ivyheretochill

First Impression of muChiangmai#

The remote working nature of the Web3 industry has made us all isolated despite being online neighbors. However, as social beings, how can we create a life that fits us like our own skin as crypto nomads?

After Zuzalu, more and more people have initiated pop-up cities around the world. Coming back from the Shanhaiwugong Academy, the desire for community life continues to grow, and we quickly got involved in the next developer co-living experience. After traveling from East to Southeast Asia, we arrived in Chiang Mai, a laid-back, international city surrounded by a moat. Here, an unauthorized developer family called "muChiangmai" was organized. It is a six-week pop-up city event that provides unique accommodation experiences for developers and mentors. It gathers technology enthusiasts and serves as a platform for global community collaboration and communication.

As soon as we arrived here, we felt the right vibe. In the co-working space, most people bury their heads in their computers during the day, with various workshops and boot camps interspersed, and everyone gathers together to listen and discuss.

In this event, people are no longer confined to traditional conference formats. The boundaries between "organizers" and "participants" have become blurred, replaced by low-intensity academic and technical conferences.

At muChiangmai, there is a rich curriculum. Every week, there are various workshops, from Solidity, Cairo Bootcamp to AI-assisted reading contracts, zk circuits, chiquito, etc. There are 60-70 courses of various sizes, providing participants with opportunities to gain in-depth understanding of various ecosystems and more exposure for their projects. Contributors from Starknet Foundation, Ethereum Foundation PSE, and participants from more than 20 countries gather here to share their projects and discuss how to better build Web3.

One of the roundtable discussions organized by Shina (from CollegeDAO) generated many valuable conversations:

What makes a good builder?

• From an ecological perspective, Taiko believes that "asking good questions" is key. First, there must be a place that allows good questions to emerge, which requires a space for public discussion. Secondly, the questions themselves must be clear, able to define the scope of the problem and provide clear definitions.
• From a community perspective, having the right atmosphere is important. The community needs a shared narrative and imagination to guide, inspire, and activate the creativity of its members.
• From the perspective of founders and developers, Social Layer believes that resilience and diverse thinking (thinking of the consequences of technology beyond code) are essential. viaPrize believes that self-motivation, communication skills, and teamwork are key.

How should we solve the Real-World Issue?

• Some people have a down-to-earth understanding of the world and believe that understanding population structure and geographical factors is the basis for finding key issues.
• Some people are pragmatic and believe that creating sustainable business models and staying in the world can have an impact on the real world.
• Some people express from a perspective of human care, empowering the powerless with public goods and bringing positive externalities to the world through technology.
• For individuals, being healthy! Eat well, sleep well (7-9 hours) is a practice of a good life.

Key Factors for Hosting a "Pop-up City"#

First is the choice of location. Chiang Mai, a city with an international atmosphere, has become an ideal place.

"According to the '2023 Latest City Safety Ranking' on the Numbeo website, Chiang Mai surpassed Tokyo and ranked 11th. In the Global Safety Index (421 cities), Chiang Mai ranked 32nd, ranking first among Southeast Asian countries.
The high cost-effectiveness of Chiang Mai greatly reduces the threshold for living. A youth hostel costs $7 per night, a fried rice costs $1.5 per bowl, and a coffee costs $1.5 per cup, allowing many people who are exploring themselves or traveling the world as digital nomads to relax the pressure of income and expenditure and fully immerse themselves in life or creation."
In terms of digital nomads, Chiang Mai has long been ranked second on Nomadlist.com, and according to local estimates, there are at least 5,000 digital nomads from all over the world living in Chiang Mai, which is one of the direct reasons why Thailand has started preparing for digital nomad visas."
Reference: Visa-free to Chiang Mai, come to one of the places with the highest density of digital nomads in the world: strategy and settlement

Secondly, the success of muChiangmai cannot be separated from a group of outstanding individuals. People like Leo Lara and Louis Guthmann, who are passionate and have leadership qualities, as well as energetic individuals like Dragan, Shina, Noah, and Sandro, have injected high energy into this event.

The integration of local culture, digital nomads, and the Chinese-speaking community in Chiang Mai is also crucial. Weekly Muay Thai sessions and occasional Thai language classes have gradually integrated everyone into the local culture. This year, we celebrated Mid-Autumn Festival together in the Chiang Mai 706 community, and many people even had their first experience of the traditional Minnan game called "bo dice".

The participants of muChiangmai are also diverse. Participants from more than 20 countries, including the United States, China, India, Thailand, Ukraine, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and Israel, live, eat, work, and focus on their own projects together. They also share life experiences, such as practicing Muay Thai, doing yoga, taking ice baths, hiking, crossing rivers, and riding motorcycles, as well as experiencing Thai massage.

Meeting People#

"AW, ZKP, MPC, EF, Starknet, FTX, etc... On the Internet, we encounter various buzzwords every day, but behind them are living people."

• Sun

Many remarkable individuals have left a deep impression on us.

I had the opportunity to chat with Starkware ecosystem lead Louis, who is passionate and a good listener, making me feel refreshed. I also asked him a long-awaited question: why is Starknet willing to do so many bottom-up, community-driven initiatives? He explained that the starting point was that the Cairo language of the Starknet ecosystem is very difficult to master. In order to attract the geekiest and most willing developers to face challenges and keep them in the ecosystem for a long time, Starknet chose to create a supportive community atmosphere with tenderness, caring, and love (TCL) to retain everyone and establish stable and trusted long-term partnerships based on common interests. The sponsorship of muChiangmai is also because Starknet wanted to try developer co-living, and the two sides quickly reached an agreement.

