IoTeX at ETH Amsterdam: Recap & Reflections

Fresh from attending ETHAmsterdam, Dan Knobelsdorf, IoTeX’s DAO Sherpa & Community Architect and Simone Romano, Head of Developer Relations, gave us their impressions of this major European blockchain event, the broader blockchain scene, and how IoTeX grabs more mindshare with each event.

ETHAmsterdam brings together developers, designers, investors, artists, and community builders from the blockchain space.  They share stories, skills, opportunities, and go away richer for the experience.

Simone certainly enriched people’s knowledge of how to best integrate IoT and Blockchain to create something greater than its component parts.

What’s Next for Web3 Infrastructure

Community and Developer Perspectives

Dan is a global citizen. He travels constantly, meets with people building blockchain projects of all types and is an expert on DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). As with any newborn industry, no one can say they’ve seen it all. But it’s pretty likely that Dan has seen much of it and will hear about anything new well before you or I will.

We can tell you, Dan clearly thought attending ETHAmsterdam was time well spent.

"It was an amazing week-plus of events (over 200 side-events took place in that time!) and we participated in many of these, as well as collaborated with allies like TRGC and Health Blocks. The number of connections was vast and valuable, and its repercussions will come to play in the long run."

Finally, Dan went wide in thinking about the blockchain scene in Europe:

"Europe is re-emerging as a key web3 primordial soup, with a mix of hacking, networking, education and serious token engineering, driven by a strong anchoring on societal issues."

Naturally, conversations with IoTeX end up talking about MachineFi and the coming POP Protocol (Proof of Presence). In various conversations over the course of the event, Dan heard a recurring theme:

"...event-ticketing systems … failed to meet expectations of attendees and organizers during the week. A GPS-powered system using IoTeX technology could be an alternative."

That’s POP Protocol.

And other meetings prompted Dan to reflect:

"I personally also had some sessions with builders on using data-streams to power metaverse actions and to mirror IRL agents into it."

For example, imagine local weather data determining how lush the plant growth might be in your virtual environment. Or maybe data from another location will fill your VR environment with sand and cactus.

Simone Romano, Head of Dev Community Growth, is a gifted teacher. In clear, calm sessions, one-on-one or with a capacity audience at a major tech event, Simone breaks down complex processes and concepts. Spend some time with him and you’ll find your head bobbing up and down with an, “Oh, I get it!” nod. That’s what makes him so effective at events.

Simone was kind enough to share his thoughts on the event. Here are some of the things he touched on:

"Hundreds of young (and not so young!) developers from all over the world sharing their ideas and visions, and working on blockchain use cases, all of them amazing in some way. All in a welcoming, cozy, and inspirational environment. Great vibes! "

We asked Simone to describe the panel on infrastructure and he called it, “...a great opportunity to discuss the current Web3 technology and how IoTeX is contributing to the future of the Web3 infrastructure.” But in fact, watching the video, it was pure “Professor Romano” making more heads bob up and down in understanding.

Watch Simone’s segment of this panel, What’s Next for Web3 Infrastructure

"At the HealthBlocks event, we presented IoTeX, shared the latest improvements as well as the most significant things we are looking forward to achieving for 2022."

We asked Simone to tell us about the people he met and what they talked about.

“It was great to meet developers that I had only talked to in video meetings, and delve into their ideas while drinking a coffee together! I also had the opportunity to meet many new developers, and share with them possible applications of the IoTeX technology into their projects.”

Simone continued,

“I can say that any person I talked to was enchanted by what we have built and the future vision. Discussions ranged from the ability to accurately measure the carbon footprint with trusted devices for the generation of "carbon tokens", to how to solve the IoT privacy and security issues with IoTeX.”

Were there any surprises?

“We met our Belgium Ambassador Jelle Debusscher in person, who is contributing a lot to the IoTeX Belgium community. He came for the TRBC panel.”

Sometimes we have a casual conversation over coffee. Other times, it’s a formal presentation from a dazzling stage to a sea of faceless people in a dark room. And other times it’s helping a young developer in a Hackathon - maybe she’s still in college - to work out a solution for an IoT project.

You never know what seeds you are sowing and you don’t know if it’s fertile ground. That’s why we’re consistent in the message and sincere in both sharing and learning from the wonderful range of people we’re fortunate enough to meet at these events.