DevConnect 2025: Inside The Biggest Ethereum Event in History

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the Blockchain revolution.

**Nathan Sexer** (0:05)
Today we're here with Nathan Sexer. Mechamon Nathan, I've been leading the DevConnect team this year, and I'm very, very excited to welcome you at DevConnect. We wanted to organize an event that could give a touch and feel experience of what Ethereum could feel like in the daily life. And again, there is no better place than Argentina to do that because people use crypto, stablecoins and Ethereum on a daily basis. In Argentina, you can see people using crypto. We estimate that about 5 million people are using on a daily basis and 20% in the country own crypto. So you can pay with crypto and everywhere in the venue with stablecoins or ETH. It is the biggest event EF ever organized in terms of attendance. We've almost now reached 20,000 attendees.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:51)
Hey Nathan, what's going on?

**Nathan Sexer** (0:52)
Good, how are you?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:55)
Yeah, we're here at DevConnect. It's been a pretty insane week. Lots of announcements, lots of new directional focuses, I think, and narratives.
What's your main takeaway from this week? What are the things that struck you as most interesting and most surprising?

**Nathan Sexer** (1:13)
All right. So I guess I'm biased towards the take of an event organizer, deep down into the weeds of organizing an event. So I've been focusing on organizing this event and making it as good as possible. So I'm less into, I don't know so much about the side events, even though I know there are a few hundreds happening inside Buenos Aires. I've seen quite a lot of announcements. So I think there's a lot of great things happening currently these days. Like every day, there's a big announcement. I've seen Polygon, I think, Trustless announced something. The Privacy Wallet by EF got released. I mean, there is a lot of new releases, a lot of new products coming out. So this is what I feel. But again, like I'm deep down into the weeds of Organizing DevConnect, which I think is a success for now, you tell me.
But yeah, we are now more than halfway through and a few days left.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:05)
This episode has brought you my Gnosis, building the open Internet one block at a time. Gnosis was founded in 2015 and it's grown from one of Ethereum's earliest projects into a powerful ecosystem for open user-owned finance. Gnosis is also the team behind products that had become core to my business and that of so many others like Safe and Cowswap. At the center is Gnosis Chain. It's a low fee layer one with zero downtime in seven years and is secured by over 300,000 validators. It's the foundation for real world financial applications like Gnosis Pay and Circles. All of this is governed by Gnosis DAO, a community run organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, fund new projects and even run a validator from home. So if you're building a Web3 or you're just curious about what financial freedom can look like, start exploring gnosis.io.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:57)
Can you give us an idea of the scale of the event? Because it's an absolutely massive venue. How many people are here? How many talks? What kind of percentage of Argentinians and so on?

**Nathan Sexer** (3:11)
Okay. So it is the biggest event EF ever organized in terms of scale of what we've been doing in terms of attendance, in terms of complexity and in terms of, I think, visibility in the country and in the area. In terms of scale of the events, so we're doing within the male building, which is very central to Buenos Aires. We are doing 40 events in Paris. So we're coordinating between 40 different event organizers, organizing a few events ourselves, but most of the events are independently organized. We also have a co-work inside the main venue, indoor, outdoor, and we organize the massive fair, the Ethereum World Fair, where we have about 100 applications getting showcased. So it's been a lot of coordination with all the apps, the creation. And so we have three main pavilions, and again, a lot of things happening. So in terms of operations, it has been very big. In terms of attendance, we've almost now reached 20,000 attendees. So our ticket claims.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:12)
2,000?

**Nathan Sexer** (4:13)
20,000.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:14)
That came through the doors here at DefConnect.

**Nathan Sexer** (4:17)
Tickets claimed. And I think we are now more than 60, 70% on day four of attendance. So people that claim their ticket that showed up at the venue. Something that is cool is that every event that is happening inside the venue requires a DefConnect ticket. So it's also like you have a DefConnect ticket as a pass to enjoy the fair, to go to the fair, you enjoy the food, you enjoy the free spaces, you go to the event. Some require additional sign-up, but most of them are free. So the DefConnect ticket gives you a lot of things. And we've been coordinating all the AV, the production, and many things for these events. So in addition to these events, plus all the World's Fair with applications, we also have like a football pitch, meeting rooms, a CMS stage, and many things happening inside the venue. So yeah, the biggest today.