Background
ETHDam 2023 a conference and hackathon dedicated to DeFi and Privacy was held in Amsterdam on the 20-21 in May 2023. Gathering 500 attendees and hackers to discuss, hack on the most relevant topics in the crypto industry. You can click here for all the pictures, videos and aftermovie.
ETHDam was organised as Devconnect 2022’s legacy, where CryptoCanal had organised ETHDay and DeFiDay. It was important for the organisers to keep the bar high and deliver an event of quality and value driven.
ETHDam used the quadratic fund to allocate 15K by allowing the ETHDam attendees and hackers to vote and fund their favourite project that was built during ETHDam. Projects that had hacked during the ETHDam hackathon, had to fill in a form to be able to enter the QF round. The All Stars Track projects were not included in the QF round.
TLDR and important links:
- Event website: https://www.ethdam.com/
- ETHDam - 20/21 May 2023 - 450 participants
- Organiser: https://www.cryptocanal.org/
- Contact team: Eléonore Blanc (eleonore@cryptocanal.org) and Federico Rava (federico@cryptocanal.org)
- Pool size: $15K
- Chain - Gnosis
- QF website - https://qf.ethdam.com/
Voting process:
ETHDam attendees and hackers, were distributed physical cards, by the ETHDam volunteers upon registration, which held their personal MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) Keys on the back of the card.
The physical cards, with individual MACI keys worked well, although some attendees did lose them and we individually had to give them a set of keys after the event (this only happened a handful of times).
We wanted to work with physical cards, rather than emails to make it more memorable and personable for attendees.
To be able to vote, a Gnosis chain faucet was set on the CryptoCanal Discord to distribute some gas for people to vote.
In addition, the QF team had a physical booth which ETHDam attendees could visit during the event, to learn more about the QF round and EF activities. Finally, Vee from the QF team, closed the event, to talk about Community Funding: a New Take on an Existing Concept - reminding all attendees that the power was in their hands to fund the future of the ETHDam hackathon projects.
Results recap:
- Total Number of individual voters: 48
- Voting timeline: As of the 20th of May (end of the hackathon) till 13th of June 2023
- Results announced on: 15th of June 2023 - via a Twitter announcement
- Funds distributed on: 24th of June 2023
Feedback and overall conclusion
Pro
- Giving power to the community (not only hackathon judges) to pick and decide who the winners should be.
Cons
- Technical and dependant on 1 person in the ETHDam team
- Can improve on communication, timeline, time management for the hackers to understand what to expect and when (pay them out as fast as possible)
- We wanted plastic cards, which were delayed in shipping, so last minute we had to print cardboard cards. It’s not an issue, as we can use them for next year! :)
