The Guide to Everything ETHBerlin / Dappcon

So we finally announced some speakers, and more are coming soon. Palley just alerted all German Customs offices in preparation for the shipments of herring for personal use. The hacker form is basically exploding with people from all backgrounds, and so are the rest.

This is a guide so you know what to do, what to expect (except the unexpected stuff, you know we’re gonna pull some stunts), and how to participate of ETHBerlin, Dappcon and more. Of course, there is much more to Dappcon than this short write-up but we will let them do the talking.

DAPPCON/ETHBERLIN:

• Dappcon and ETHBerlin are partners. We are very close to Gnosis, and last year Gnosis was a top tier sponsor from ETHBerlin. We were so happy with the joint work, we decided to do the conference together — cater more people, have more rooms. They are 100% separate entities, with different missions but very aligned.
• We have a conference that runs for three days in the Dappcon venue (21–22th August for talks, 23rd August for workshops), and then on the 23rd in the evening, we move to the hackathon venue — PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY ETHBERLIN PARTICIPANTS (volunteers, speakers, judges, sponsors, mentors. press and hackers) HAVE ACCESS TO THE HACKATHON — we run for 36 hours straight, in a closed event, and there are security, logistics and other issues to look after. We cannot give access to other people than these groups. However, the conference with Dappcon is very public. This allows us to have more people into the ETHBerlin conference (everyone from Dappcon has access to ETHBerlin Conference and vice-versa), maximum exposure for our sponsors and speakers, and more talks than last year. It is totally free to apply to speak. For ETHBerlin click here. And for Dappcon here.
• Please note that even though we are at the same venue, we have very different concepts. ETHBerlin is chain-agnostic while Dappcon is focused more on Ethereum (DappCon is a nonprofit global developer conference focusing on decentralized applications, tooling, and foundational infrastructure on Ethereum.)We know the name is confusing, but it’s the name we chose last year and we keep it for old time’s sake :) — we have worked a lot on the message to push agnosticism. So we are synched to avoid overlaps, and have a balanced agenda, but if you choose to speak at both, you would need to submit different talks.
• If you want to experience all of ETHBerlin — then apply to make yourself useful somehow (judging, mentoring, hacking, sponsoring, volunteering, speaking)

• Hackers and speakers don’t have to pay for the Dappcon tickets — as well as the volunteers helping us at Dappcon. Sponsors get an allocation of tickets based on the tier they choose. All the rest of the people, will be fed, loved and given swag for free at ETHBerlin (23rd to 25th) but will need to purchase a ticket to access Dappcon. We’re not entirely past the bear and ETHBerlin is a 100% grassroots organization.
• If you want to come ONLY to the conference, please help our Dappcon hosts and purchase your ticket here.

HACKERS:

• The “soft cap” is 400 — but based on the fundraising (ETHBerlin is 100% grassroots) we might extend to 600. Given that now we are fast approaching 200 and the mass sign-up usually pops up a month before, we will possibly be reaching 600.
• We have been registering a high number of newcomers that start from scratch in our hackathon as well, make sure to have mentors for them.
• All sponsors can hack and should hack! Same with speakers — only judges and mentors can’t hack for obvious reasons. JUST, HACK!

SPONSORING:

• Depending on what you want to show during the event, you pick a tier (projects with APIs or toolkits normally go for the top 2 tiers — right now we have an earlybird promo for Tier 2, at 20.000 instead of 25.000 — till May 31st, so chop chop)
• There are also some tiers to sponsor experiences: this year we are planning an escape room, a culture room, a cryptoeconomics lab, hardware lab, and more — we are super open to suggestions here. The experiences proposal is also on the deck
• Then you can just talk to us: just tell us what you need, what you expect and we will see a way to make it happen, or come up with ideas, we’ve been working with most teams on ideas to get the most exposure and the best way to achieve this, so im sure we can come up with something together too!

HACKER PRIZES:

• We ensure the prizes will be substantial in the open track bounty (last year they were 7.500€ per team /10 teams) to make sure that people can build whatever they feel like and get incentivized accordingly.
• We will introduce two categories, as there are a lot of first time hackers coming in this year, and very experienced ones as well
• Sponsored prizes: sponsors own them, judge them, assign them. ETHBerlin does not impose any decisions. Sponsors are given time at opening and closing ceremonies to explain the hacks

CONTINUITY FUND DAO:

• We are building, alongside DAOStack, a continuity fund DAO to ensure projects will get to completion after the hackathon
• The DAO stakeholders will be given reputation to vote in Dappcon and ETHBerlin
• You will have the chance to vote for your favorite project
• Funds from the ETHBerlin fundraising will be deployed into the DAO and the stakeholders will vote several projects to fund for a period of time — to ensure continuity
• This is like a grants program, only a community of 600+ people will decide on this
• Yes, we think on-chain governance, for this PARTICULAR use-case is good.

ADDED VALUE:

• Visibility throughout 5 days (conference and hackathon) on the biggest blockchain week in Europe, Berlin is the blockchain epicenter in europe.
• We are one of the founders of BBW and this is our second hackathon, the first one was very successful, 900 people, some of the most ambitious projects were registered in ETHBerlin 2018
• This year we are chain-agnostic after having two very successful projects last year that mark the precedent (the fully operational Goerli testnet works for ETC and ETH, and Piñata just joined the IPFS community as a contributor).
• Press already being planned and in motion
• Secondly, part of the proceeds of the Open Track bounty goes to community improvement bounties the open track pays and can benefit the projects, such as: bounties for found bugs (Colony was a beneficiary last year), bounties for apps that improve the UX of project, bounties for apps that improve projects documentation and introduce best practices to help them.
• That all goes in the package. Moreover, ETHBerlin has a job fair, and the level of our hackers is very high, so last year many teams could successfully headhunt in our hackathon.

KNOWLEDGE BASE:

• We are building a knowledge base for hackers to have a month before the hackathon. We want meaningful projects that sponsors and ecosystem can really use. You will be asked (if sponsoring tier 2 or 1) to submit your information ahead of time. This Knowledge Base, curated by Afri, Ligi and Chris (EF) will be as well continuing to grow over time, and become a new hub that of course — will be open for all hackathons, events, people and anybody needing it, as well as updated regularly.

BLOCKCHAIN WEEK:

• Last year ETHBerlin catalysed Blockchain week and gave it away to the community.
• The experience was extremely prolific
• This year with the addition of Dappcon and Web3Summit to Blockhain week we will be experiencing a volume of people that we cannot predict yet
• You will need to book tickets, lodging and send swag in advance, or produce here, because Berlin is not prepared to experience such a high volume of people coming in
• You can also host your own meetups and just submit them to blockchainweek.berlin — ETHBerlin does not impose any rules or guidelines for this — we will promote your events in our channels
• More info here: blockchainweek.berlin