Thousands of ethereum coders bring their grunge-hacker vibe to Denver
DENVER — A few blocks away from the Colorado state capitol in downtown Denver is a place called the Sports Castle. The six-floor building is a retrofitted Chrysler car showroom, originally constructed in 1927, where instead of stairs, sweeping ramps wrap the perimeter of every floor. The degenerate grunge aesthetic is deliberate and perfectly fits the ethos of ETHDenver, an annual two week-long event drawing some of the brightest and most innovative minds in the ethereum ecosystem.
“It's like we broke into an abandoned warehouse,” said John Paller, who first launched ETHDenver in 2017. “It fits the vibe of that emergent, sort of permissionlessness, where it's almost like, ‘Yeah, we're kinda building a revolution, and you don't even know about it.'”
Five years on, and the cat is most definitely out of the bag. Paller tells CNBC that more than 20,000 people registered to attend this year — and he estimates that more than 13,000 descended on Denver for the official gathering, plus the more than 350 ancillary events. ETHDenver organizers say it is now the largest and longest-running ethereum event in history.
Ethereum is the world's second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, and it is known for its smart contracts, which are basically programmable pieces of code that could someday replace middlemen like banks and lawyers in certain types of business transactions.
Paller tells CNBC that hackers are known as BUIDLers — an intentional misspelling of the word ‘builders' in a sort of homage to the bitcoin meme, HODL, or “hold on for dear life.”
“We prefer to BUIDL instead of HODL,” said Paller. “That ethos is very ingrained in the community.”
The meme-off may seem silly, but it gets at the core of what separates these two very different sets of people.
Bitcoiners tend to move more slowly on development, prioritizing security and decentralization above all else, while ethereum programmers tend to be more cavalier. While they aren't necessarily breaking things as they go, they move fast and tinker aggressively.
Ethereum serves as the primary building block for all sorts of crypto projects, like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), and web3, a still somewhat amorphous buzzword for a third generation of the internet that is decentralized and built using blockchain tech. Most NFTs and 74% of DeFi apps, or dApps, run on ethereum, according to the website State of The dApps.
The network is also on the verge of a years-in-the-making upgrade from a proof-of-work mining model to a consensus mechanism known as proof-of-stake. The makeover will move ethereum to a less energy-intensive mining process and, according to network founder Vitalik Buterin, could boost speed by over 7,000-fold to 100,000 transactions per second.
丹佛——距离丹佛市中心科罗拉多州议会大厦几个街区的地方是一个叫做体育城堡的地方。这座六层楼的建筑是一个经过改造的克莱斯勒汽车陈列室，最初建于 1927 年，每一层的周边都没有楼梯，而是宽大的坡道。堕落的垃圾美学是经过深思熟虑的，完全符合 ETHDenver 的精神，这是一项为期两周的年度活动，吸引了以太坊生态系统中一些最聪明、最具创新性的头脑。 2017 年首次推出 ETHDenver 的约翰·帕勒 (John Paller) 说：“这就像我们闯入了一个废弃的仓库。”它符合那种新兴的、某种未经许可的氛围，几乎就像，‘是的，我们正在掀起一场革命，你甚至都不知道。'”
五年过去了，猫绝对是出类拔萃的。 Paller 告诉 CNBC，今年有超过 20,000 人注册参加 - 他估计有超过 13,000 人来到丹佛参加官方聚会，外加 350 多个辅助活动。 ETHDenver 组织者表示，它现在是历史上规模最大、持续时间最长的以太坊活动。
按市值计算，以太坊是仅次于比特币的世界第二大加密货币，它以其智能合约而闻名，这些智能合约基本上是可编程的代码片段，有朝一日可以在某些类型的商业交易中取代银行和律师等中间人。
Paller 告诉 CNBC，黑客被称为 BUIDLers——故意拼错“建造者”这个词，以表达对比特币 meme、HODL 或“坚持到底”的敬意。
“我们更喜欢 BUIDL 而不是 HODL，”帕勒说。 “这种精神在社区中根深蒂固。”
模因可能看起来很愚蠢，但它是区分这两组截然不同的人的核心。
比特币开发者往往在开发方面进展缓慢，将安全性和去中心化放在首位，而以太坊程序员往往更加漫不经心。虽然他们不一定会在进行时破坏事物，但他们会快速移动并积极修补。
以太坊是各种加密项目的主要构建块，例如不可替代的代币 (NFT)、去中心化金融 (DeFi) 和 web3，这是第三代互联网的一个仍然有些无定形的流行语，它是去中心化和使用构建的区块链技术。根据网站 State of The dApps 的数据，大多数 NFT 和 74% 的 DeFi 应用程序或 dApps 都在以太坊上运行。
该网络还处于从工作量证明采矿模型升级到称为股权证明的共识机制的多年准备工作的边缘。根据网络创始人 Vitalik Buterin 的说法，这次改造将使以太坊的采矿过程变得能耗更低，并且可以将速度提高 7,000 倍以上，达到每秒 100,000 笔交易。
