Ethereal Summit 2019 showcases boom across the Ethereum ecosystem

Founders, investors, creatives, and technologists converge at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn to accelerate the development and adoption of blockchain technology

by ConsenSysMay 10, 2019

NEW YORK, NY – Friday, ConsenSys kicked off its annual conference, the Ethereal Summit, hosting 104 speakers, 67 talks, including 13 panels, on 2 stages over 2 days.

Over the duration of Ethereal, ConsenSys and its portfolio companies are set to announce nearly a dozen project launches, platform upgrades, client success stories and enterprise partnerships, built on the Ethereum blockchain.

“ConsenSys is committed to its focus, building core Ethereum infrastructure, developer tools and advanced solutions to meet the ever-increasing demand for blockchain technology,” said ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-creator Joe Lubin. “But at Ethereal, we take the opportunity to look up from our work, gather the foremost experts in the community and deeply discuss the technological advances we see coming to fruition across industry verticals.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

OpenLaw and Loan Syndication Trade Association (LSTA)
In one such vertical, financial services, ConsenSys is announcing two partnerships, set to simplify the way financial institutions can streamline commercial relationships. In collaboration with the Loans Syndication Trade Association (LSTA), ConsenSys’ OpenLaw will unveil a pilot to explore how a complex revolving credit facility could be automated with blockchain technology to streamline both the formation of complex syndicates and the creation of marketplace lenders, to trade tokenized interests in those syndicates.

ConsenSys Legal and Latham & Watkins
Additionally, ConsenSys’ in-house legal team, in collaboration with global law firm Latham & Watkins LLP, will announce the launch of the Automated Convertible Note powered by an OpenLaw-based document generator to help startups raise capital with customizable market standard terms and optional digital token provisions.

GridPlus
In consumer hardware, ConsenSys backed GridPlus will announce the pre-sale of its Lattice1 hardware wallet, which utilizes multiple chipsets, secure environments, an anti-tamper mesh, segmented WiFi connectivity, and physically unclonable functions (PUFs) to provide a sophisticated key management solution, achieving greater levels of security than any hardware wallet built for the blockchain ecosystem to date.

ConsenSys Diligence and Amberdata
MythX, a subsidiary of ConsenSys Diligence that brings advanced security analysis into development environments, detecting common Solidity vulnerabilities and EVM bytecode vulnerabilities, will announce a partnership with Amberdata. By integrating with MythX Platform API to verify changes in contracts deployed to Ethereum MainNet, Amberdata automates the discovery of vulnerabilities, version mismatches, behavioral or transactional anomalies in its real-time data analytics and monitoring platform.

Pegasys and LiquidShare
PegaSys, the Enterprise Ethereum protocol engineering group at ConsenSys, will announce its partnership with LiquidShare, a European fintech venture using blockchain to improve SME access to capital markets and the transparency and security of post-trade operations using blockchain. With the financial support of its shareholders — AFS Group, BNP Paribas, CACEIS, Caisse des Dépôts, Euroclear, Euronext, S2IEM and Société Générale — LiquidShare will launch a production-grade system on PegaSys’ Pantheon, a Java-based implementation of Ethereum. Pantheon enables LiquidShare to achieve the scalability and finality it requires, while complying with stringent regulatory environments.

Kaleido
Kaleido, an award-winning SaaS platform for building and running live blockchain networks, is bringing together a full stack of tools and technologies from across the Ethereum ecosystem into its plug and play Marketplace and is announcing the new additions of Open Law team plan to automate legal agreements, Rhombus for off chain data feeds, Truffle and Metamask as new development tooling options, and support for PegaSys’ Pantheon 1.1, a Java-based, enterprise version of the Ethereum client. With this announcement, Kaleido now supports all popular Ethereum protocols for enterprise usage. Kaleido Co-Founder Sophia Lopez will be speaking Friday at 9:40 AM, sharing the expertise gained through helping enterprises deploy live blockchain consortia networks in production with some of the world’s most recognizable brands, like T-Mobile, Kroger, Heineken, Sony, Fox, Citi, ING, and many others.

Rhombus and Raincoat
Rhombus, which develops oracles to connect Ethereum with real-world data, will announce a partnership with Raincoat to offer low-cost hurricane insurance to residents of Puerto Rico. Rhombus and Raincoat automatically determine whether a hurricane has struck, using wind speed sensors distributed throughout the island. If the sensors detect a hurricane, users receive a payout that same day—no claims process, no slimy insurance agents—it’s all automatic. Jeff Rosen, co-founder and COO of Rhombus, will discuss this technology on May 10 at 3:50 PM on the Workshop stage.

Alethio
Alethio, an advanced blockchain data, analytics and visualization platform, will announce the release of its new aleth.io platform and its updated public Ethereum API product. The updated aleth.io platform integrates Alethio’s advanced, UI-focused explorer with the team’s recently refined Monitoring & Reporting capabilities. Users can easily monitor any deployed smart contract or external account based on custom rule-based alerts. Users can also run reports to obtain historical aggregated blockchain datasets (in excel or .csv format) based on custom queries. The entire platform is also deployable on private and permissioned blockchain networks, providing enterprise customers with much needed advanced analytics for their blockchain deployments. Alethio Co-Lead Christian Crowley will showcase the platform on May 10 at 11:00 AM on the Workshop stage.

Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio
R/GA Ventures, Moda, Umpqua Bank, Portland State University, Oregon Health & Science University, Business Oregon, ConsenSys and blockchain research firm Smith + Crown, are pleased to announce the launch of the Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio (OEBVS): the first program of its kind designed to build a blockchain-based ecosystem, and position Oregon’s businesses and institutions to further compete globally. Read the full press release here.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS:

ConsenSys Grants

ConsenSys Grants, launched in 2018, awards grants ranging from $10,000-$25,000 to projects bolstering the rapidly accelerating Ethereum ecosystem. Grants are awarded based on 5 categories: Core Infrastructure, Improved Developer Tooling and UX, Education and Technical Knowledge, Social Impact, and Security. ConsenSys has pledged to distribute $550,000 in 2019 to emerging entrepreneurs and technologists.

ConsenSys is proud to announce the first wave of grant awardees at this year’s Ethereal Summit:

Core Infrastructure: Gas Station IEP awarded $25,000
Education and Technical Knowledge: Black Girls Code Blockchain Immersion Program awarded
$25,000, and Africa Blockchain Developers program awarded $10,000
Social Impact: Public Health Incentives’ App awarded $25,000
Security: Lighthouse, a security-focused Ethereum Serenity client awarded $25,000

Ethereal Arts Grants

For the last two years, the Ethereal Arts Grant program has contributed over $50,000 to contemporary artists around the world who are experimenting with blockchain technology and decentralization as inspiration for conceptual art and social expression.

ConsenSys and The Foundation for Art and Blockchain has granted $15,000 to three artists for their contributions to this year’s theme: How will technology shape the cultures of the future; How might ethics be defined by decentralized systems?

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● Shirley Shor

New media artist Shirley Shor creates real-time computer-generated installations and environments that alter our experience of concepts such as identity, conflict, language and the passage of time. Shirley will create the “Team Human” art project, a dynamic portrait that creates a unique transformable face using photographs of Ethereal Summit attendees. Attendees can participate in Team Human by sending a small amount of ETH to an Ethereum smart contract. The person will receive a physical Team Human signed art certificate and ‘ShorTs’ (Shirley Shor Art Tokens) to their wallet, based on the amount of ETH contributed, along with their portrait which will be added to the new Team Human art piece. Prints of the art piece will be purchasable by ShorTs holders. The piece explores the process of how identity is generated and is a reflection of the ongoing attempt to reclaim and deconstruct identity.

● Trevor Croop

Trevor Croop is a visual artist who paints with invisible glass that transforms when exposed with a smartphone flash. Through this process, Trevor aims to create physical art for the digital world.

On display in the Ethereal Gallery will be Croop’s invisible glass depicting Archimedes and his revolutionary astrolabe. The visual aspects invoke “Lincoln in Dalivision,” Salvador Dali’s 1976 exploration of pixelation and emerging photomosaic technology. The original required a specialized viewing glass to fully experience and was one of Dali’s most counterfeited works.

Croop requires a smartphone flash to fully experience the piece, and various interactive channels invite the viewer deeper into the work. Viewers can obtain a limited edition digital object from the artist via Portion, which also ensures it will never fall victim to counterfieting.

● Jessica Angel

Jessica’s#ArtProjectDecentralized is a community art project supported by Truebit and The Foundation for Art & Blockchain. Jessica is creating the third iteration of her interactive MakerSpace concept for the Ethereal Summit, which will be located in the event’s art gallery. This year, she is inviting a group of artists, curators, and AI developers to foster a series of intimate round-table discussions around the concept of Unstoppable Art. The MakerSpace will feature Jessica Angel, Jason Teutsch, Iain Nash, Gene Kogan, Dada NYC, Coldie, and Alexine Rodenhuis.

Ethereal Virtual Hackathon

From April 15-30th Gitcoin and Microsoft collaborated to host the first-ever Ethereal Virtual Hackathon. The online-only event brought together over 500 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs to build blockchain-based projects for a chance to win $67,000 in total prizes. Prizes were positioned as cryptocurrency bounties on Gitcoin, ensuring a peer-to-peer link between hackers and sponsors for project submissions and payout.

Hackers submitted over 80 projects ranging from fully developed dApps and blockchain tooling to documentation, legacy software integrations, and cryptographic primitives. In addition to the sponsored prizes, participants battled for the overall top spot: the Ethereal Best in Show prize. Following an initial four-way tie, sponsors collectively voted to award the prize to Enable, a cross-border peer-to-peer loan and credit scoring system built by hackers from Indonesia, Nigeria, San Francisco and Singapore. nuBox came in as a close runner-up, presenting a NuCypher browser extension for encrypting and decrypting distributed files and emails. Eauth, an OAuth-compliant sign-in tool, and plasma chain-based game Dungeon Riches tied for third. Gitcoin even received a pitch for Gitcoin Experts: a real-time mentorship billing feature for its platform.Gitcoin, Microsoft, and the hackathon’s sponsoring organizations will announce the winners live at Ethereal and invite the Enable team to present their hack on stage.

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