Forget about price! Polkadot Decoded 2023 says bear markets are for building

The Polkadot Decoded 2023 conference just wrapped up and this year more than 100 speakers and 100 blockchain projects were in attendance. 

The beauty of crypto bear markets is they catalyze a realignment of perspectives and objectives.

All the hidden leverage is gone and most of the speculation is gone.

SBF is gone.

Do Kwon is gone.

Three Arrows Capital, Su Zhu, Kyle Davies and a handful of other hucksters and snake oil salesmen have been exiled.

And good riddance to all of them. Crypto doesn’t need hopium, messiahs, populists and dream peddlers. What we need are builders, fresh ideas, solutions that have product-to-market fit and some sort of realistic real world application.

That’s what I like about blockchain conferences. Especially during a bear market.

The buidl first mentality is the whole vibe of Polkadot Decoded. For the past two days, a tightly knit community of ecosystem siblings composed of developers, investors, ambassadors and a few curious journalists such as myself rendezvoused at the Øksnehallen conference center which is tucked away from the bustling, cobblestoned streets of central Copenhagen, Denmark.

The location is almost poetic given that it is a surprisingly quiet spot that is discreetly nestled within a thriving city center, and that ethos carried on through the conference events where the focus has been:

• Creating better interoperability between the projects in the Polkadot ecosystem;
• Making the blockchain more welcoming to builders; and
• Refining the cross-chain bridges that connect Polkadot to Ethereum, Cosmos and other blockchains.

Hardly anyone is talking about airdrops, token prices, memecoins, Bitcoin (BTC) hitting a new all-time high or any of the general conversational fodder that forms the bulk of most crypto discussions.

It’s bigger than a dollar sign

Rather than price, panellists discussed the challenges and occasional successes of helping TradFi and Web2 companies transition into Web3, the steps being taken to make the VC funding of projects more transparent, and the need for all the crypto jargon and rigamarole to be placed on the backend of DApps and the frontend UX to be more seamless.

Many folks even suggested that “blockchain,” “crypto,” and “Web3” should not be mentioned on projects’ websites, apps, roadmaps and so on.

According to Public Pressure CEO Giulia Maresca:

“I think it’s not about talking about the…