Aleph Zero takes over Warsaw Blockchain Week 2024

The Aleph Zero team gave another strong showing at this year’s Warsaw Blockchain Week, appearing at—and sometimes hosting—the following unique events:

• The first annual Verifiable Summit;
• Meet the Founders: Techstars Web3 x Aleph Zero and Bank Pekao;
• The Official ETHWarsaw Opening Party by Aleph Zero;
• The main event: Aleph Zero as a headlining ETHWarsaw sponsor;
• The ICP Startup Lab;
• The ETHWarsaw Hackathon.

The first annual Verifiable Summit: unlocking new possibilities in private DeFi 

Before things officially got started at ETHWarsaw, Co-founder Adam Gągol and Lead Blockchain Developer Damian Straszak attended the first Verifiable Summit conference held by ZKWarsaw on September 4th, where Aleph Zero was a lead sponsor. There were 121 unique attendees and 29 insightful presentations given on applied cryptography. The speakers spanned 11 nationalities—and each talk was streamed here. 

Aleph Zero Co-founder Adam Gągol and Aleph Zero Lead Blockchain Developer Damian Straszak presenting at Verifiable Summit by ZKWarsaw

Damian Straszak conducted two insightful workshops entitled “Beyond ZKPs: MPC” and “Client-side Proving,” while you can check out Adam Gągol’s talk on “Private DeFi: The Possible, The Impossible, and What’s Worth It” here.

Meet the Founders with Techstars Web3 and Bank Pekao

Also on the 4th, Aleph Zero held an exclusive “Meet the Founders” event with our partners Techstars Web3 and Bank Pekao at PKO Rotunda—Bank Pekao’s iconic building in the center 

of Warsaw. Over the past 17 years, Techstars has invested in more than 4,400 companies with a combined market cap of more than $113.6B. Together with Bank Pekao, we used this event as a collaboration opportunity for Poland’s most innovative and promising web3 founders and co-founders 

Stage 2 EVM Expansion: the Official ETHWarsaw Opening Party by Aleph Zero! 

We kicked off ETHWarsaw on September 5th with Aleph Zero’s official opening party. 

This was hosted together with Cardinal Cryptography ecosystem partners VIB3S, AZERO.ID, pieces.market, Upcade, Tubbly, Syncra to celebrate the launch of Aleph Zero EVM. The party connected the Aleph Zero ecosystem and the ETHWarsaw builder community for a full night of entertainment, networking, delicious food—plus, a carefully curated Zero-Proof-themed cocktail menu. 

The party also included live demos and Aleph Zero use case showcases, classic console gaming, psychedelic mini-golf, crypto beer pong, crypto darts, and a special Tubbly-enabled AZERO treasure hunt with some big prizes. Plus, there were also live DJ sets from Aleph Zero’s in-house music maestro, Pete Urinsky, Upcade’s inhouse DJ Mr Scream, and the ARCANA founders who are two well-known DJs—Steez83 1/2 of PRO8L3M (Piotr Szulc) and Angelo Mike (Jarek Czechowski). 

The main event: Aleph Zero as a headlining ETHWarsaw sponsor 

Aleph Zero was a headlining “Ocean” sponsor at the third annual ETHWarsaw conference, which brought together over 1,000 builders and innovators from the ETH community to Browary Warszawskie in Warsaw from September 5th to 6th. 

Adam Gągol gave a thought-provoking talk on Exploring the Spectrum of Intent-Driven Designs in DeFi, where he laid out how intent-driven design principles are critical in creating DeFi solutions that are both functional and align intuitively with user needs and expectations. 

Aleph Zero Co-founder Adam Gągol speaking at ETHWarsaw 

Damian Straszak also joined a panel entitled Are L2s parasitic to L1s? Where are we heading with L2-centric strategies? While Aleph Zero Senior Blockchain Developer Maksym Zub led an engaging workshop on Generating halo2 zk-proofs in any user device. 

The ICP Startup Lab

The ICP Startup Lab took place over September 5th to 6th at the Samo Centrum Wszechświata and was aimed at both newcomers to the world of Web3 and more experienced enthusiasts of this technology. Aleph Zero’s Head of Investments, Piotr Saczuk, was a featured speaker on the main panel. 

Aleph Zero’s Piotr Saczuk (Head of Investments) speaking at the ICP 

The ETHWarsaw Hackathon 

Aleph Zero also participated in the ETHWarsaw Hackathon, which had its biggest bounty yet with $86,000 in rewards! The whole event spanned 40 hours with 114 hackers, 43 projects submitted, and 12 projects competing for Request Network bounties. 

Aleph Zero’s Damian Straszak and Jan Kuczma on stage for the ETHWarsaw Hackathon awards