Over 1,300 attendees from around the world virtually gathered earlier this month (June 1-3) for the inaugural Mainnet by Messari event, focusing on the crypto industry’s past, present, and future of developmental progress and pain points from leading thinkers and builders including: Meltem Demirors (CoinShares), Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures), CZ (Binance), Balaji Srinivasan (Nakamoto, CoinBase), and Neha Narula (MIT, Digital Currency Initiative).
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Over 200 of the industry’s leading executives and builders participated as speakers from some of the top companies and projects including: Fidelity Digital Assets, Ark Investment, Paxos Global, Circle, Bitfinex, Lightning Labs, Kraken, Maker Foundation, Coinbase, Ledger, Chainalysis, Bison Trails, Bloq, Binance, and more. Additionally, the event raised over $60K for COVID-19 relief efforts via non-profit partners, Binance Charity and The Giving Block.
As the talks centered on many themes related to creating free, equitable systemic financial, and technological changes to our world, the prevailing global call for racial and governmental reform ignited around the globe sparked much debate, discussion, and unity on the need for innovative advancements now more than ever.
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A few noteworthy talks included:
- A heated debate took place during the session “Blockchain Analysis or Financial Surveillance” between Alex Gladstein (Human Rights Foundation) and Dr. Tom Robinson (Elliptic), inspiring Gladstein’s posit to Robinson, “I think you should quit your job and go and work for the good guys.”
- During the presentation “Bitcoin 2020+” with Elizabeth Stark (Lightning Labs) and Neha Narula (MIT, Digital Currency Initiative), Narula sparked Twitter fodder when she questioned the need for institutional support of the movement vs. use of the people, stating “Mainstream adoption doesn’t mean institutional adoption. To me, it means people–everyday people–are actually using this network.”
- During her keynote “The Anxiety of Influence: The Ideological Contradictions of Crypto-Governance,” Meltem Demirors (CoinShares) related the need to be different and pull away from the inequalities and power-driven decision-making structures that have been seen to go so awry over the course of history, and more specifically in recent weeks and days.
- Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures) thoughtfully discussed income and wealth inequality, opportunity attainment, and other themes of the scarcity of attention to valuable, curated knowledge as a society to drive impactful change during his fireside chat with Ryan Selkis (Messari), “The World After Capital.”
Videos of select presentations will be posted on Messari.io/Mainnet2020 for attendee and Messari Pro subscriber access, and on the Messari YouTube channel in the coming days.
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