Web3 Summit - My thoughts & take aways
Polkadot is entering event season, and we’ve got one of the largest flagship events in the Polkadot ecosystem coming up later this year, Sub0 Symbiosis.
With Sub0 now around the corner, I wanted to showcase a recap of the most recent event I’ve attended, its impact and most importantly, what we can learn from it to better improve physical, in-person spaces for Web3.
We’re diving into the 2025 Web3 Summit that took place in July earlier this year.
The Web3 Summit - Berlin 2025
The event, hosted by W3F took place on the 16th, 17th and 18th of July, with talks, hackathons and discussions happening throughout the course of the 3 days. Once again to note, I am not an events expert and all opinions within this post are mine.
First impressions?
Packed. Out. Needless to say that attendance was not a concern, the summit was filled to the brim with attendees, many of who have travelled far & wide to attend these 3 days. I’ve attended events in the past where they’ve got such a large space, but little to no attendees. This thankfully wasn’t the case and it was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces from around the ecosystem in attendance.
WebZero delivers on their promise to bring the vibes to physical spaces in Web3. The Blockspace Synergy took place at the same venue as the Summit, Funkhaus Berlin bringing with them a 72 hour long hackathon for all attendees.
With free food, drinks, an incredibly talented DJ and even camping facilities for hackers, all provided, it was clear that WebZero aimed to bring hackathons back to their roots by providing a safe and energetic environment for its builders.
Polkadot goes global? I had the pleasure to speak to many friends and colleagues throughout the event, and was lucky enough to meet some new faces. What really took me back was simply how far some people had travelled, with some travelling from across the globe to attend, speak, network and hack.
After 3 days I had lost count of how many talks and presentations I had attended, all were thoroughly engaging, but a few really stood out to me.
The wild world of Web3 rollups - Maciej, Parity Core Dev.
Being in Polkadot, especially at the length of time many of you reading this post have been here, it’s easy to forget how far our tech has come.
Maciej takes it back to basics, starting with Monolithic Blockchains, Optimistic Rollups, ZK and Cynical. For anyone new to Polkadot, or in need of a refresher, looking to understand the key differences between all the potential rollup options out there, this serves as a great knowledge base to really get stuck in.
Not only was this talk knowledgeable, but it was understandable and most importantly, digestible. From past feedback, I’ve been told that we, Polkadot, continuously push out innovative tech, yet the rest of the Web3 space does not truly understand this. It’s critical for us to ensure people understand this, not from a complicated developer standpoint, but from an easily digestible discussion.
Building Developer Communities: From Grassroots to Global - Angie Darrow, Vicktoria Klich, Zachary Kornberg and Sacha Lansky
This talk really caught my attention, as someone with a deep passion to help foster and build Web3 communities, especially physical spaces, this discussion hit the nail on the head.
The discussion veered towards the idea that there was a dire need in the Polkadot ecosystem to be actually connected with developers interested in tinkering with the technology, and that there were very minimal spaces for developers to actually feel at home, essentially a safe space for builders “to hang out and build cool things”.
I think in our current world, it’s easy to become isolated, separated and disconnected from people, especially in-person. In Polkadot, the community is so vast and wide, it’s reassuring to see the focus being back on Developer Communities where the intent is to bring people together under one roof, with shared goals.
Further on into the talk, they discussed how we can really advocate for real adoption of the tech through hackathons. What happens after the hackathon? The panel went on to discuss how they can ensure that these builders who are taking part in these hackathons actually turn into real businesses, projects and cool ideas.
Closing Day 1 Key Note - Dr Gavin Wood
Gavin Wood’s keynote outlined a vision for Polkadot’s next phase, urging fiscal discipline, privacy, and proof-of-personhood to replace costly staking and make Web3 more sustainable and inclusive.
“Proof of personhood, if it’s successful and ubiquitous, can be a silver bullet - it can solve a lot of problems we’ve been banging our heads against for 11 years.”
I could spend ages talking about what he covered, the future and the road ahead, trying to put his thoughts onto paper, but instead I’d like to speak about the impact the talk had, rather than just the context.
My reasoning? You’ve most likely heard many summaries, explanations and this was arguably the most attended talk of the summit by a mile. If you’ve not seen it, then check it out below
Gavin’s in-person presence was great, not just for the updates and information, but also for the morale of the community. It’s a reminder that the founder of the protocol is there building with the community, pushing forward his vision for a better Web3.
This goes particularly in hand with the Blockspace Synergy Hackathon happening in parallel. To me this was something almost poetic, where the founder of the protocol was on stage showcasing the future of the protocol whilst there was a small army of builders in the same building using this technology.
What would I improve?
Whilst the summit was a great and engaging experience, there were some things I believe we as an ecosystem can improve upon.
Can we attract new faces?
The current crowd is already heavily involved in the Polkadot Ecosystem. Whilst it was amazing to see many familiar faces, there weren’t many who had come from outside the bubble.
So whilst the event was a success, my concern was how far outside of our circle are we actually reaching? Now, in contrast, it provided a really good opportunity for everyone to get together, hack and build, but any new faces I noticed were mainly here for the hackathon and less so, the talks.
Events like the Web3Summit should be held alongside other events such as Berlin Blockchain Week or Protocol Berg, which was hosted in Berlin 1 month prior. Many teams and projects from other ecosystems travelled to Berlin for these events, so travelling back to Berlin again 1 month later can be expensive, tiresome and means teams incur additional costs and resources to attend.
More Web3 Tech
An all-around opinion I know that many share is that these physical spaces should incorporate, or at least try to involve the tech that we build. We’ve got rooms full of hackers building cool and disruptive tech, yet we rely on Web2 services to run a Web3-focused event.
Whether it be attendance monitoring, payments or booking systems, we should be trying to build or incorporate the protocol into these simple avenues. If these avenues have not yet been built or if we deem it not yet possible to execute physical spaces using Web3 tech we should make it possible using the technology currently available to us..
This also goes without saying, but we should aim to include the project teams, those who are building with Polkadot, technology into the creation and execution of the Summit.
Don’t fragment the vibe
Combining the Web3Summit with WebZero’s Blockspace Synergy was a great collaborative move, however, I’d love to see this avenue explored further. At times, there were two, social based, events going on with one at the Hackerhouse and one in the main summit venue, causing a slight fragmentation of the crowd.
We should aim to unify these social events to ensure we don’t needlessly split the crowd, and thus the vibe into two separate locations.
Staying on brand
When walking into the Summit I expect to be walking into a new world, a world fashioned and branded like the Web3 future we’re trying to build. For me, the vibe was very formal, the venue and the styling felt more like a Web2-focused summit than anything else.
Many of the hackers, attendees and speakers in the summit have left Web2 technologies behind in hopes of building innovative decentralised Web3 tech. We should cater to this cohort by bringing in some chaos, disruptiveness and integrating Web3 culture into the design and feel of the event.
I truly believe that between the minds of the W3F, WebZero and the many agents involved in its curation, we can pull off an event in true Web3 style.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Web3 Summit was a great event, with no shortage of discussions or talks to attend. The partnership between W3F and WebZero to share the venue was the correct move, and we should keep pushing forward with this avenue to see how we can better integrate the ecosystem into the summit.
For future events, I ask that we keep in mind the Web3 vibe, its technology and its people whilst incorporating the technology to replace the traditional Web2 systems we’ve grown accustomed to.
I’m incredibly positive for future events and truly believe that we are taking the right steps towards better physical spaces.