Taipei Blockchain Week 2022 Recap

March 14th, 2023

It’s been a few months since we wrapped up Taipei Blockchain Week 2022. We’re happy to say Taipei Blockchain Week was a huge success, with 2000+ attendees, 300+ developers, 130 speakers, 35+ side events, 130+ press features, 60+ countries in attendance. Here we’ll recap what we loved about last year, what everyone can look forward to this year, and… reveal the new theme for Taipei Blockchain Week 2023!

This blog post recaps our why, the process, how everything went, and most importantly - thank everyone who contributed from Bu Zhi DAO and the community around us. We hope you’re as excited as us for this years Taipei Blockchain Week!

The Why

We hosted Taipei Blockchain Week with the theme “Bridge” to “Bring people who love Taiwan and web3 together, and grow the Taiwan web3 ecosystem on the global stage“

Taipei Blockchain Week 2022 was the first conference hosted by Bu Zhi DAO. With the theme of 'Bridge' it brought together people that love Taiwan and Web3.

The early days

In the early months of 2022, we decided to host our own conference to fill the missing need for global crypto events in Taiwan. We quickly realized we had underestimated the amount of roadblocks we would hit. As our first time hosting a conference together, there was a lot to be figured out. We put a team together from the DAO pulling our resources together, sleepless nights, and sheer willpower to pull off the largest crypto conference in Taiwan.

From countless negotiations, venue changes, design brainstorms, the uncertainties of Taiwan’s border and quarantine restrictions during the pandemic, and constantly going back to our mission - we ended up getting our first sponsorship from Google, confirmed our first keynote speaker pplpleasr, gained Taiwan government support, and sold out of our early bird tickets - each goalpost became a huge turning point and momentum shift in our planning.

More details on some of the planning process as a DAO with pods detailed here

Key builders

A few key turning points were gaining the support of our friends at Google Cloud and Avalanche, committing our first keynote speaker pplpleasr, the Taiwan government agreeing to support us and doubling down, and Taka at TABEI’s willingness to support us with local operations.

We couldn’t have done it without key members of Bu Zhi DAO willing to contribute their time, resources, and energy. Tiffany the mastermind leading the planning. Andy with his larger-than-life design and mock ups that made the entire planning committee’s jaw drop. Rinnie’s attention to detail communicating with local venue, PR agencies, KOLs and all things PR. Cin taking care of the developer bootcamp and community. Oliver handling visas and ticketing. Jolie and Wellington leading legal contracts. Jesse detailing the finances. Jacky inviting speakers and rallying the troops. Ray with his overall knowledge on the space to build out our programming. TMOC taking care of side events coordinations, and many more contributors handling various tasks (Sun, Kevin, Danielle, Daniel, Cal, Eefy, Eason, Natalie, Jessie, Darren, Karen, Harrison, Kai, Wei…and more).

Thank you to everyone that showed up, contributed in any way, shared tweets, or sent words of encouragement that kept us going.

Crossing the bridge

Here’s how the venue looked before production began, we were in shock to see how it looked after all was said and done.

Pre-production took a few days, constructing every booth, activation, vip lounge, into our venue.

Finished merch section ft. 0xAvenue merch.

Bridge - The Conference

We opened with key leads Tiffany Lai and Jacky Wang talking about WHY Bridge, Why DAOs.

We then welcomed the mayor of Taipei City, Deputy General of MODA, and a keynote from Google Cloud.

The very deep and pro-found opening speech by Taipei City mayor is one to remember. Watch again here.

The mayor of Taipei City, Chiang Wan-an, giving an inspirational opening speech at Taipei Blockchain Week.

Followed by 6 action-packed days of speeches, keynotes, workshops, and demos.

Conference

Day 1 | DAO, VC, Sustainability

Day 2 | Defi, Infra, Privacy, Security

Day 3 | NFT, Gaming, Metaverse

Bootcamp

Day 1 | Solid Foundations

Day 2 | Diving Deeper

Day 3 | Demo Day

Highlights

pplpleasr goes into her epic story of getting into web3 and starting Shibuya

Yat Siu, co-founder/CEO of Animoca Brands shares about digital property rights, NFTs and the metaverse.

Tom Schmidt from Dragonfly discussing investing in the West vs East with Yan from Hive Ventures and Tony from 500 Global

Josh Principe from Youtube on Web3 Design, discussing web3 utility from a web2 giant streaming platform’s perspective.

Patrick Lee, Holly Liu, Kun Gao, and Kevin Lin from PKO discuss building community comparing their illustrious experience in web2 and how that translated to what they’re doing in web3.

Bootcamp opening speech by Oliver and Cin

Matt Sorg, Head of Engineering at Solana shared to 300+ developers the core fundamentals of the Solana ecosystem.

Focused Devs taking it all in.

Demo Day

We had 16 teams pitching at the final demo day in front of guests, VCs, and judges.

Judges from Google Cloud, Lead Capital, and BNB Chain listened intently giving critical feedback to help projects improve.

Side Events

We’ve heard from multiple people that this was the most events they’ve ever seen in Taipei in such a short amount of time. Thanks to all the side event hosts that lit up the city.

Metatheory team at the conference closing party at Ce La Vi hosted by Leads Capital

Metatheory team at the Ce La Vi afterparty in Taipei.

Fansi hosted the official conference after party with artists, celebrities, and more to celebrate music NFTs.

Beer pong tournament hosted by RBC

Bu Zhi DAO members taking over KOR (several nights in a row).

Bu Zhi DAO members taking over Kor Taipei.

Merch

We had amazing merch thanks to 0xAvenue.

We featured Taiwanese artists, creating rare commissioned merchandise for Taipei Blockchain Week. Shout out to Chou Yi, Night Brew Bar, Flint from Capsule Vault Team, and York Yeh.

The merchandise at Taipei Blockchain Week featured rare tshirts printed with artwork by Taiwan artists.

The Bu Zhi Dao Vibes

Bu Zhi DAO is known for our welcoming and friendly vibes. We wanted the conference to embody that as well from our designs, activities, programming, and food.

We worked with local boozy ice cream shops to supply treats made with local award-winning whisky, Kavalan.

We show-cased famous Taiwanese snacks for the international audience to experience.

Our snack section was filled with local chips and candies - a crowd favorite.

We collaborated with nounsDAO to create a VIP area decked out by nouns for the fun and easy vibes.

Next year

They say one year in crypto is like 10 in the real world. One year in crypto conference planning has definitely given us decades of learnings. From the skills learned in large-scale event planning, work stream organization, to making countless friends and connections along the way, TBW has been an experience we’re excited to re-do every year. We’re recharged and ready to plan the next Taipei Blockchain Week at an even bigger scale.

The theme for this year is SCALE.

The theme for Taipei Blockchain Week 2023 is SCALE

After a successful first year of bridging, we’re showing the world how we take everything we learned to the next level, how we scale Taipei Blockchain Week to be the best conference of Taiwan every year.