In spite of it all, the vibes were indomitable.
Between the Thursday Schelling Point mini-conference and the Sunday ETHDenver closing ceremony, Ethereum’s price fell as much as 15%. Meanwhile, Russian military equipment and personnel continued amassing on the Ukrainian border, setting the stage for what has, as of today, become the largest land conflict in Europe since WWII. Just after the event formally ended, a $1.7 million NFT hack briefly appeared to be a wider OpenSea vulnerability that could have wiped out the fortunes of dozens, if not hundreds of those gathered.
And yet, perhaps the most common conversation I had with attendees was jovial and conspiratorial: “Do you think Banteg is here?”
The pseudonymous purple bunny avatar was the most popular ETHDenver attendee who wasn’t actually in attendance. Like many, I was shocked when I saw that Yearn Finance, Banteg’s project, was hosting a booth at the conference. The OG “yield vault” is one of DeFi’s largest and most notorious platforms, and has a sprawling history as rich in innovation as it is in controversy. It was born in the COVID years, is entirely online-native, and a booth – a classic corporate fixture – felt at odds with Yearn’s rebellious ethos.
Read more: ‘Let’s Not Be Bitcoin’: Yearn Finance Considers Minting $200M in New YFI Tokens
On Twitter, Banteg is an outspoken cypherpunk waging a one-rabbit campaign to keep DeFi weird and out of the hands of “the suits.” They’re known as much for sharing their (vast) hentai collection as they are for waxing poetic about the revolutionary potential of DAOs. In many ways they serve as a figurehead for Yearn, embodying all of its ambition and weirdness.
Bringing any kind of internet-based culture into the real world is both awkward and inescapably uncool.
In Denver, I saw at least a dozen different nametags proclaiming its bearer as “Banteg” as everyone took a turn at playing Ethereum’s own pathological, porn-posting Spartacus in place of the real thing.
I thought it was a fun bit, and one which benefited from some extra oomph courtesy of a semi-staged heist, and eventual recovery, of two hand-painted dakimakura pillows – a sting operation ostensibly organized by Banteg themself.
Reactions to the stunt on social media were decidedly mixed, however.
Yearn’s presence at the conference struggled with the painful reality that bringing any kind of internet-based culture into the real world is both awkward and inescapably uncool. While this is most acute among chuds wearing Bored Ape hoodies and the like, the rule nonetheless also applies to DeFi degens.
Growing pains
In DeFi’s case, facing an awkward entrance into the meatspace is also starting to look like an inevitability. Indeed, the fabled DeFi Summer – when the notion of DeFi surged for the first time from an oddity to a true financial vertical – was back in 2020, the first summer of COVID lockdown.
Until now, DeFi has thrived in a cloistered,…
Read More: finance.yahoo.com