Eric Bishard
This year the MetaMask DevRel and friends from ConsenSys and many members of our team traveled to the ETH Dubai conference held on March 29th and 30th at the Le Meridien Dubai Hotel & Conference Centre, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Welcoming approximately one thousand attendees and speakers from all over the world, the organizers of ETH Dubai (known for also hosting React Europe) split the talks up into two tracks which did a great job of combining speakers of similar themes and topics into the same rooms. I don't see this done at many conferences. It helps to keep turnover to a minimum after every speaker and overall, creating a much more pleasant experience from an attendee's perspective.
If you have not checked out the beautiful video put out by the Cartesi Team saying goodbye to ETH Dubai post event, it's got some amazing shots of the city and conference.
Now, let's get to some of the great talks that came out of this event. Here is a list of everyone involved and a link to each talk, and how to follow them on Twitter:
Track One
Hosted by Eric Bishard focused on more traditional themes: Ethereum core and updates on scaling and decentralization, web3, and DeFi + security with panels at several intervals.
| Speaker/Host | Talk/Panel | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Protolambda | Scaling Research in Ethereum | Ethereum Core |
| Ansgar Dietrichs | Role of EVM in an L2 world | Ethereum Core |
| Kristof Gazso | Smart Contract Wallets are the Future | Ethereum Core |
| DappLion | Road Ahead: Ethereum Light Clients | Ethereum Core |
| Willy Ko | L2’s and Sidechains | Panel |
| Austin Griffith | Web3 for Frontend Devs | Web3 |
| Gabe Rodriguez | Web3 Frontend Pitfalls | Web3 |
| Salty Facu | Writing Yearn Strategies | DeFi |
| Boring Crypto | YIΞLDBOX | DeFi |
| Nikolay Angelov | Building in DeFi Sucks | Panel |
| Roman Semenov | Shielded Transactions Using ZKP | DeFi |
| Mudit Gupta | The Security Trilemma | Security |
| Mirko Garozo | Building Web3 with MetaMask Snaps | Web3 |
Track Two
Hosted by Alexander Telegin focused on more esoteric themes and new Ethereum blockchain innovations like NFTs, DAO's upcoming Layer 2, etc.
I had the opportunity to hear everyone speak in the track I was hosting, and since the conference, I have tried to watch as many videos on the ETH Dubai YouTube page as possible from track two. There is so much to learn and so many various topics to consider. We have put all of the videos from the conference and their YouTube links, Twitter links to speakers, and the category for each talk into one place, right here on this page.
Workshops
There were several workshops at ETH Dubai, one of which was hosted by our DevRel team with support from our Community Lead and engineers from MetaMask. So credit to Eric Bishard, Mirko Garozo, Francesco Andreoli, Manbir Singh, and those involved in preparing this workshop before the event.
MetaMask On-Chain SVG Tickets Workshop
This workshop was approximately 3 hours long and taught web developers how to create an On-chain SVG (NFT) Ticket and a Minting client in React.
Unfortunately, not all workshops could be recorded, but don't sweat it; we got you covered.
We have a GitHub repo complete with a README that you can walk through from the comfort of your own home.
The MetaMask Workshop described above walks you through building the NFT token and mint smart contract, React client with components that connect and switch chain and facilitate the mint of each SVG ticket.
We also have a link to the repo on GitPod so that you can build the project right in the browser and not have to install and complicated setup on your own computer. Beware, though, this project requires you to provide a MetaMask wallet passphrase, so if you decide to work with it on GitPod, please use a wallet-only set up to use a test account with test ETH and not your personal wallet with valuable assets and NFTs.
Recorded Workshop Videos
| Host | Workshop | Category |
|---|---|---|
| Yearn Finance | Coding Yearn DeFi Strategies with HardHat | DeFi |
| GTON Capital | Initiation to DeFi with GTON Capital Team | DeFi |
Hallway Track
The hallway track was an incredibly great way to meet so many developers, researchers, and folks from some of the most well-known Ethereum ecosystems worldwide. Dubai gave me a chance to meet people in the industry that I know but rarely get to see, considering they live in places like India, Australia, Asia, Bali, and Indonesia. With that said, many attendees made the trip from Europe and the Americas too. As blockchain should be, it was a melting pot of fantastic talent and in-between talks. During lunch, we had great opportunities to get to know these people with that we usually only get to interact on Twitter.
Also, from the MetaMask DevRel and Engineering teams we had Eric Bishard, Jyoti Puri, and Mirko Garozo from DevRel, Community and Engineering. This conference was a great opportunity to connect with and learn from brilliant web3 professionals, meet developers, researchers, and scientists in the Ethereum blockchain community, and talk about their views and experience around Ethereum and MetaMask. We wanted to listen to any feedback and take that feedback back to our team to ensure we can improve our products and improve the developer and community experience.
Our community lead from India, Manbir Singh, and other MetaMask team members got a great chance to interact with the community at our booth. We touched base with hundreds of MetaMask enthusiasts during the 8+ hours on conference day and throughout the many external events and parties and are still following up with people we met and now even working with some of them. Without this event, those opportunities may have never presented themselves.
One of the best opportunities to meet other developers and teams outside of the conference was the ETH Dubai Yacht Party. This was the most significant opportunity to meet people in a fun and inviting atmosphere as we sailed around the Dubai intercoastal on the Lotus (such a beautiful yacht). We exchanged ideas, talked about MetaMask roadmap features, and got excellent feedback on all of our ConsenSys products. We heard all about the exciting technology our friends in the Ethereum space were building.
We met people like Anish Mohammed from Panther Protocol, Lion an Eth2.0 Core Dev at ChainSafe and OG dev at DAppNode, Austin Griffith from Speed Run Ethereum, Scaffold ETH and Buidl Guidl who spends the majority of his time onboarding and helping new developers entering the Ethereum space. Please check out everything he does; he is a special member of the Ethereum community.
Conclusion
ETH Dubai was a massive success for MetaMask and the team to be able to interface with our developer and user community. We hope this event happens every year and we get to visit such a fantastic city again. Feel free to follow up and get in touch with the MetaMask team on Twitter and us individually. I (Eric Bishard) as well Manbir Singh always keep my DMs open and will do everything we can to answer developer and user-related questions respectively. I can't wait to see you all at the next major Ethereum event!
