Neo will have a footprint at ETHDenver 2024, with members from the community hosting a side event and joining the judge’s panel. The Smart Economy Podcast has a side event offering users free beer for interacting with Neo blockchain assets. The event is a collaborative effort between ITEM Systems, DENVER WALLS, Neo Global Development, and Ratio Beerworks.

According to ETHDenver, the gathering is the “world’s largest web3 hackathon” and has been running since 2018. Each year, the innovation festival (colloquially termed by the event founders) has attracted more participants than the year prior. In 2023, ETHDenver recorded its largest attendance in history, with 15,000 unique visitors from 115 countries.

Side Event 2024

On Thursday, Feb. 29, The Smart Economy Podcast is coordinating a meetup at Ratio Beerworks, located in Denver’s River North neighborhood just north of downtown.

Source: ITEM Systems

Event attendees can scan two non-fungible item waypoints and redeem them for a free pint at the brewery. The tap and redeem process will all take place within the mobile phone’s web browser, so users will not need to download an app, save a seed phrase, or pre-load the wallet with GAS.

Users can tap 2 of the 17 NFI plaques that ITEM Systems installed during the DENVER WALLS 2023 international mural festival last September. DENVER WALLS comprises 17 murals scattered throughout the RiNo area of the city, some painted by local artists and others by international muralists brought in for the event.

Alongside its involvement with ETHDenver 2024, ITEM Systems will host an ongoing buy one, get one free campaign in collaboration with Ratio Beerworks. To participate, visit and tap into any 2 of the 17 murals created during DENVER WALLS. Then, present the claimable beer prompt to the staff at the brewery. Buy the first pint, and the second is free. This campaign is currently live and running until the end of March 2024.

Judges Panel

COZ CEO Tyler Adams has joined the ETHDenver 2024 judges panel. Adams will be a Community Judge, made up of a panel of 50 experts who evaluate technical demos of projects created in the BUIDLathon phase of ETHDenver. The Community Judges will filter through the hackathon projects, selecting the Top 15 to be presented at ETHDenver 2024’s closing ceremony.

Hackathon categories and prize amounts for the 2024 event are not currently available. However, in 2023, a total of 359 projects were submitted to the ETHDenver BUIDLathon, judged by 95 community judges, with the top 18 submissions advancing to the final pitches at the closing ceremony. Approximately US $698,192 in sponsor-paid bounties were distributed to winning teams. The hackathon categories included impact and public goods; NFT, gaming, and metaverse; DeFi; DAO and community; and infrastructure and scalability.

Neo Ecosystem History at ETHDenver

In the years since its inception, Denver’s premiere Ethereum-sprung festival has grown beyond its namesake blockchain and increasingly become inclusive of other ecosystems. Alongside this growth, Neo and NNT have also had an expanding role in the event.

At ETHDenver 2020, Neo Colorado hosted a meetup to introduce the Neo ecosystem to developers during BUIDL Week before the main conference. At the end of the event, NEO was distributed to attendees, 80% of whom had never used the Neo blockchain or COZ’s Neon Wallet before.

For ETHDenver 2023, The Smart Economy Podcast released two episodes dedicated to the innovation festival. The first episode was with ETHDenver community steward Derrek Coleman and focused on the opportunities for developers leading up to the event. The second was a culmination of several short interviews with a diverse group of people on the ground and full-time in the blockchain space.

The registration for The Smart Economy Podcast event can be found at the link below:
https://lu.ma/SmartEconPodETHDenver

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