As many of you know, ETHDenver is an annual Ethereum hackathon + conference that takes place in Denver, Colorado. This event brings together developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from around the world, to meet and build decentralized applications and other innovative solutions on the Ethereum blockchain.

This year it was held from Feb 24 to Mar 5 and we were there with our Head of R&D Jakov. We had so much fun, met so many great people, and now after all the feelings and impressions have finally settled, we what to share with you our thoughts.

Hey fam, don't forget to connect with our @ShardYaco at @EthereumDenver!

You can't miss him – just look for the tallest guy in the room😎 (hopefully, before Denver Nuggets get to him…) #ETHDenver2023 pic.twitter.com/B82DiBKAMB

— Shard Labs (@shard_labs) March 1, 2023

Though the DeFi presence was minimal (Aave and Uniswap), most of the emphasis was put on the infrastructure projects like wallets, zk-related stuff (zkEVM, privacy), and gaming. There was an entire sub-conference around wallets (Walletcon) where you could find virtually every wallet project in the space.

Since ERC-4337 went out live on Ethereum during the Walletcon, it created a big hype. Everyone was buzzing about all the new features that can now be added to Ethereum wallets for UX improvement.

The best thing about ETHDenver is that almost every project or a newborn startup in the space is present there, and you can meet whomever you need! Meeting random people that end up being super interesting is also not uncommon, especially on the side events. Side events are what makes ETHDenver great.

We were positively surprised by how web3 gaming evolved in the last year! The games are finally starting to look more mature, and like they could actually be fun to play 🙂

Overall, the event was great, but there were a few minor issues that we encountered. One of the challenges we faced was with the WiFi connectivity, as there were so many attendees using their mobile devices at the same time, which made it difficult for the network to keep up. Despite this setback, the projects and booths were still able to showcase their demos and games, even though there were some slight delays. All in all, the event was still a huge success and everyone had a wonderful time.

After the official conference, we went for the post-conference mountain retreat in Breckenridge for 2 days of skiing. The weather was perfect, and though we were all physically and mentally exhausted, the community was still vibrant as ever!

With that being said, we would like to finish this article by saying that ETHDenver 2023 was definitely the biggest and the best Web3 community gathering so far!

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