Meet John Paller, The Founder of ETH Denver! | ETHDenver 2025

[Music] What's going on everybody? Eth number 2025 here and we're with John, the one and only who put this thing together in the first place. I got to ask a question. This to me is the most important thing. Why?

So, back when I first was exploring uh blockchain technology, I didn't know where to start. So I went to a meetup and the meet up in Denver for Ethereum was about I don't know 20 30 people really small and in the spring of 2017 though it it grew to like 500 and then I got really excited about it because I'm like wow we I started thinking about use cases and things we could build but then nobody that I know knew how to code Solidity and I couldn't find anybody that knew how to do it. So we I had an idea and I took it to the organizers of the meetup and I said, "Hey guys, I got to know these guys, right?" So you're good guys, Ken, Corey, and Sasha and I said, you know, we should do a hackathon and we could bring people in from out of town to help teach it because nobody here knows how to do it, right? And they're like, ah, you know, in Denver and all.

I said, no, Denver. Denver's great like why not? Why not us? And if not us, who? And if not now, when?

Yeah. And why not? So, it kind of started as a yolo. Might as well. And selfishly, I wanted to find some devs to like build some things.

Yeah. And uh, you know, one thing led to another. We we aimed for like three to 400 people the first year round or the first in 2018. Mhm. And it ended up being 1500 people.

So, we struck a nerve and then it it sort of took on a life of its own. I mean, I I equated to raising a child. Okay. where, you know, at some point it just kind of has to run on its own. It goes on its own.

It's not none of this is even about me at all anymore. It never really was about me, but it's really not about me. So, what are we doing now is it's we've evolved it into the world's largest web 3 liveaction crypto experiment. It's working. I gotta tell you, it's working.

Some things work really well. Other things need optimizing. It's a constant iteration and evolution and how do we stay ahead of the curve and how do we, you know, show people what's possible. I think that's what it's really become now is like almost like a an exercise in futurism. Yeah.

Like how do but not just talking but walking, right? How do we do this? And the idea is to create a template that people could follow to like decentralize all the things. So this event is hopefully on the path to do that. I love that.

I mean, talk about winning and making sure things happen. I mean, we went from 1500 just what uh seven years ago to tens of thousands. That's a huge accomplishment. And I get the fact that it's not you, it's not you alone. And I super appreciate that.

And the fact that you say that I think is the reason why we have so many incredible people here. It's because you are allowing others to lead the charge in so many different areas. But you relinquish control and you created this doubt on this. That's what I'm saying. You Why Why did you go that route?

So, we went the route. So we we call our leadership style or our our operational execution style stewardship. So it's not about power and top down control. I have a responsibility to maintain operational alignment with ethos, right? And with community values and I'm really the curator of the big tent that has a blank canvas in it.

So, I'm responsible to make sure that intent gets up, right, and the doors get open and the canvas is there for people to paint or create or whatever they're going to do. So, yeah, I mean, again, it's an experiment, right? I think what we're hoping for is that the future of organizing for humans can be uh much more abundant. They can be less competitive. Y they can be more fun.

Like this notion that we have that where work and life are like separate compartments is kind of wild because I don't actually live that way at all. I it's work life integration for me. Good point. And even then I just don't even see it as work life integration anymore. That is completely abstracted away.

It's just life. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's like okay but again we're we're trying to give people the space and a place to express their unique creativity in a way that's meaningful for them. So our job, my job, our our board and our steward's job is to keep that alive so that people can come and do their own innovations.

I love that. And it's like everyone has their own different passions, right? For example, I've been here for eight eight days. I've done almost 100 interviews and I loved every single one of them because I'm getting to hear people's passions, what they love, why they're here, why they're excited about the space, and it's always different. How do you manage to get a team that is that diverse that likes and enjoys doing so many different things?

Well, this is how you practice the network state. The network state is open and permissionless and diverse by nature. Humans are diverse by nature. The minute you get into where you try to like standardize what it means to be a web 3 community uh community member or even what regenerative means, right? Then I think you're trafficking in religion.

That's a good point because dogma requires or you know religions or whatever even uh you know I mean there's lots of var there's lots of varietals of religions and a lot of them that aren't even religious. Mhm. Like people who think no this is the way everything works and they're so rigid in their thinking and they're they're unwilling to even accept people into their lives that think differently. I think you're in a religion whatever that is. Okay.

So, I think that's a very dangerous place to go with human creativity because it stifles it instead of encourages it. If I'm told A, B, and C are true, but I don't ever challenge any of that. But I I kind of feel being pulled into maybe some peripheral area of that. Let's say my parents said that art never makes any money. Okay.

