ETHSanFrancisco Is Your Friendly Neighborhood Hackathon

September 12, 2018 11:44 PM

ETHSanFrancisco published a Medium post on Tuesday, September 11, to describe its motivations for hosting the world’s largest Ethereum hackathon in San Francisco. The team believes the city offers a venue for the Ethereum community to effect change within the heart of a flawed technological development scene.

The author of the post said that although the hilly city “is a testament to the potential of new waves of technology,” it concentrates “too much power … in one place.” They noted that the unicorns (billion-dollar startups) “that made San Francisco what it is today were built by exploiting users” through spying and controlling data.

The ETHSanFrancisco team sees the Golden City as “the belly of the beast,” where folks can collaborate to build “a radically different future” under the noses of mainstream tech giants. The crew wants the Bay Area to know that the Ethereum community is creating “something interesting – something weird.” The author went on to mention that the event is open to all engineers and developers who want to do more than simply optimize clicks and sell ads for companies.

Of course, ‘Frisco is not the be-all, end-all hub for Ethereum development. The team sees its other hackathon events, like in Waterloo, Denver, Buenos Aires, Bangalore, Berlin, and Singapore, as components of a “global network” of Ethereum talent. San Fran is one of many “nodes” in the overall development ecosystem.

Whether people are joining the madness as hackers or volunteers, ETHSanFrancisco will feature “a small army” of individuals working to build “a decentralized web without centralized gatekeepers.”

The hackathon will take place from October 5-7 at the Palace of Fine Arts and will host 1,000 developers from around the world. Notable attendees include Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir (Ethereum Foundation), Joey Krug (Augur), Will Warren (0x), and others from the community. Besides building a project (or “hack”) in only 36 hours, participants can attend talks and workshops, allowing them to acquire new skills within a condensed timeframe.

Daniel Putney is a full-time writer for ETHNews. He received his bachelor’s degree in English writing from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he also studied journalism and queer theory. In his free time, he writes poetry, plays the piano, and fangirls over fictional characters. He lives with his partner, three dogs, and two cats in the middle of nowhere, Nevada.

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