Skulls and bones stacked at the Catacombs of Paris
AFP / Patrick Kovarik
PARIS – About 65 feet below ground in Paris is a labyrinth of centuries-old tunnels known as the Catacombs, which house the skeletons of about six million Parisians. Legend has it that the victims of the plague consisted of several bones lying along the corridor.
This week, it turned into a technocratic cave with neon lights for top ethereum programmers to party until 4am. The spell “leave no trace” so everything disappeared after sunrise.
“It’s very illegal but also very crypto-currency,” explained one of about 100 party attendees, who declined to be identified for fear of alarmed Paris police.
She also said the trip was one of the funniest things she’s ever done in her life. The expedition consisted of ducking under fences, wriggling down caves, following a trail of old railroad tracks, wading through muddy and thigh-deep water – and a bit of cobblestone.
“There was a gap in the rocks, and I didn’t think about it. I just said ‘Oh, we’re stopping here,’ and then a human jumped out,” explained the attendee.
Walking to Catacombs involves wading through water at one point
Anonymous party participants
Multiple detachments gathered throughout Paris’ 14th arrondissement on Saturday night to sneak into the underground landmark. Each team is assembled through an anonymous Telegram group and assigned its own entrance.
“You have a link and password for a survey form, you basically answered some questions and gave your Telegram. If you are selected for this adventure, you will be added to the Telegram group. with some other people you don’t know, and the guide visited the chain that day to tell you a meeting point,” the attendee recounted.
Another party attendee turned on their fitness tracker to map the distance and found they had gone four and a half miles underground.
All paths converge to a large central cave where DJs, neon bars, candles and people are dancing.
The only downside to an underground protest being held in a mass grave?
“People started thinking, ‘Hey, where am I going?’,” said another party attendee.
Welcome to the Ethereum Community Conference, an annual event that brings the world’s top developers and cryptographers to the City of Light. The official event kicks off on Tuesday morning, but key players in the space have descended before their Paris days for ancillary events like the Metaverse Summit and a Parisian-style salon called The future of content in Web3. And for parties like La Degen and Raave.
Photo taken while on the way to the secret, underground party in the Catacombs of Paris
Anonymous party participant
EthCC: ‘Not Bitcoin Miami’
EthCC is in some ways the opposite of Bitcoin MiamiThe highest configurable cryptocurrency conference.
While Bitcoin Miami boasts tens of thousands of participants, EthCC has intentionally capped tickets at 2,000 to keep it small and intimate. CNBC spoke to nearly a dozen people on the ground in Paris who couldn’t buy tickets before the event sold out, but came to town anyway just to take part in all the side events.
“They intentionally kept it tailored and small, because they could easily sell more tickets,” said Samantha Yap, who is helping coordinate EthCC.
The event comes at a difficult time for the crypto industry. Big names like Three Arrows Capital and lenders like Celsius and Voyager Digital have all filed for bankruptcy, and the direct impact has been brutal, shaking general confidence in the sector – and placing raises the question of the current state of the decentralized finance (or DeFi) ecosystem.
“I think a lot of projects are completely shoddy,” said developer Max Saal, about the many companies that succeeded in 2021 amid the token price boom. “It’s a deterrent to people who are…really building something real.”
Meanwhile, ethereum is also on a multi-year upgrade, which will be the most significant overhaul since the digital currency was launched nearly a decade ago. There are many threats with this implementation.
Cryptocurrencies like ethereum and bitcoin often criticized for the mining process to create new coins. Both are currently using a so-called proof-of-work mining model, where miners race to solve complex mathematical equations using a series of powerful computers.
Ethereum has been working to move from an energy-intensive proof-of-work approach to securing the network to a proof-of-stake model, which requires users to leverage their existing ether cache as a means to verify transactions and mint new tokens. This requires less energy and will translate into faster transactions.
The transition has been consistently pushed back over the past few years because of major flaws in the implementation. But one a series of costume rehearsals over the past few months already showing promising signs that all will be well when the so-called “consolidation” occurs in September.
If things don’t go well, it’s questionable what impact that could have on digital assets on a broader scale. Get DeFi, Aim reinventing the traditional financial system like a bank, but with cryptocurrencies. They mainly run on the ethereum blockchain. It’s not clear what will happen to large groups of the DeFi ecosystem if there are any hiccups with the massive transition to proof-of-stake later this year.
But the vibe on the ground at EthCC is extremely positive, with most people excited that the bear market means no spoilers as there are no quick and easy profits.
Dani Osorio, who has spent many years working in infrastructure and developer relations and organizations EthDenver This year’s eariler conference told CNBC that there are many blockchain and crypto conferences around the world, but EthCC is the only one that focuses on technical participants.
“You will see CTOs, technical founders, cryptographers and protocol researchers,” Osorio said. That was unheard of.
Felice Schimmel represents TikTok celebrities, and she began her downfall of web3 in November 2021. She traveled to Paris to better understand the conversations happening between insiders, specifically. is when cryptocurrencies and platforms become more international – and when regulation becomes more of an international conversation.
“[Web3] gives you the opportunity to own your fans and followers, allowing you to connect with them without having a platform in the middle of that conversation. “
Even a Bohemian prince from a 600-year-old aristocratic family in the Czech Republic couldn’t win a ticket in time before it sold out. But William Lobkowicz — who spent last year minting his family’s collection of 20,000 cultural objects in the form of NFTs — flew in from Prague to talk shopping with some of the brightest minds in the blockchain ecosystem. .
“I come from an industry that is struggling and needs drastic change for sustainable and long-term development,” he told CNBC. “What if the usual no longer works?”
People don’t talk about price charts or markets at EthCC, but ether is currently gathering after a period of discounts. Ether is a token that is derived from the ethereum blockchain, and it is up nearly 40% in the past five days, after a protracted plunge that saw it drop almost 70% from its peak last November.
