ETHDenver founder John Paller reflects on the evolution of the world’s largest Web3 builder festival and its growing relevance to institutions, merchants, and payment leaders.
Tell us a bit about yourself and how your professional background ties into the ETHDenver story.
I’ve been working in crypto full-time since 2016 and have seen the industry come a long way since then. In 2017, I founded Opolis, a Digital Employment Cooperative for independent workers, and the first ETHDenver festival.
Also, please explain for our audience – made up of bankers, financial institutions, merchants, PSPS – thus people that are not so technical – what is ETHDenver and what does it aim to achieve?
ETHDenver was founded in 2018 (three years after the launch of the Ethereum blockchain) as a local Ethereum meetup and has since grown into a global gathering point for open-source builders and early-stage teams working on decentralised infrastructure.
Since its founding, ETHDenver has generated nearly USD 250 million in cumulative economic impact for Colorado and has served as a launch point for thousands of open-source projects and startups worldwide.
What did you learn from organising your first ETHDenver edition? How has the space evolved so far? What innovation do you perceive?
The first ETHDenver in 2016 was a meetup with about a dozen people at a dive bar, talking about technology and decentralisation. The summer of 2017 was our first ‘real’ event, with about 300-400 attendees and a waitlist. The core focus of the conference has always been building in the space, or ‘BUIDL-ing’ as we like to call it.
2022 was the biggest jump for the industry. In 2021, Bitcoin finally broke through, soaring in valuation from around USD 8,000 – USD 69,000 by the end of the year. ETHDenver then saw a similar leap with over 13,000 attendees, far exceeding our initial expectation of 4,000 to 5,000.
Despite the increased attention on the space, the core focus for us remains bringing the community together to build. As the space evolves to include regulators and institutions, we certainly will continue to bring these conversations to Denver as well, but building remains our top priority.
Tell us more about stablecoins – what are some real use cases you have been learning about?
The AI Agent economy is a stablecoin use case I’m incredibly excited for. As AI Agents increasingly operate onchain they’re forming the basis of a new economy, and stablecoins are perfectly poised to be the backbone of this.
Agentic AI – can you briefly share for our less technical audience what AP2, x402, and Autonomous Transactions are, and how these interplay with agentic AI?
For the less technical audience, what’s important to know is that AI agents will signal a new chapter for coordination. At our opening ceremony this year, we debuted Buffibot (built by CoinFello), the official AI assistant for festival information. In the past year, the amount of coordination AI agents are capable of has skyrocketed. As humans and AI agents continue to iterate together, the ceiling for what they’ll produce is limitless.
The interplay between AI and crypto?
The future of crypto will involve AI as a middleman between a lot of the technical infrastructure and regular users.
Over the past ten years, the crypto industry has built an amazing amount of infrastructure, but the industry has repeatedly failed at actually getting regular people to use the technology for regular things. We’ve not actually seen crypto completely replace any of even the backend systems it set out to. AI could shift this tide.
Crypto has set out to be faster, cheaper, and better than existing systems, but it’s not there yet. I’m in the camp that AI won’t replace us, but your job will be replaced by the guy using AI, and ideas will be more of a premium than technical skills.
Do you feel that there is still a knowledge gap between DeFi and TradFi? If so, why and how can this be overcome?
The knowledge gap between DeFi and TradFi is definitely closing. The hurdles that used to exist for institutions no longer pose as high a barrier, and AI agents are likely to close the average consumer's knowledge gap in a similar way in the coming years.
What are your main takes from ETHDenver in terms of topics covered, the audience reaction, and overall atmosphere?
ETHDenver has always set out not to just be a crypto conference, but rather a global innovation festival that puts community and builders at the forefront.
Bear markets are the best way to separate the signal from the noise. The people who attended ETHDenver this year care deeply about building a decentralised future, and meeting the people who showed up to build always gives me great hope for the future.
About the author
John Paller is a Denver-based blockchain entrepreneur and futurist who founded ETHDenver, the world's largest Web 3 and Ethereum-focused hackathon and festival, attracting more than 100,000 participants across eight seasons. He also founded Opolis, an innovative employment ecosystem for independent workers.
With over 20 years of experience in talent acquisition and HR before discovering Ethereum in 2014, Paller now serves on the SporkDAO Board, where he pioneers patronage token models to sustainably fund decentralised ecosystems. His work bridges traditional employment systems with decentralised innovation and has earned him recognition as one of the Denver Business Journal's ‘40 Under 40’ (2014).