A developer from a village in northern India: We became familiar with each other through Muay Thai. He is the only person in his village who knows coding, relying on self-study online. Now he is developing his zkFi middleware project and plans to go to Istanbul Devconnect next month to gain more exposure for his project. He found out about muChiangmai through Twitter. Every time I come across such a self-taught success story, I am more convinced that the paths in this world are created by ourselves.

In an era where information flattens geographical differences, this person, who has completely changed his destiny through self-study and social media, is still struggling to obtain a visa to Turkey, which shows that people with different passports face different barriers when traveling in the world.

My tablemate is also from India: an electrical engineering major, a hardcore anime fan, wearing a T-shirt with five Goku characters, and a laptop with One Punch Man stickers. He never eats during meal times and often sleeps on the couch in the co-working space. He is an intern at Lambda Class and is developing his project, an e-sim empowered wallet, and also helping with development for a gamefi platform.

A young Japanese developer building a full-chain game: slim and introverted, it is difficult to have a conversation about life that goes beyond the third round. The correct way to talk to him is to discuss AW, and he will instantly become talkative, typing on the keyboard at lightning speed.

A Taiwanese builder writing DeFi strategies: outwardly enthusiastic, inwardly focused on self-improvement, with delicate and textured writing, speaking in a measured and thoughtful manner, and having a questioning and contemplative attitude towards life. He has been consistently updating his Substack for five years, taking every request seriously. Through him, I learned about FAB DAO, which opened up another world for me.

A Korean developer building Herodotus: what attracted me was her keynote speech, which was well-organized, informative, and had a good rhythm, giving a lecture-like feeling. The project's name, Herodotus, is a project that traces the history of the blockchain, doing L1-L2 storage proof, and it takes the name of the Greek historian Herodotus.

A freelancer from Peru: mainly contributing to the StarkNet ecosystem, involved in projects like Kakarot and Dojo. He studied CS in Beijing a few years ago and has traveled to many cities in China. He also speaks Chinese quite well.

A cross-chain bridge developer from Japan: due to the high cost of living in Dubai, he moved to Southeast Asia to find a digital nomad community. He found muChiangmai through Twitter.

A former fitness coach from the United States: he started learning about DeFi after contracting dengue fever and became an adventurer in the web3 world.

...

As people come and go, through these interesting souls, I catch a glimpse of the diverse ways of life in the world.

Thoughts on Co-living#

During the one-month stay in Shanhaiwugong and the three weeks in the developer community, I observed:

• How culture and networks are formed and how small groups integrate: from point-to-point to organization-to-organization.
• The development process of communities and the inheritance of connotations: from Zuzalu to pop-up cities.

Long-term co-living is a new form of communication that allows Web3 practitioners to establish longer and deeper cooperative relationships. Unlike short-term events in the past, muChiangmai's "pop-up city" provides people with more opportunities to explore and engage in the Web3 community, beyond just technology and business.

In public life, many people have regained a sense of proximity to others and a sense of familiarity with their neighbors. In this public life, people share experiences with each other, and everyone has the opportunity to try new things.

In the just-right spatial scale, where you can get to know every member, and where every place you want to reach is within walking distance, we are supported by this appropriate familiarity. We gather with like-minded peers who speak the same language, and a few friends sitting on the ground can start a gathering, and this friendship will last a lifetime. We enjoy this "within reach" communal life.

With the just-right duration, you don't have to worry about missing out on getting to know everyone in a short time. You always have the opportunity to naturally create shared memories with anyone. For example, sitting on a couch, a tablemate who has never had a conversation with you asks for your keynote notes, and you naturally exchange contact information. For example, holding a coconut bought at a bar, sitting on the back of Leo's motorcycle, racing through the night in the ancient city. Sitting face to face in a dimly lit tuktuk with people from six different countries, with two people hanging outside the vehicle, the scene was very South Asian.

More and more pop-up communities are emerging around the world, providing people with more social and creative opportunities through long-term communal living. This model may become a new paradigm for Web3 practitioners to build relationships and provide a pure soil for the incubation and iteration of new technologies.

Considerations for Hosting Developer Community Events in the Future#

The choice of how to organize a dev community event depends on the goals.

From the perspective of VC, hosting a dev community event is more about brand building and gaining a deeper perspective. Hacker houses are the starting point for non-technical VC to build a dev network from scratch. There is no need for dev co-living with a monthly cost as high as $100,000. A 2-3 day hacker house with clear goals and higher intensity is sufficient.

In the developer community, pursuing clear project input-output ratios is challenging, but there are some indicators to follow:

• The most direct indicators are the cost of the event, the number of participants, and the number of ecosystem projects born.
• Long-term tracking is needed for long-term project conversion rates and developer retention rates.

From the perspective of public goods communities, if the goal is to improve the living conditions of practitioners, establish broader and deeper connections between the ecosystem and developers, and explore the possibilities of future life as social beings, then pop-up cities are a good practice.

Thoughts on Hackathons#

The value of participating in and hosting hackathons is also worth considering. Hackathons are not only competitions but also opportunities for learning and collaboration.

In fact, due to not being born in a commercial environment, it is difficult to verify the product-market fit of 2B and 2C projects, and few hackathon projects reach the stage of commercialization.

However, in events like muChiangmai, people participate not only for the prize money but also for the experience, finding partners, and establishing long-term relationships. The combination of "hackathon and developer community" may be one of the keys to the success of Web3 projects for developers.