Consensus 2024 and The Rise of Solana: A Summer of Regulatory Breakthroughs
Consensus 2024 had a completely different beat than last year, thanks to recent regulatory changes and retail waking up.
Consensus 2024, CoinDesk’s annual crypto conference, wrapped up last Friday in Austin, Texas. The conference had around 15,000 attendees, up from 10,000 last year, although the crowds seemed to taper off towards the end due to the heat and insane flights in and out of the city.
The overall vibe was electric compared to last year when the industry was still reeling from the FUD caused by the FTX collapse. For example, Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Invest, expressed strong bullish views on Bitcoin, calling it "unstoppable" and a "big idea" with no single point of failure or vulnerability.
Although it lacked some of the flashier booths of last year, bullish attitudes prevailed at Consensus, especially when it came to building on Solana. It helped that Phantom Wallet surpassed both Facebook and ChatGPT to become the 11th most downloaded free app on the Google Play Store after hitting over seven million monthly active users in April.
This spurred a rush on Solana, with over 455,000 new tokens launched in May, many of which were memecoins. High-profile celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner added to the hype by launching her own memecoin on Pump.fun, while Iggy Azalea independently launched her $MOTHER token.
Of course, one of the more buzzworthy side events didn’t actually happen, to the chagrin of many attendees.
The Anticipated Showdown That Never Was—Nic Carter vs. David Hoffman
One big event that was noticeably missing was the promoted fight between Bankless founder David Hoffman and Coin Metrics and Castle Island Ventures co-founder Nic Carter. Hoffman reportedly broke a rib a week prior to the bout, and no replacement could be found in time, which was a bummer for those who would’ve been happy to see a fight for the books, post-Ansem vs. Barney at Token 2049.
Some attendees questioned the lack of a full x-ray and speculated that he may not have broken his rib and instead realized he didn’t have a chance of winning. Without a doctor’s note, we’ll have to take his word for it, but now isn’t the time for Web3 to dodge any fights, as regulation took center stage at the conference. Another fight that took center stage was a fight with Billy McFarland but the crypto crowd didn’t care as much about the C-list Fyre Festival scammer as it was more a glitzy cash grab move as a backup option.
The Path to Regulatory Transparency: What Lies Ahead?
With the launch of a Bitcoin ETF and pending Ethereum ETF (along with a growing appetite for more crypto ETFs, including Solana), regulation was a big focus at Consensus 2024. The new regulation made a night-and-day difference that created unmatched momentum. Everyone from politicians like Robert F Kennedy Jr to VC's like Blackrock’s Joseph Chalom emphasized the need for the crypto industry to maintain momentum and position the U.S. as a leader in blockchain innovation post-passing of the FIT 21 bill and Trump announcing that he’d accept donations in crypto the week before.
Some went even further, funding lobbying efforts to ensure future regulations are favorable to the industry.
Chris Dixon, Founder and Managing Partner of a16z Crypto, confirmed the venture firm's $25 million donation to Fairshake, a super political action committee (PAC) focused on lobbying for pro-crypto regulations on Capitol Hill.
This increased the firm's total contribution to Fairshake and affiliated PACs to $47 million.
The funds will support political candidates dedicated to protecting internet freedom, open-source blockchain development, and cryptography in the U.S. It’s clear the investing side of Web3 will continue to thrive, but under the hood of the market, the technology is what’s truly driving this growth.
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger… but TPS
Despite the regulatory uncertainty, there was plenty of building on display in Austin. Layer0 has the industry buzzing due to its ability to bridge chains and enable interoperability between over 50 blockchain protocols so far, plus their recent integration with Solana was a successful media push arriving in Austin. I attended their event alongside producing our own Consensus exclusive event titled IYKYK bringing together some heavy industry hitters like Helium CEO Mert, Sol Big Brain and Nom amongst numerous other industry players.
Anzo Technology Head of Developer Relations, Rex St. John, was particularly excited about the upcoming FireDancer upgrade he’s working on alongside Jump Crypto, which aims to achieve 1 million transactions per second on Solana. Amongst many, he believes FireDancer will allow Solana to support high-frequency trading, decentralized exchanges, compressed NFTs, and other applications that require ultra-low latency.
This will 1000% push the ecosystem to unmatched territories as many other competing L1’s and neighboring L2’s are attempting to keep up this bull run.
Chris Perkins, President at CoinFund, is similarly optimistic on Web3. In a 1-on-1 interview I had with him, his firm is always on the lookout for strong founders and big market opportunities in early-stage deals. Perkins is bullish on the overall crypto space, and he cited favorable macro-conditions, increasing regulatory clarity, and continued innovation across verticals like AI, scalability, gaming, and decentralized data.
He views recent regulatory moves like the approval of Bitcoin/Ethereum ETFs and the repeal of strict custody rules as positive steps that will unlock value for retail and institutional investors, and his advice to entrepreneurs hoping to succeed in this space is to think big, find the right partners aligned with their vision, and potentially work with firms like CoinFund to help scale their companies.
Sun, Fun, and Solana: A Crypto Summer to Remember
Beyond all the business, meeting up with friends and colleagues IRL is one of the best parts of any conference, and Consensus was no exception. Between work and VC dinners, it was great to hang out with old friends like Victoria, COO of ZEITGEIST and Head of Operations at Myosin, attending another Boys Club hoedown and meeting new friends along the way.
It’s wild to see how much changed in the past year in the blockchain space and one can only wonder how far along we’ll be next year. The scene will definitely evolve, as Consensus is moving to Toronto in 2025 and we’re working on ETHCC in Brussels to more easily accommodate the global Web3 community.
Hope to see you all there 🫡
Lena Grundhoefer is the Co-Founder of OFFLINE and Founder of ZEITGEIST Labs, a boutique Web3 strategy + events agency. Through future-proof marketing solutions for the brands of tomorrow, we help Fortune 500 companies as well as brands just starting out break into web3.