Well, I want to be an artist lowkey, but I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to go, you know, pursue that passion because they said that. And why do why do I believe that? Because they said that. And it's not I didn't explore it on my own.

So we believe life should be a choose your own adventure. And in web 3, web 3, the tool set of web 3 is just it's just a toolkit. Yeah. to ex help people realize that it is and positive sum games can exist and we don't have to compete over supposedly scarce resources, right? Because in my opinion, I think that that's probably one of the biggest lies that we've been told and sold as children growing up in the last, you know, 75 years is that somehow the world operates from scarcity.

And I just don't think that it does. I think the only scarce thing is people that don't quite understand something yet. For example, lack of devs. That's scarce. But we can all change that.

We can just bring people together. You know, show me the show me the game incentive. I'll show you the outcome. Yeah. Why don't we have enough devs?

We don't incentivize them. Exactly. I mean, yeah, sure. You can make a paycheck. You can make a lot of money.

Yeah. But do we really really go out of our way to to teach people the mindset of engineering? That's the most important one. Absolutely. the mindset of creative expression.

Do we teach people the mindset of uh you know even game design and economics, right? Do we do that? Not really. You know, we we're very rigid and sterile how we go through textbooks and here's the things you got to learn and here's the thing and check the boxes to get your degree and then next thing you know you've got a worthless piece of paper and and starting over because you got to go out now and prove that you that you're even a valuable person. It's so true.

Yeah. I mean, I think a degree is just, you know, a piece of paper that tells people that you were able to sit down for four years. That's that's about it. Yeah. I I I personally dropped out after a semester.

I'm like, "This is way too boring." Went to work for a Fortune 500 instead. I did. I mean, a little bit different, but I got the hell out of college as quickly as I can by testing out of my entire freshman year and then graduating in in about three years and then realizing that my accounting degree was completely useless to anything I really wanted to do unless I wanted to sit in Vegas and, you know, casino cages and do night audits. I don't think anybody likes that job.

No, I mean, you hate your life if you have that job. I mean, somebody's got to do it. I guess maybe AI can do it in the future. Just abstract that away from people. But I don't know.

We don't we just we I don't I don't think that the game, education, early life is designed to encourage people to express on a blank canvas. I I think and define who they are. We try to put them into a lane that makes them quote unquote productive for society. But is it really who they are? I don't think so.

Right. almost working against the grain. It's not it's not a blanket thing, you know. I'm not I'm not going to say that dogmatically either. I'm just going to say that generally the rule is people when I look around they don't have they don't have they don't really know who they are.

And I that's not a judgment. I'm not even taking moral ground on them. Yeah. I'm just saying I think people they they they're lost. They don't know they don't know who they are to then be able to contribute to the larger Candace, but I can't tell you how many people are finding themselves here at ETH Denver.

Like, personally, I'm having trouble sleeping because we're up until 2 a.m. not doing anything crazy. Literally talking, having conversations, talking about what we like, what we don't like, what could be done better, what direction we're going to go in this web 3 space. So, there's a lot to learn, a lot to grow amongst other people.

There's there's more to do here than you could do 24 hours a day for 4 weeks. I for two months, and I'm proof of that. I'm proof of that. sleeping as little as possible, trying to get as much done as possible, and I'm still missing out on so many things. I agree.

So, I got to come back next year. I mean, look, I organized this thing, and I absolutely categorically cannot keep up with 98% of what's going on here. I have no control over any of it. None. So, anybody who thinks I'm some, you know, master magician controlling things or whatever, it's not true.

Like, I I don't want to. We don't. That's not the point. Yeah. This is this is an exercise of free expression and creativity and however that looks for you.

Yeah. Could be coding. It could be art. It could be building governance models, tokconomics models, it could be just socializing and networking if that's your version of you. We don't care.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. People think you're like the puppet master behind things. No, Pinocchio's running around, guys. Like that is way way out of, you know, give me way too much credit.

I I I don't have anywhere near that kind of power, nor do I want it. That's not the point. Well, I think that's why this place is where it's at. I'm a steward and curator. I have a responsibility to protect the ethos to create some level of rules of engagement around the DAO, you know, to help execute on operational things and make sure that the experience of the event is as good as we can make it around the ethos of what we do.

But other than that, you know, other than that, it's not up to me. All right. So, I got to ask a few questions for the people that really want to understand a couple of things here. Who should be a board member for the DAO? Who?

Yeah. I don't care. What I what I when I vote, what I care about is that whoever it is cares deeply about the success of this experiment. It's not about one particular outcome. It's an open mind to this blank tent or this or this big tent blank canvas that we have that is very delicate and precious to the community.

