It’s all about the benjamiWE MEAN THE ETH! The grand finale.

Words by Helena Flack

IN JUST A FEW DAYS judgment day is upon us. Hackers are slowly trickling through the gates of Berlin ready and energised to take on the challenges that await them in the city of sin, you know like getting into Berghain, surviving the 24/7 party culture, and BUIDLING the winning project at the most epic hackathon to grace the Ethereum community.

On the contrary, WE are lacking sleep and sanity. I’ll try control the caps lock on this post, however the excitement and delirium is too much. But we are nearly there. Do not judge us if you see us crouching in a corner, rocking back and forth, taking constant sips out of a bottle of Jäger (there’s a lot of corners at Factory though tbh so you will never see the true extent of our alcoholism).

Anyway, enough of the rambling. Again, MASSIVE Danke, gracias, merci, thank you and ありがとう to our bloody amazing sponsors. YOU DA BEST!!! Here are some words from the rest of our sponsors on why they cannot wait to be part of ETHBerlin (apart from the obvious that it’s going to be the BEST EVER HACKATHON).

Gnosis have been instrumental in the organisation of the event and have been a huge pillar of support for the ETHBerlin team. They are doing it because they are an awesome team obvs, and, “believe in a redistributed future. Gnosis builds new market mechanisms to make this future possible. Through decentralized platforms on the Ethereum blockchain, we enable the distribution of resources — from assets to incentives and information to ideas — at individual, societal, and global scales.”

Now what is a hackathon without our friends over at Aragon being there?! They told us that, “We’re very excited to be sponsoring ETHBerlin, that’s where the true #BUIDLers will be! We’re looking forward to seeing the amazing combination of crypto with the hacker ecosystem in Berlin 🚀 🛠️.”

Next up is Agoric. They are ready to join us in taking on the centralised world. “Agoric is proud to support the efforts of ETHBerlin. By bringing together talented people from across the world to work on new Ethereum applications and smart contracts, ETHBerlin takes us one step closer to bringing the world economy online and enabling true fearless cooperation.”

Thanks to Quantstamp for getting involved too! For them, “Berlin is an epicenter and melting pot of creativity and technology. We are participating in ETHBerlin as we believe it will harness Berlin’s best hackers and ideas to push the boundaries of Ethereum and strengthen the global Ethereum developer community.”

Brickblock gave us their reasons for their support and mentioned that, “ETHBerlin is one of the most important blockchain events of the year, as more than 700 blockchain enthusiasts will be coming to the crypto capital in order to participate in a hackathon, connect with other enthusiasts from around the globe and find synergies with other blockchain projects. We at Brickblock decided to become a sponsor as we believe in the power of the community around Ethereum which is developing great tools for every blockchain project, accelerating the common goal, mass adoption. At the same time we want to connect with other developers who might find asset tokenization interesting to get feedback, create synergies or bring them to the Brickblock family.”

We also welcome CoinFund to the event! “CoinFund is thrilled to sponsor ETHBerlin. The quality of attendees, speakers, and organizers as well as a keen technology focus of ETHGlobal hackathons all over the world speaks for itself and we are proud to support, mentor, and participate in this productive and educational initiative.”

ConsenSyS, key players in the Ethereum space told us that Berlin stands out for them because, “It is testament to Berlin’s influence in the wider Ethereum ecosystem when over 40 members of the ConsenSys mesh elect to mentor, hack, judge, volunteer, and speak at ETHBerlin. From VariabL to Viant, Diligence to Infura, uPort to Ujo, Kauri, Linnia, OpenLaw, Nethereum, Balanc3 — and of course the Bounties Network with Berlin Coin, ConsenSys’s talented devs are excited to bring about mass aDapption. We’ll catch you all on Status next week.”

As we’ve seen at ETHIndia and past events the team at NuCypher, love to support the hackers and help them buidl on their protocol. And they are all about the #massaDapption too. “NuCypher will be sponsoring ETHBerlin as part of our ongoing commitment to support the Ethereum community. We are eager to showcase NuCypher’s data privacy solution to all the attending dApp developers. Providing the necessary developer tools and support is paramount to advancing the decentralization and the ETHGlobal movement.”

Brainbot are a key project in the Berlin community. They told us they are backing the hackathon because, “We at Brainbot love ETHBerlin for its commitment to the community and are excited to sponsor this wonderful initiative. It’s especially great to see so many dApps being integrated into the hackathon — early adoption and building at its best. Our mentors are looking forward to supporting motivated hackers from all over the world right here in one of our homes, Berlin.”

The awesome team behind Havven told us, “We’re excited to be sponsoring ETHBerlin as we we’re committed to contributing to a creative, open and decentralised ecosystem, driven by developers. We also believe that ETHBerlin will serve as a great testing ground before wider adoption occurs for some exciting projects that we’re sure will be introduced at ETHBerlin.”

Kr1 jumped on the chance because as everyone knows, right now Berlin is the Blockchain capital: “We’d love to shill our home base London as the world’s most active blockchain city but humbly have to admit that Berlin is truly the place to be! The ecosystem here genuinely shares the ethos of permission-less, decentralised technologies we’re all excited about and we’re proud to be involved!”

Viewly, the Tokenised video platform, are excited to be part of the, “new, decentralized internet. By supporting ETHBerlin we commit to supporting all initiatives helping bring this bright vision to reality. Viewly is ready to use and we are looking forward to meeting and helping out anyone who works with video content or creators.”

Additionally, we are happy to announce Dharma as a sponsor! They are continued supporters of the Ethereum community and past hackathons too. ETHBerlin is special to them because, “Every ETHGlobal event has exceeded our expectations in terms of the quality and creativity of projects hackers built on Dharma, and we think Berlin will be no different. The crypto scene in Berlin is one of the most vibrant in the world, and we’re excited to put a face to the projects we’ve known in cyberspace for years.”

Liquidity Network are all about scalability. “Ethereum scales today — instant, secure and gas-free payments are currently possible with Liquidity Network, the first bi-directional, off-chain wallet operational on the mainnet.”

Livepeer are supporting ETHBerlin because, “we are on a mission to enable people around the world to share their voice in an affordable, uncensorable, and accessible way. With a history of censorship resistance, citizen activism and creativity, Berlin has become an active hub for the livepeer community, and we couldn’t think of a better city and or organization to launch our first ever hackathon with than EthBerlin. We are grateful to be apart of the journey.”

Multichain Capital cannot get enough of the global series of hackathons and they said they are here because, “The ETHGlobal series is one of the best hackathon series on the planet. We sponsored both ETHWaterloo and ETHDenver, and found both events to be nothing short of amazing. The people, community, learning, and building are unparalleled. As investors, we learn more at these events than others.”

Last but not least, we welcome Weeve to the family. “Weeve is proud to be part of the ETHBerlin Hackathon and unite creative individuals in Berlin to build around blockchain. Berlin is a melting pot for high tech, deep tech, real-world use case changing tech, and we are are more than happy to support the growing, decentralized ecosystem and excited to meet everyone there.”

So there we are. The final shout out to our sponsors! Over the past few months we realised how lucky we are to have such an amazing community behind us. We really can’t wait to bring everyone together and see what fantastic projects get built here at ETHBerlin! BRING IT ONNNNN!