ETHGlobal: A Pop-up Developer Community, A Snapshot of Entrepreneurship Landscape

After Devconnect, I took the opportunity to attend ETHGlobal Istanbul over the weekend, which opened the doors to the world of development for me. Thanks to my teammates, my first participation in ETHGlobal was fortunate enough to win 3 bounties. The best part was the observations gained from the hackathon and the passion of the developer community:

Observations:

The ETHGlobal participants are quite focused, roughly divided into sponsors and hackers. The bounty booths of sponsoring projects reflect the health of existing projects. Only well-funded leading projects can afford the 30-50k US dollars sponsorship cost to enter the ETHGlobal hacking main venue, plus various bounties and travel expenses for members. Only two Chinese projects, Scroll and Mask, made it to the main venue. As for hackers, only those who registered for ETHGlobal in advance and pledged 0.05eth could enter with a wristband. With three batchs of security from the entrance to the hacking chamber, the venue was filled with well-prepared developers, not just casual onlookers.

The Community Vibe of ETHGlobal: It feels like community/familiarity/back home. Those who frequently participate in ETHGlobal forma a small group. You always see the dev rels of leading projects, as well as some professional hackers, at events around the world. My teammate Tim said that coming to ETHGlobal feels like being back home. Although it was my first time hacking, I completely understood this feeling of familiarity and warmth – similar to what I've experienced in various pop-up cities. Shanhaiwu, muchiangmai, zuconnect, devconnect & ETHGlobal participants often overlap, so I frequently see familiar faces worldwide, sometimes more often than see my own family. This naturally creates a feeling of being back home, making it easy to collaborate on a foundation of trust. In a way, ETHGlobal is like a 2-days pop-up city.

The Spirit of Open Source: Web3 is still in its early stages, not yet in a zero-sum game. The spirit of open source is still controversial in business. But at hackathons, it's not a big issue, as the ideas are very preliminary and haven't been refined in a business environment, so there's no concern about leaking trade secrets. Participants are generally very willing to share and collaborate on their hacking projects, offering suggestions. At first, I was worried about sharing ideas with others, fearing copycats. But in reality, the value of an idea itself is limited; what matters is turning an idea into a product with impact. Once I started seeing hackathon projects as public goods, I had no more reservations and opened up completely.

A Snapshot of Entrepreneurship Landscape: There's a huge variance in the quality of teams. At ETHGlobal, most people are part-timers participating over the weekend. With over 2000 attendees and more than 400 teams, commitment to the hackathon varies greatly. Some teams are well-coordinated, understanding the judges' tastes; some are hastily formed and diverge mid-way; some have clear divisions of labor, while others lack coders or pitch skills; some projects have been polished for over a month, while others are born midway through 2-3 days of hacking... This variance is perhaps a snapshot of the Entrepreneurship landscape of the world.

Chasing project bounties is about the prize money; Chasing finalist status is about getting industry attention. Bounties from various projects range from a few hundred to 2000-5000 U.S. dollars; by contrast, material rewards for finalists are less, but being in the top 10 finalists is like getting ETHGlobal's traffic and endorsement, attracting industry-wide attention.

Most of the 10 finalist projects at each ETHGlobal are not suitable for VC investment. The real value lies in the developers themselves. There are several reasons: first, most hackathon projects are completed in 2-3 days, or even hours, so profitability and sustainability are not the criteria; second, most hackers have full-time jobs and lack the motivation to continue their gig projects after the competition; third, finalist judging has its own tastes, like this time at ETHGlobal Istanbul, which favored interaction with the real world, with 3 of the 10 finalist projects incorporating NFC functionality.

Experience as a Hacker:

The key to success is to have a plan.

Before participating, you must have a basic knowledge of the schedule and rules, such as timely registration, keeping your wristband, filling in project details on ETHGlobal website early, ensuring enough time to submit the code of the project, and knowing that the pitch and demo are only 4 minutes. The venues for finalist and bounty pitches are different;

Get to know what resources are available, like mentorship, SDKs, and libraries provided by various projects, to avoid double work and save a lot of time. Big projects have deep insights into specific tracks, and a few words with insiders can save you from many pitfalls.

Before the competition, come up with a rough project idea and know whose bounty you're hunting for. Scan the sponsoring projects before the competition. On the first day of hacking, go to these booths to chat, roughly present your idea, collect their feedback, see what libraries and SDKs they have, and what pitfalls to avoid. Also, try to familiarize yourself with mentors for support during coding.

Form a team in advance, with people you've worked with before, covering all necessary roles. Some think of ideas, some work on front-end and back-end, and some develop browser extensions.

During the competition, completing the project is more important than perfection. A hacker with 10 times finalist experience advised: Don't add people to the team just because you lack skills. Use the skills available in the team. Bringing in outsiders at the last minute adds too much extra work.

Learning from Teammates:

Beyond practical competition experience, there are more universally applicable lessons:

Having a project as a focus makes it easy and natural to interact with any peer at the event, more efficiently and deeply.

Pitching improves with practice. After 5 pitches, you become very familiar with your material. After 10, you start refining your narrative. After 15, your presentation becomes natural.

Actively collect feedback after pitching to refine your narrative and add product features. Practice makes perfect.

Special Thanks:

Youbi family, my company has always been very open-minded, giving me a lot of freedom and space to explore, and supporting me in doing what I am good at and enjoy.

Teammate @timtimtim_eth, with rich hacking and development experience, action-oriented, his rapid growth and the passion for hacking he conveys are very inspiring.

Rod @ ledger (@carraresi), a true project motivator, made me realize the significance of building in public, reigniting my drive for content creation.

@Masterdai, some of the content in this article was gradually sorted out in conversations with him. I'm grateful for his reminders, which led to this observational summary.