Devconnect Opening by Nathan Sexer

All right, welcome to Dev Connect. I've been leading the Devcon connect team this year and I'm very very excited and a little bit tired to welcome you at Defconnect. Um, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about why we're here. Um, and a few words about that. So, some of you might think that we're here because, well, the community has been asking it for many, many years.

Some of you might think that Vitalik is thinks that it's a great opportunity and therefore we're here for that. Even the president of Argentina himself thought it was a great idea. Well, this is not for that. It's because Argentina truly embraces Ethereum and Argentina truly embraces Ethereum because it solve real life problems. Um around 20% of Argentina own crypto and it places Argentina as the fourth top country in terms of crypto adoption.

Um fun fact we had we organized latv connect in Turkey. We organized uh last Devcon in Thailand and we're going to announce later this week that probably next Defcon will be somewhere in this chart. Stay tuned. Back to Argentina where 5 million of Argentinians use crypto on a daily basis. It's about 10% of the local population.

So it's big. Um, and you have some reason for that. Like it has been going through years and years of inflation, currency devaluation, and I've lived it myself. Like I was here earlier this year, and well, the dollars is 70% stronger than it used to be. Um, some of the reason is that uh they've been doing some money printing.

They had a lot of debts. I won't go too far into this like we have amazing speaker that will go over this this afternoon. Um but you had ma major crisis like the coralito in 2001 where all the Argentinians got their bank account frozen and those kind of events uh led everyone to understand the true value of crypto and ethereum and so for Argentinian Ethereum is a solution. It is a solution for accessibility first of all because Ethereum provides access to worldwide markets. You can access your data and markets anywhere in the world.

You only need internet and a mobile to access the network and you can access your money at any point in time when it's being limited by banks and local institutions. It's also a solution for the stability can provide right um for financial stability because most of the stable coins are based on Ethereum and well stable coins are stable against the dollar helpful when your local currency is crashing and also for technical stability right so like Ethereum is operational 247 and it does not go down like AWS banks or other layer ones that I won't name um and as a result you actually have a very vibrant ecosystem of um of builders of companies of developers. Uh those are some of the uh local projects built in Argentina. But as a matter of fact, you have uh developers from Argentina in all the major protocols. Uh you also have um major adoption from institutions.

You major companies like Combs got their approval to uh get into Argentina. And you have a lot of community adoption, a lot of local communities like Chrissy Mento, Ethereum Argentina, Sid Latam and others that have been very very active and involved into also making Devcon connect happen. Now Ethereum is 10 years old. It faced zero downtime and it is working at scale. The L2 thing is working.

vast majority of of on onchain assets are been issued on Ethereum uh on top of like in front of others and you have now hundreds of applications based on Ethereum across all these categories and so there is no better place than Aratina to host the first ever Ethereum world fair and this is what we want to show we want to show the applications of Ethereum for real so this is dev connect Argentina we will do a showcase of applications also crypto payments so we built an app for you to use any of your wallet, connect your external wallet and pay with crypto in the venue. We've onboarded all the merchants. Um, we'll organize more than 40 events within the venue. We also have community hubs. We have core workspaces, meeting rooms, discussion corners, and a lot of activations in the building.

You are currently in Aural. It's probably the most iconic venue in Argentina. It's in the heart of Palmo. You have a mix of indoor, outdoor, and is the host of the most famous um agricultural and book fair in the world. And it's been inspired by the 1893 Chicago's World Fair.

Uh imagine the feeling where well, you see a lot of pixel right here. But um when the first time um the city have been lit by electricity, we want to get that feeling again with Ethereum and promote uh the technology that it is. Ethereum is in production right now and this is what we want to show with this event. So it is um it is a demonstration of Ethereum uh as a new paradigm a new technology and we want to provide attendees with a touch and feel experience of what Ethereum is. So you'll be able to go around the venue and experiment with the apps of Ethereum.

So all the apps uh are our supporters. So we have about 80 supporters. We dispatch them into eight districts. You'll find them most of them into the uh green pavilion as well as the pista central and pavion 9 the cave. Um and I'll start with defy for you to experiment with like a way to lend borrow pay invest and swap and we'll showcase some of the most um the most important international and local projects as well.

But Ethereum is not only about financial applications. It's also about decentralized social media. It's allows you to own really your social graph. It allows you to do many more things also government's model and we you'll get to see all these amazing applications. Uh there we also have the hardware and wallet district to safely own and store your crypto privacy apps because properties of public blockchains like credible neutrality and censorship resistance like they need privacy for real to reach their real their full potential.

the gaming district to have fun on chain and explore autonomous worlds, the collectibles and art gallery, the L2 districts because Ethereum is for scaling and we have all or most a lot of L2s and including base our biggest supporter that we thank you that we thank very much and last but not least um we will explore the intersection between AI and Ethereum with the AI district. And I want to say I want to say also a few word about defcon and why it's different. I want to talk about specifically destin. Um it was the road to defcon that you might have experienced for last defcon. And with this program we supported more than 100 events across 14 countries.

And we did a lot of effort in making the the event as accessible as possible. And as a result we had more than 130 countries represented and about the half of them half of our attendees are from Argentina. We make it accessible also for the pricing but also like for locals and student but we also set up some programs like this visa policy the streamline streamlined visa process that we set up with the immigration office so that people from really all over the world could join. And so we we're very proud about this. Um, those are some pictures about the events.

Some Chris Mento, we had a bus roaming around Defcon connect around. Uh, we had a visa line at the airport. Maybe you've seen that. But yeah, those are cool pictures. Um, I want to talk briefly about all the events that will happen inside the venue.

So, as I've mentioned, we you will have more than 40 events happening um across DeFi, AI, privacy, a whole range of topics. It really is for everyone. We made sure to have content for developers but also newcomers, students, experts, uh builders for real. Um we have a track for university in Spanish throughout the week and we have truly content for everyone. Going over a few of them.

Um tomorrow you'll have Eve, the local event organized with all the local communities that I've mentioned earlier. Uh it will happen tomorrow. It will be in Spanish. It's a big event. Um it will happen here.

You also have a hackathon inside the venue organized by Ethereum Arantina. You have Defi today, the main DeFi event organized by the Ethereum Foundation on November 21st. Make sure not to miss this one. And last but not least, um a happy hour at the closing on Saturday, so where we'll make some announcements hopefully. And so on top of that, you have, as you might know, hundreds of side events all overina, all over Buenosarees um to enjoy fully the city.

Um I want to share the app as well. Uh this is your main resource for uh the event. So you have um all the information that you need for the event, including your tickets, you have the map, uh the quest, and the quests are a way for gamifying a bit of the experience across the world's fair. And last but not least, we built a way for you again to pay inside the venue. So please, if you don't have it yet, make sure to scan it and get it.

And we built it with many partners. So um to create to allow you to create a wallet with your email address and do many other things. Also, make sure not to miss all the other cool stuff that will happen inside uh Defcon. The community have the discussion corners, the lightning stage, uh the cinema stage, the soccer piece, uh the music stage. um food trucks and co-work and the food trucks you can pay with crypto.

And this is the map. So this is where you'll find everything that you need. But yeah, today is Ethereum day. Um it's a day about Ethereum with some of the sharpest minds in the field uh with speakers from the Ethereum Foundation, local Argentina builders, uh app founders, and much more. And so thank you again for coming today.

Please enjoy the event, enjoy today, enjoy Dev Connect. And without further ado, I would like to introduce our MC for the day, BG. The floor is yours.