Crypto’s event scene didn’t come from nowhere. The hackathons, summits, and mega-conferences we take for granted today trace a lineage back to Web2 startup battles, open-source sprints, and even hacker club meetups. That history matters because it explains both the energy and the dysfunction we see today: why people love hackathons but complain about conference fatigue, why Consensus feels like Davos while ETHDenver feels like Burning Man with Solidity.
This week, we break down the origins, the turning points, and the state of the union for Web3 events, and what’s next.
The Web2 DNA of Web3 Events
Developer Conferences → Devcon
Steve Jobs and Apple’s WWDC and Google I/O (2008) set the model: big keynotes, tech roadmaps, live demos.
Ethereum copied that playbook in 2014 with “Devcon 0” in Berlin. It became the must-attend annual summit for Ethereum devs, just as I/O became for Android.
Other chains followed: Solana’s Breakpoint, Polkadot’s Decoded, Cosmos Gateway.
Hackathons → ETHGlobal
The term “hackathon” came from the 1999 OpenBSD coding sprint in Calgary. No stages, no sponsors, just devs in a room shipping code.
By mid-2000s, Yahoo Hack Day and TechCrunch Disrupt popularized hackathons as competitions with prizes.
ETHGlobal (launched 2017) plugged directly into this lineage: 48-hour builds, prize bounties, and VC scouts circling. CryptoKitties famously came out of ETHWaterloo.
Grassroots Meetups → Bitcoin Meetups
BarCamp (2005) pioneered the unconference: open agenda, anyone can speak, pure peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.
That spirit carried into early Bitcoin meetups circa 2011, dozen people in a café debating mining rigs and libertarian politics.
Today, DAOs run their own unconferences (like DAOist), echoing the BarCamp “no spectators, only participants” ethos.
Startup Summits → Consensus
DEMO Conference (1991) and TechCrunch Disrupt (2010) created the template: startup launches on stage, media + VC audience, hype cycles born overnight.
CoinDesk’s Consensus (2015) imported that model into crypto. By 2018 it drew 8,500+ people paying $2,000 a ticket. Think Davos with tokens.
Token Summit, NFT.NYC, and hundreds more now mimic that format, for better or worse.
Web3 didn’t invent its event culture, it remixed proven Web2 formats with crypto’s values: openness, global reach, and speculation.
The Boom, the Crash, the Recovery
Bull Market Era (2021–2022): Hype on Steroids
Bitcoin Miami 2022 drew 35,000 people. NFT.NYC sprawled across Times Square. Parties with superstar DJs were common.
Social media was flooded with FOMO: “NFT NYC is lit… partying with millionaires.”
Gripes: $1,000 tickets, overcrowded halls, cringe marketing (remember “Doop Snogg” at NFT.NYC?).
Bear Market Era (2023): The Hangover
Bitcoin 2023 had under half the prior year’s attendance (~15k). Consensus dropped to ~15k too.
Events cut the fluff: no DJs, no hype. Panels turned to regulation, taxes, and post-FTX autopsies.
NFT.NYC 2023 felt empty: 6,000 people in the cavernous Javits Center.
Sentiment: cautious, sometimes frustrated, but resilient. “Bear markets are for builders” became the mantra.
Rebound (2024–2025): Guarded Optimism
Consensus 2024 bounced back with 15k attendees and a “crypto’s back” vibe. Google Cloud and big banks sponsored sessions.
Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville drew 22k but felt more like a political rally than a tech summit, Trump and RFK Jr. keynoted, MAGA hats in the merch hall.
Asia surged: Korea Blockchain Week 2024 hit 61,000+ attendees. TOKEN2049 Singapore became a global magnet.
Vibe: more upbeat, but also more skeptical, people demand substance, not just hype.
Hackathons: From Spark to Friction
The Boom
Hackathons remain beloved: ETHDenver 2023 hit 30,000+ attendees. DoraHacks alone hosted 24 blockchain hackathons in Q1 2024, distributing $4.4M in prizes.
The culture is infectious: free Red Bull, all-nighters, memes, and real friendships formed.
The Reality Check
Studies show most hackathon projects don’t survive. One 2022 chain hackathon with $430k in prizes had zero winning projects still active a year later.
Many teams chase bounties across chains, recycling boilerplate projects. Critics call them “hackathon tourists.”
The result: hype during the weekend, silence after.
The Debate
Defenders argue hackathons are training grounds—failure is part of the funnel.
Critics say ecosystems waste money if there’s no follow-up.
The solution: post-hackathon support. Grants, accelerators, mentorship. When ecosystems do this, teams actually stick around.
The Community’s Gripes
Across both conferences and hackathons, enthusiasts voice the same frustrations:
Cost vs. Value: Why pay $1,000 for talks you could watch on free Twitter Spaces?
Conference Fatigue: Too many events, too many panels repeating the same content.
Echo Chambers: Maximalist or politicized events alienate outsiders.
Logistics: Bad Wi-Fi, overpriced coffee, or yes…lack of deodorant at hackathons.
But there’s also enduring love:
The magic of hallway conversations.
The thrill of seeing a new protocol unveiled live.
The community spirit of bear market hackathons.
What This History Teaches Us
Formats repeat. Web3 events didn’t emerge from nowhere—they’re adaptations of proven models.
Culture shifts with markets. Bull = hype and celebrities. Bear = builders and sober talks. Recovery = cautious optimism.
Value creation vs. spectacle is the core tension. Hackathons and summits can either spark real innovation or become shallow hype cycles. Which path depends on what organizers do after the event.
It also teaches us we can create our own new modalities that take what works and kick the stuff we don't like to the curb.
