CryptoCanal 2023 Review✨
Another year promoting privacy, censorship resistance and peer to peer electronic cash. Our highlights: 1st edition of ETHDam, OtterTank, speaking at ETHPrague & Web3Privacy and organising DeFiBoat!
5 years since I created CryptoCanal, and I would never have guessed where I would be now. I’m very grateful, I do what I love everyday, surrounded by amazing people - while bringing people together to develop the financial world of tomorrow.
My passion still burns for peer to peer electronic cash, privacy and censorship resistance. More than ever, we need to stay focused on the value proposition that cryptocurrencies can bring to people’s lives, I’m preaching to the choir, but hear me out.
Look at the bigger picture, inflation, censorship and the rise of authorianism. We need cryptocurrencies, an alternative to this war fueled printing machine. Crypto at this moment, remains mostly a niche investment vehicle, a lovely ride, but it can be so much more. We have the tech, we need to fine tune it and keep building the infrastructure.
Drop the sketchy admin keys and the fractured off chain scaling. We can adopt, evolve and learn from all the different blockchains, all these efforts poured into this industry, the hopes and dreams of a better world, won’t fly with failed lightning payments and L1s reserved for businesses and 50$ transaction fees.
I hope that we can move on from our tribalism, learn from all these social and financial experiments to focus on the core principles that cryptocurrencies can offer, a viable alternative to fiat, full ownership of one’s financial assets and last but not least freedom and financial privacy.
Our Highlights in numbers 🤩
I know you don’t want the fluff, you want the hard core numbers! In 2023, we hosted 46 events, including 1 Conference and a Hackathon, 4 side events, 20 Meetups in Amsterdam, 10 in Rotterdam and 9 in Zürich and 2 Hacker Speed Dating! Culminating in 3476 RSVPs, 87 speakers and 53 hackathon projects!
Obviously, this would not have been possible without our amazing partners, busy building the tools or infrastructure for a more resilient and private financial system, so if you don’t mind, here’s our warm shoutout and thank you to 🥁
1inch Network, Summer.Fi, Ajna Finance, Lido, Bitvavo, Van Eck, Sismo, Railgun, Scroll, AlephZero, Cyber Capital, Silent Protocol, Marlin Protocol, Proto, Maven 11, Spankchain, Waku, the Ethereum Foundation and API3!
Enjoy a few highlights from this exceptional year
ETHDam - Conference & Hackathon 🌷
We had to make sure, post Devconnect 2022 to keep Amsterdam on the map. As such, we organised our 1st edition of ETHDam dedicated to Privacy and DeFi! During this conference and hackathon, we gathered 450 guests, 237 hackers, 67 speakers and a juicy 67K prize pool aaaaaand we are doing it all over again next year! → recap
OtterTank - Pitching Stage 🦦
We started a new Meetup format, welcoming local builders to pitch their startup idea, in front of our panel of Otter Judges! Join us for our next edition in Amsterdam at Pakhuis de Zwijger on Jan 31st → RSVP and/or apply to pitch
DeFiBoat - Devconnect Istanbul
DeFiBoat was a challenge, organising an event in another country, during the 1st trimester of your pregnancy… well I simply don’t recommend 😅
But we had a blast! The pictures speak for themselves, follow us on Instagram for more beautiful pictures and Youtube for all the upcoming footage.
Tornado Cash - a never ending Storm
The Dutch prosecution is accusing Alexey Pertsev of money laundering by concealing the source of 500’000 ETH from 36 specific hacks. Earlier this year, a brief sigh of relief, he was able to go home after 260 days in detention.
The battle in far from over, his trial will be taking place in March 2024. To help build his case, we have reached out to projects that were hacked, and who’s funds had been Tornado Cashed, to testify that they didn’t hold the platform or the developers responsible for any of it.
“Alex is currently being accused of laundering 36 hacks through Tornado Cash,” Eléonore Blanc, CryptoCanal’s founder, told DL News. “These protocols coming out and openly deflecting these charges is important.” → read more
In June, we were invited to open the stage of ETHPrague, to discuss this important case: “In the eye of the Tornado, the Case for Freedom → full presentation deck
Followed in October, with an updated talk, which goes more in depth between the differences in the US/NL cases during the Web3Privacy conference in Rome. → full presentation deck
ETHDam 2024 - Privacy & Security
We are delighted to host our 2nd Edition of ETHDam this April 12-14 in Amsterdam! Join us to speak, hack or volunteer! ps: our early Shrimp tickets are still for sale until the end of January 🦐
Enjoy some fluffy hoodies, and wear your political statement! → Buy now
As you can see, we were pretty busy this year, and I’m so happy and grateful for everyone in the CryptoCanal team that made this possible! 💜
We look forward to welcoming you during our upcoming shenanigans, join Luma (we are moving away from Meetup), our Telegram Community and if you haven’t already X for the daily updates.
“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged