SAN FRANCISCO, CA - On August 28, 2022, SNZ together with De University of Ethereum (UETH) co-hosted the "Ethereum a New Era", one of the last monumental Ethereum events prior to the Merge, at the Chase Center in San Francisco. Over 1,400 attendees gathered to gain insights from an all-star lineup of speakers, including the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin; executive director of the Ethereum Foundation Aya Miyaguchi; core researcher Justin Drake, Dankrad Feist, Barry Whitehat; Co-founder of Scroll Haichen Shen; Product Manager & Blockchain Researcher at StarkWare Ariel Elperin; Founder of 0xPARC Brian Gu; Director of UETH Cy Li; and Partner of SNZ Keith Chen.
Chase Center, the home venue of the NBA Championship Team – the Golden State Warriors
Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder of Ethereum, performed a tunnel entrance in a green dinosaur costume. During his keynote speech, Vitalik outlined Ethereum's top priority post-Merge: to increase the blockchain's scalability. He also highlighted that EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding, would be the biggest EIP after the Merge. Later, he moderated a panel discussion on the Ethereum Foundation's role within the Ethereum ecosystem, featuring Aya Miyaguchi, Justin Drake, and Dankrad Feist. They discussed the importance of maintaining a decentralized yet coordinated structure within the ecosystem.
Keith Chen, Partner of SNZ, subsequently delivered a keynote speech that provided insights into the company’s Ethereum journey. The founders of SNZ have been supporting Vitalik Buterin and the development of Ethereum since 2015 in Asia with a few other friends and communities, by hosting a series of “Smart Contract Salon” with Vitalik in Shanghai from 2015 to 2016; and co-launching the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) in China with other western peers in 2017; deploying funds to core infrastructure projects in the Ethereum ecosystem.
"SNZ is committed to supporting the growth and development of the Ethereum ecosystem," said Keith Chen, partner of SNZ. "We were thrilled to see such a fantastic turnout for Ethereum a New Era and are proud to have sponsored such an important event."
Additionally, Keith announced the official launch of the new office in the Silicon Valley and SNZ Fund I, which will invest heavily in Ethereum ecosystem, ranging from infrastructure, middleware to applications.
The overall conference gave the Ethereum community helpful guidance on the key visions and challenges Ethereum Foundation is focusing on, credibly neutrality, decentralization, scaling with danksharding and rollup solutions, and unlocking further potential for decentralized applications with the help from latest zero-knowledge techniques.
SNZ also organized an afterparty post the main conference. Our portfolio companies, ecosystem partners and researchers from Ethereum Foundation continued discussing these topics while enjoying the stunning view of San Francisco Bay.
The organizers are thankful to all the attendees for participating in the most significant Ethereum event in San Francisco, as well as the Ethereum Foundation, event sponsor and collaborators who made it all possible. The title sponsor SNZ have been active for community building, incubation and investment, as one of the earliest backers of Ethereum. SNZ will continue to be a long-term investor and supporter for the Ethereum ecosystem.
Appendix I: Speaker Highlight and Agenda
Full speech recordings can be found at: https://ueth.org/media