Outlook: The Next Cycle of Events
Looking ahead, three trends will shape Web3 events:
Hybrid by default: Post-COVID, streaming and virtual participation are table stakes. Expect more events to lean global, not local.
AI convergence: Just as Web2 hackathons mashed APIs, expect AI-crypto hackathons to dominate the next cycle.
Mature metrics: Ecosystems will start measuring event ROI not by headcount or prize money, but by what sticks, projects that raise, launch, and grow after the event.
The challenge: keeping the energy of open hackathons and meetups while avoiding the empty spectacle of $2,000 ticket conferences. The opportunity: build events that combine the best of both worlds, Google I/O-style polish with BarCamp-style participation.
Crypto events began in borrowed hotel rooms and hacker cafés, long before Consensus turned into a Wall Street summit. They borrowed their formats from Web2 but layered on crypto’s unique DNA: decentralization, speculation, and community obsession.
Now, in 2025, as the industry claws out of its bear-market hangover, the question isn’t whether events matter. They clearly do. The real question is: will the next cycle of Web3 events create lasting value, or just another round of neon lights and boring stages?
Beyond the Old Models: BattleCodes
If Web3 events were born out of Web2’s playbook, the next cycle has to break that mold. Conferences can’t just be pay-to-network expos. Hackathons can’t just be weekend prize hunts with no follow-through. The industry needs new paradigms that blend education, competition, and long-term value creation.
That’s where Cracked Labs comes in. Our flagship series, BattleCodes, is designed to flip the script. Think of it as the fusion of hackathon energy, esports theatrics, and DeFi mechanics:
Head-to-head coding battles with real stakes, streamed globally.
Transparent scoreboards so every decision is public, accountable, and dramatic.
Sponsor-driven drafts and challenges that inject real-world use cases into the competition.
Post-event pipelines to ensure winning teams don’t just take prize money and vanish, they get integrated into ecosystems and backed to keep building.
BattleCodes isn’t another conference, and it isn’t a hackathon with a new coat of paint. It’s a new format entirely, engineered to solve the very problems people have with Web3 events: too expensive, too performative, too shallow. By making competition the content and outcomes the metric, we’re pushing event culture forward toward something more…fun and engaging to people not just in the web3 space.
For us, this isn’t just about one event in New York or Seoul. It’s about creating a replicable new layer of Web3 event infrastructure, one that developers, traders, investors, and ecosystems actually get value from.
The first arena is BattleCodes: Defi Trading this fall. Winner-take-all. Global stage. No panel fluff. Just code, capital, and drama.
Ecosystem Headlines
1. The Rise and Fall of Crypto Conferences
Bull markets turned conferences into carnivals, Bitcoin Miami 2022 drew 35,000 and NFT.NYC packed Times Square. Then came the bear: 2023 events halved in size, sponsors cut budgets, and panels turned into regulatory post-mortems. The rebound in 2024–25 is real, but veterans now ask: are pricey tickets worth it when Twitter Spaces are free?
🔗 https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/05/29/consensus-2024-recap
2. Hackathons: Weekend Sparks, Short Lifespans
Hackathons feel like the purest energy in Web3, ETHDenver 2023 set records with 30,000+ participants. But research shows most winning projects die within a year, often abandoned GitHub repos after prize money clears. The community debate is shifting: hackathons need post-event scaffolding, not just weekend hype.
🔗 https://blockworks.co/news/web3-hackathons-study
3. The Political Turn of Bitcoin Conferences
Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville felt less like a dev summit, more like a political rally. Trump and RFK Jr. headlined. MAGA hats outnumbered laptops. For some, it was validation; for others, a cringe caricature of what Bitcoin events used to stand for. The split shows how fragile event culture is when hijacked by outside narratives.
🔗 https://coindesk.com/bitcoin-2024-recap
4. Asia Becomes the Event Powerhouse
Korea Blockchain Week 2024 crossed 61,000 attendees. TOKEN2049 Singapore has become the global anchor for institutional crypto networking. While U.S. events wrestle with politics and costs, Asia’s scale shows where the industry is growing fastest—and where ecosystems should be planting flags.
🔗 https://cryptoslate.com/kbw-2024-attendance
🛠 Builder’s Corner
Supafund — Spartan Labs own AI-driven intake and scoring engine for founders. Perfect for teams graduating from hackathons who need structured evaluation and funding pathways.
🔗 https://supafund.xyz/
Cracked Labs Spotlight
We’ve seen what conferences and hackathons got right, and wrong. Now we’re building the next paradigm. Something more intimate, more fun. Taking the things we love about crypto, nightlife, sport, all the things that bring us joy in this crazy world and then put it in a blender to create BattleCodes.
BattleCodes: Prediction Markets, Cage Style
Date: Oct 7, 2025 — OS NYC, Lower Manhattan
Prize: $10,000 winner-take-all
Format: Live, head-to-head trading battles, streamed globally. No panels. No fluff. Just code, capital, and drama.
Draft Day: Sponsors pick teams. Challenges are real DeFi use cases, not weekend toy apps.
Apply to compete 👉 airtable.com/appqUkw6HSQ4h5thp/pagPrif695zlemHlF/form
Join the crowd 👉 luma.com/9y3zbnry
This is our move beyond Web2 formats. We’re not cloning Google I/O or TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re rewriting the rules of Web3 events. Join us and say you were there in 10 years.
👀 Alpha Leak / Teaser
BattleCodes is just the first arena. Next year, we’re scaling it globally, two online “labs” feeding into an in-person World Tour. Think hackathon intensity + esports reach + real DeFi stakes.
Keep your eyes on the scoreboard.