Attendees proving they are human during W3S 2026.
The Web3 Summit 2026 in Berlin just concluded, with around 900 attendees coming together to participate in creation of future tech - technology in which privacy is the default for practical tools that people will be able to use in everyday life.
Attendees used multiple proofs of concept open-sourced by Parity Technologies, published by the Polkadot Community Foundation (PCF) and stress-tested during W3S.
Throughout the Web3 Summit, PCF deployed every app on site, from the Polkadot mobile application to the developer tooling Playground.dot and the seamless payment functionality used across the whole venue.
We believe people will not start using new technology for the sake of new technology, but because it serves their needs: because it’s private, straightforward and convenient. This is the rationale behind the tech tested during the summit.
Truly Web3 applications are rare, and where they exist, rarely at scale, in a way that feels natural to ordinary users, or without relying, somewhere along the line, on the very Web2 infrastructure Web3 was meant to move beyond. For Polkadot that means testing early, testing with actual people and inventing solutions along the way, instead of quietly compromising with existing centralised tools.
What decentralised and privacy-preserving tech was deployed by PCF and tested during the summit?
No logins. No install to start using. Familiar and simple interfaces. No exposure to multiple digital selves. Coherence across devices. No crypto identifiers. Mathematically guaranteed privacy and security.
The Polkadot super app, designed to bring together core decentralised functionalities in one unified experience:
- Private Chat, a completely private and secure peer-to-peer messenger
including chats, media, voice and video calls. All running without servers or traditional infrastructure.
- One digital identity across different services
Enables not only a simple sign-in but staying private and selectively choosing to whom or to what extent you reveal your identity.
- Humanity, proving you are human without providing personal information
Enables users to prove that they are human without undergoing KYC, surrendering unnecessary personal data, or relying on an intermediary that can censor or exclude them. The ambition is: one person, one private account.
- Private payments during W3S
Instant and private peer-to-peer payments between friends or to pay for your food and drinks during the Web3 Summit, again without any intermediaries between you and the merchant. Demonstrating how private and direct transactions can work in an everyday setting rather than only as a technical concept.
- Decentralised app browsing
Ability to browse any of the decentralised apps deployed and hosted on the Polkadot network. No longer do apps need to be hosted on traditional servers, the Polkadot mobile app gives users a way to browse, bookmark and interact with their favourite products.
Web3 Summit in numbers
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Around 900 attendees checked in during W3S. This year, selected institutions and universities, such as TUM, TU Berlin and Bard College Berlin were also invited, with students from different colleges joining in.
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13 artists set-up their installations, workshops or exhibitions, while around 190 developers participated in the fun and easy ‘one-click app development experience’ with Playground. dot
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2,000+ transactions have been processed through the Polkadot private payment system over the two days. Overall the tested payments system provided a very intuitive cashier experience for attendees to buy food and drinks, with food stall owners expressing the wish to use the Polkadot payments again in the future.
Thank you to everyone who made the Web3 Summit a success and who contributed to the testing of the privacy-preserving and decentralised Polkadot App.
