Developer conferences for founders and computer scientists, developers, and designers of cryptocurrency tokens and blockchain technology are typically found in places like San Francisco, New York, or cities that are tech hubs around the world. While Washington D.C. might not come to mind as a crypto tech hub immediately, a combination of remote working policies and burnout from policy conferences has prompted a ‘genesis’ first-of-its-kind conference only for developers in D.C.

So if you are interested in a neat drink of technical blockchain development speakers and panels with policy talk on ice, the very first ETHDC conference is being held at Culture House DC tomorrow on May 14th starting around 9:30am ET. I had a chance to talk with Shailee Adinolfi, Business Development Manager at TrustMachines and someone who has been in the blockchain space in D.C. for a long time, who explained how she identified a growing ecosystem of developers in D.C., Virginia, and Maryland that over several years grew to 300 people.

Adinolfi stated, “The genesis ETHDC conference is to put a spotlight on D.C. area founders in the crypto space. We formed the DC DAO and the idea of ETHDC came about because we wanted to have an event for ourselves that was not focused on policy where we have talked about things like scaling and roll-ups, token standards and abstraction and all the things that we want to do to scale, grow and succeed in this space, and partner with each other.”

Amid what many are describing as a Bitcoin renaissance with renewed interest in developing applications on top of the base layer of Bitcoin, TrustMachines is a company that is focused on developed the Bitcoin
Bitcoin
ecosystem. Using its own Leather Bitcoin wallet, Adinolfi described the company sees an opportunity for bitcoin applications to be built that could that potentially replace the fees that will naturally decrease over time from Bitcoin miners, and thereby provide a replacement for a financial incentive to keep the Bitcoin network secure and sustainable in the future.

UniSwap, MetaMask, and Casa are among the many companies that will be represented. Adinolfi said developers attending the conference are looking to, “…understand how these companies have dealt with launching tokens in a decentralized way in a safe space – for what developers, not policymakers want to talk about.”

It is of course hard to ignore the policy discussions that may arise with the aforementioned companies particularly regarding MetaMask and self-custodial wallets. Adolfini described that a self-custodial wallet, “…is like a browser, but where the user owns all the cookies, bookmarks, and their data, and can easily switch providers and keep all of those things intact”.

UniSwap has made public that it received a Wells notice from the SEC and ConsenSys, the developer of the MetaMask wallet, also received a Wells Notice after which the company announced it was suing the SEC to defend the Ethereum
Ethereum
ecosystem. Both companies are defending themselves against the potential regulatory enforcement actions on the policy and legal side, and for now, are clearly still interested in building in the U.S. The question is, does the U.S. want blockchain developers launching tokens or not and under what circumstances. That will of course, have to be left to another conference.