing channels have yet to be explored.

That said, web2 marketing has taught us that up to 95% of buying decisions are made subconsciously. Or, as Garry Tan put it, “You need to get in front of people again at 2, 7, 30 and 60 days later if you don't want to be forgotten.”

We dare say that with proper KPIs in place, parties are actually a great way to clock in the hours with potential business partners or get people to remember your brand. Deals don’t happen over night and let’s face it - not every side event needs to be technical and not everyone in crypto is a developer.

TLDR; Fun events don’t need to be extravagant, but they shouldn’t be dismissed entirely either. Great party examples are La Degen and rAAVE.

5 differences between SOL vs ETH conferences

There’s been a lot of debate around the higher perceived production value of Solana Breakpoint vs. Devcon. Here’s some key differences:

• The SOL Foundation asks its community for input, but event execution for Breakpoint is mostly in the hands of the Foundation.

• The ETH Foundation involves its community as much as possible through its Devcon Forums.

• ETH focuses on technical talks, SOL focuses on an array of topics and formats and puts a large emphasis on entertainment.

• SOL has hosted official After Parties in the past, going as far as flying out DJs from the US, renting a castle, offering ride services to guests. The ETH Foundation does not.

• Due to its decentralized nature, ETH has longer turn around times on speaker decisions, budget approvals, event date, etc. SOL has already announced Breakpoint 2025 will be in Abu Dhabi.

Both approaches have their own pros and cons, but it is clear that crypto folks like and want entertainment and not everything in the space should be decentralized. 

We’re soft launching a job board.

We’ve been proudly serving thousands of crypto builders (not bots! real humans!!) for a while now, it was time to make it official.

If your company is hiring, reply to this email to get your job featured for free. It’s a one time offer as we’re still beta testing. 

Builder Highlights

What our members have been up to: 

• Anett wrote a very dev friendly blog post on RPCs aimed to give folks a non-biased overview of the RPC infra.

• Cyn, founder of DTravel, put together a free digital nomad directory.

• Lachlan has written technical litepapers for DeFi projects and surpassed 900K+ views on his content for Ripple.

Who are we?

• We’re building cryptonomads.org - The place to discover crypto events, companies & professionals

• We also run a private club -  a community of web3 founders and builders who meet at events worldwide.

Cheers!