Innovation, Cryptocurrencies, and Co-Founder of Ethereum at the ETHPrague Conference

Hundreds of developers, a hackathon with tens of thousands of dollars in prizes, and discussions about the future of blockchain with leaders of the tech scene. The fifth annual ETHPrague conference took place at Prague’s Municipal House. The conference was attended not only by FMV students, but also featured a presentation by PhD student Martin Bok from the Department of International Economic Relations on one of the main panels.

Global Technology Leaders in Prague

Last weekend, May 8–10, the historic Art Nouveau spaces of the Municipal House came alive with modern technology. The fifth annual ETHPrague conference combined critical debates on the future of Ethereum with a large-scale hackathon for hundreds of teams. The growing significance of the event is also evidenced by the fact that the total value of the competition prizes exceeded $41,000.

Keynote speakers included Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, alongside Marian Goodell from the Burning Man Project and Christopher Fabian from UNICEF.

Our faculty present not only in the audience but also on the program

Thanks to free tickets, students enrolled in courses focused on cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and blockchain were also able to attend the conference, giving them the opportunity to hear from global leaders in person.

However, the faculty was also actively represented in the program. Our PhD student Martin Bok spoke on an academic panel dedicated to ZK rollups technology, which is currently one of the most significant innovations in the field of blockchain scalability. ZK technology allows the correctness of a computation or statement to be verified without the need to disclose the input data itself. In the Ethereum environment, for example, it is used to process large volumes of transactions more efficiently and securely off-chain, with only a brief cryptographic proof subsequently stored on the main blockchain.

ETHPrague reaffirmed that Prague is among Europe’s key centers of technological innovation and that students and academics from VŠE are certainly not missing from these crucial technological debates.