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Hackathon teams present their projects at ETH Dublin, with one team explaining how their solution ... More addresses doom-scrolling and screen-time goals.
Kate Lawlor
Paul Dylan-Ennis, an Irish academic, sits in front of the stage next to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. They are sat in a Dublin cellar, flanked by pictures of padron peppers and tomatoes. A professor at University College Dublin, Ennis does not look like a stereotypical academic. He is covered in tattoos, including a prominent Ethereum logo inked on his skin. As the conference unfolds around him, he finds himself thinking about a sci-fi essay he once wrote exploring what the world would look like if everyone lived as sovereign individuals. His thought experiment asked: what if we took the ideals that the crypto community holds sacred and made them universal?
The world we live in today would have seemed like strange science fiction to many of the people who attended ETH Berlin in 2018, when I first saw Buterin in person. Or at least I think I saw him, because he may have been wearing a fur suit during what was then a fringe gathering of crypto enthusiasts. But here’s an even more sci-fi twist: many of the hackathon projects at ETH Dublin were built using AI coding tools that didn't exist seven years ago, creating better minimum viable products faster than anyone could have imagined.
What strikes me about Ennis’s reflection is the apparent lack of recognition from many in crypto circles that, in many ways, this vision has already materialized. Yet here they are, trapped in an odd dynamic of discussing the same topics they debated seven years ago, seemingly oblivious to how dramatically reality has shifted since then.
The Adoption Users Deserved, Not What Enthusiasts Wanted
Paul Dylan-Ennis (left) and Vitalik Buterin during a talk at ETH Dublin, discussing crypto's ... More evolution in the venue's atmospheric stone cellar.
Boaz Sobrado
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