Feb. 18, 2022: Mile High Down Bad

A Rocky Start For ETHDenver

I’d earmarked today’s newsletter to quickly jot down some takeaways from my first day at ETHDenver. I’m therefore struggling to deliver you a meaningful newsletter today. I always try to focus on the positive, and unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot positive to report so far.

The fact of the matter is I have nothing to report about ETHDenver because I spent all day standing in line and never got to go into the main event. So all I can really talk about is my blasé observations about standing in line for hours in the freezing snow.

So, uh, relative to other queues I’ve stood in, it was maybe better than average? At least here I could talk with people about crypto, whereas it’s tough to force conversation about interesting concepts the DMV.

The handful of people standing in talking distance were certainly a plus. I managed to connect with somebody who could get me access to the Bankless Discord, which was a bit of a win for me. Years ago I gave up my traditional phone plan in favor of Twilio’s programmatic capabilities. This has mostly been great, however, it occasionally keeps me from receiving shortcode SMS for verification and I have to work to find a loophole. This makes me the only person on the planet who has had an easier time getting access to the Bankless podcast than their Discord.

Big thumbs up for the ability to occasionally collide with people on the streets. Unfortunately stuck in a line you’re limited to a slice of about 10 people in shouting radius. Therefore my main takeaway is that the queueing mechanics could use some work. It reminded me of Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad, where they had all these great ideas, but didn’t plan for a heavy influx of people.

Other queueing systems invented a clever “take a number” system that’s in fact been around several decades. If the expected wait time is extensive, you could perhaps go for a walk, grab a coffee to warm up, or mingle outdoors. If web3 is to be the future, the community would gain credibility if they demonstrated better logistics than the DMV.

Instead, we just stood in the snow for several hours, which was a bit difficult for some people in our party without enough layers. A clever marketer would have walked the line distributing hot chocolate rather than QR Codes to mint NFTs, (though I hear these ignite the rain forest, so perhaps it helped raise the ambient temperature ever so slightly?) Particularly frustrating was the anticipation of the three heat lamps towards the end of the line; it was a cruel letdown to find two of the three weren’t even functioning.

By mid-afternoon, I successfully tested negative for a disease I’d recovered from two years prior. At least I could now get access to the event! Except at this point I was a bit hungry and needed to find some food.

ETHDenver had a thing where you could claim a testnet token airdrop onto your phone to claim my free meal at the food trucks. Unfortunately the complementary WiFi was quite clogged, a necessity for me given my aforementioned phone situation. The MetaMask install proceeded at glacial speeds, but at least allowed a good chance to warm up inside one of the smaller venues. Sadly, the airdrop failed because I lacked sufficient Arbitrum Testnet ETH.

By this point I didn’t particularly care and just ponied up some worthless fiat cash for the food. The thing is, I’m a crazy busy person. Regular readers may have caught references to my various projects — I work hard to cram efficiency into every waking minute. Give me an hour, I’ll give you the world. Time is my most valuable resource. Money, far less so. Twenty bucks to save a few minutes of hassle finding a testnet faucet is well worth it.

Stuffed with some garbage food and looking at just a couple hours left in the waking day, I finally strolled over to the main event space, only to find… yet another long line. I strolled halfway around the block, and asked some people about a third of the way from the end how long they’d been waiting.

“A half an hour.”

Welp, goodbye. So much for ETHDenver. I left to find some fresh vegetables and see what scenic Denver had to offer. Day one, a major bust. I’m heading out earlier the next few days in hopes of getting a better scoop, but sadly for readers I don’t publish on weekends.

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By all reports, ETHDenver on the inside was great. The thing is, some people qualified for “VIP” badges which let them skip the line. Maybe if I’d known how severe the line would have been, I could have perhaps asked my Very Important colleagues to sneak me inside. Or, arguably, this newsletter should have qualified as “press,” since our audience is multiples of some of the outfits that did get such badges.

Yet in a way I’m glad I didn’t get to cut in line. Everything happens for a reason, they say. Only about half my audience identify as whales, so it’s helpful to see the experience from the point of view of people who don’t get the red carpet treatment.

In fact, my experience fully reflects the nature of Ethereum. Ethereum is perhaps the least egalitarian blockchain in the world. The user experience is incredible for whales who can just tip miners and zip to the front of the line. Users who have to cheap out on gas may have to wait hours or days to get confirmation. Whales don’t often get to experience why newcomers may be less than enamored with the Web3 experience.

A bit too late I learned about the SporkDAO pass, which would have allowed me to skip the line for $2000. This is quite consistent with the spirit of EIP-1559 allowing people to “tip” their way to the front of the line. A truly sleek queueing system would allow people to adjust their tip — the “VIP parties” part of the SporkDAO bundle carries no weight with me, but $100 to save 2.5 hours would be an obvious choice and best maximize revenue for the organizers.

At any rate, attendees thinking of flying in for the weekend should be aware you may lose as much as a full day in line for health protocols. Had I known the wait would prevent me from attending a full day of the conference, I likely would have paid the ransom. Money I can make back, but time is priceless.

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Disclaimers!