So I look for integrity. I look for character of stewardship. Are they leader? You know, you call it servant leaders. Yeah.

you know, are they not that I think servant leadership gets a bad description sometimes because it somehow comes off as like well, you know, it's only about um giving to the community. No, it's mutual. Mutuality is important. We give and receive at the same time. I think we we look for sincerity.

Yeah. It's the heart behind it, right? Yeah. It's like that's what I like to approach anything. Like it doesn't matter if it's my company or somebody else's company.

If I'm doing a job, I'm going to treat it as if it was my own. I'm going to treat it like I need to make sure it succeeds. We don't have any investors, by the way. So, we're completely selfunded. Trying to get a hold of some spork, man.

I know. Well, we're going to we're going to we're going to probably uh a little drip maybe. We're working on trying to figure out how to set up markets. Yeah. Uh in a non overly degen way.

Yeah. To, you know, help create sustainability for the DAO. uh give those who are interested in in increasing their their stake in the community, you know, without having to wait 20 years to do it or contribute every year, every year, every year because it is hard to get uh right now it's really hard to get signal, you know, and if you want to be a more active voice, it's hard to do it. Um yeah, we're working on all that. Yeah.

And I would say get involved. Like that's a main thing like start talking to people in the community. This is an incredible incredible Well, I think it could start before you even want to be on the board. I mean, you could just volunteer for a stewardship or take a seasonal contract or, you know, contribute. Yeah, we have people that make things for us without us asking.

And they say, hey, I made this Buffacorn game. I love it. What do you think of this? And we're like, that's so amazing. And we're like, hey, do you want to showcase that at ETH Denver?

It's awesome. And they, you know, they didn't come to us and say, "Hey, I could make a game." Yeah. Will you pay me to do that? No.

So, we look for these kind of cues, these social cues. We want to include people who are willing to just, you know, express themselves, lay it out there, build cool and I mean, we'll give them the we'll give them the stage. Yeah. No, this is incredible. Like, I started by just hosting spaces through Jenzio, and all of a sudden, I'm like, I don't want to just do that.

I want to do more. Like, let's let me go ahead and get NFTs. Of course, it's an incredible community and like you said, the diversity of the community is so great that I don't think I've spoken to this like to people about the same exact thing once and I've done about 100 interviews. Like I said, I don't because if you if you go to a Bitcoin conference, which by the way, I I'm a I I own Bitcoin. I mean, I I am a Bitcoiner.

I would even say I was a Bitcoiner first, but I'm not a onecoin maxi. Sure, you go to a Bitcoin conference, you hear the same five narratives. you know, sound money, digital gold, peer-to-peer, cashless transactions, whatever. Okay, in this space is the opposite. It's literally let's push the envelope be homogeneous, honestly.

And that's okay. I think I think Bitcoin has a use case. I'm just not sure I see a reason to have conferences around it, cuz to me that just seems like, well, what are we talking about, right? I already know what it is. I mean, maybe it's networking, which is fine.

But like I don't know. I I like the concept of of a hackathon first community event which is what we do. The biddathon as we call it is the reason why we're here. It wrapped up this morning. So people we're actually judging these projects right now as we speak.

And you know, I think it's uh it's a huge opportunity when you talk about incentivizing productivity and lots of, you know, instead of lots of talkie-talkie, it's more walkie-talkie. I love that. So, John, how would you invite somebody and who would you invite out to eat Denver? Just look right there and tell them like come out. Make sure you're not missing out on 2026.

Yeah. Well, come, you know, if you're shy, don't worry about it. We all are. Everybody's sort of doing yoloing. If you have an idea but you don't have a team, we have campo build a team.

40% of our people come alone. Just take the leap. Come. It's too expensive. It's free to attend.

Get your butt to Denver and you can get in for free and you can meet some of the most wonderful creative people literally in the world around this future. Not just it's not this is not a tech movement. This is a social movement using tech tools. So if you're interested in improving humanity and seeing what other people have to say on the subject and how they're trying to do that, I I can't imagine anything more productive and better for you to do than to come eat 2026. I love it.

And there's room for everybody. Doesn't matter if you're a builder, if you're a marketer, if you're trying to lead a team, you will find your place here. If you're just curious. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of people here are brand new.

50% of attendees are normally brand new. Brand new. They don't know anything. It's not a It's not a prerequisite to know anything about this to come. You don't need to know anything.

You don't need to know anyone. You can just come completely blank canvas and just go. I love that, John. Thank you so much. I don't want to take too much of your time.

You have I'm sure you haven't been sleeping or eating during this week, so take care of yourself. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.