Berlin’s Blockchain Week is one of the largest — if not the largest — in Europe. Much of the Ethereum community is based in this German capital, a fast growing center for decentralised technologies. As a city, it’s also vibrant and creative, so it easily inspires insightful conversations and collaborative energy.
We moved Pillar HQ to Berlin for the week to be a part of its story and to host our 2019 NonConference. Our calendars were filled with different conferences, meetups and events. We learned more about the industry’s progress, contributed our own ideas and lessons, and connected with all the other teams who believe in the spirit of BUIDL.
Here’s a wrap up of our time there…
🌶 Things got heated @ MetaCartel Demo Day
There were sombreros all round as the Meta Cartel put their best dApps forward!
The Meta Cartel is essentially a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), which is a great way to experiment with governance in a project or company. This collective of individuals and teams have come together and pooled their ETH into a grant-giving objective to fund projects that are pushing the innovation envelope. The group is focused on consumer applications, with a goal to make user experience as friendly and intuitive as possible.
The Demo Day hosted a series of talks from some of these projects about their successes, challenges, and their methods for simplifying the complex aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
Drew presented the Pillar philosophy of failing fast and ‘falling forward’ – check out the video above. He reflected on the startup’s early days, examining some of the challenges and failures we’ve experienced as a Project, and how we’ve been able to turn those challenges into strengths in order to move forward. Experimentation has always played a big role in our progress and development – making mistakes is part of our path to success!
💡 Show & Tell at the Blockchain Developer Summit
We co-hosted a meetup which brought together the LimeChain, OpenZeppelin, AdEx, Aave and Abridged teams. Each team showcased their latest developments and lessons learned along the way. We heard all about tooling, how to create a flawless UX and developer experience, some best practices for user adoption, and how collaboration just makes everything better (or BETA).
Drew showcased a dApp (Frank) that the Pillar, LimeChain and Abridged teams have been working on. It utilises the same SDK which powers the Pillar Smart Wallet. It was one of the first dApps to utilize the Abridged SDK and a case study for how Layer 2 blockchain solutions can recreate familiar Web2 user experiences. As the Pillar Platform grows, we intend to provide seamless onboarding and a frictionless exchange with all dApps that utilize the SDK.
📣 Pillar Smart Wallet made its demo debut…
Blockchain Week was particularly exciting for our team as a project as we have a big feature and functionality revamp in the works. We’ll soon be launching the Smart Wallet, as well as the Pillar Payment Network. We were able to demo these for the first time in Berlin, sharing all our hard work and gathering feedback on our UI and design. This really helped us abstract much of the complexity out of it so we can perfect it before its launch.
Our star Community Ambassador Jen (AKA BitcuriousMom) got a personal Smart Wallet tutorial from Drew, experiencing all the cool new features firsthand.
You can check out this live demo and explore the amazing world of smart contract-based wallets for yourself!
👩💻 Hack-Attack at ETHBerlin Zwei
It was all hack, no play for some of our devs at this hacktivist-cultural festival. The team checked into ETHBerlin Zwei to battle it out with code against hundreds of other hackers.
The result was a brand new wallet that can be customised and used specifically for events! Scan a QR code to download a unique pre-funded wallet which lets you interact with the event, its host and other attendees. You can check out the agenda, pay for merch by sharing some personal data and even collect badges along the way.
🇩🇪 Auf Wiedersehen
We had an incredible time in Berlin. Being there reminded us yet again how important it is to dive headfirst into the community and connect with friends, both old and new.
Pillar wants to be a hub where users can explore and experience everything the world of Web 3 has to offer. Being a part of Blockchain Week is an important part of that development process. We want to offer support for those working towards a decentralised future, see firsthand what amazing technology others are creating, and connect with projects interested in being among the first dApps built into and hosted by our platform.
As an open-source industry, it’s even more important for us to collaborate and work together to agree on universal standards, approaches and mechanisms for pushing the whole industry forward, and not just individual projects.
NonConference 2019 in pictures
Enough with the words — here’s some photo highlights of our time with our ambassadors, partners and community.
A special shout out to Jen Leo (AKA Bitcuriousmom) who flew across the Atlantic and lit up our community with her energy and endless curiosity.
We hope you all join us at our next summer’s event — watch this space!