Among the serene mountains of Western Turkey, the Nesin Math Village offered us a space for learning and collaborating after Devconnect 2023. Itâs a place built for thinking â 13.5 acres, 7.5 of which are olive groves â nestled just outside the village of Ćirince in the Selçuk district of Izmir. The houses are simple: stone, straw, and clay, scattered among greenery and cats. Itâs a place that teaches you how to be still and curious at the same time.
It was the perfect setting for 0xVillage: a gathering that wanted to break away from the typical crypto conference circuit. No booths, no badge scans, no over-polished panels. Just people, math, olive oil, and shared curiosity.
A Different Kind of Crypto Gathering
0xVillage was meant to be a non-instrumentalized space. A place where people donât feel like resources or stepping stones. Most crypto conferences say they want to reimagine the future but often end up reproducing the same power dynamics and extractive culture. We wanted something different: an unconference where people brought their full selves, not their pitch decks.
Imagine a meetup where the stage is a stone house, the audience is a mix of students and cryptographers, and conversations are fueled by shared meals and spontaneous chalkboard sessions.
Talks, Topics, and Tangents
The lineup was a mix of academic depth and casual exploration:
We also dove into group theory for cryptography, proof systems, and new primitives. The format was fluid. Someone would start explaining something on a chalkboard, and before you knew it, a group of people would gather around and stay for hours.
Building Bridges, Not Audiences
I have organized 100+ events and a half-million-dollar fundraise. I partnered with Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana, Avalanche, NEAR, Algorand, Protocol Labs, Stellar, and more. It taught me one thing: the best communities aren't built by broadcasting. They're built by bridge building.
0xVillage is my proudest accomplishment. It was both the hardest and easiest thing I ever did. Hardest because it took a lot of research, planning, operations, etc but easiest because once the heavy lifting was done, the community became self-sustaining and I got to take a step back and let it grow.
It wasn't about positioning ourselves as experts lecturing beginners. It was about creating a space where everyone, from students to cryptographers, could help each other cross gaps in understanding. People do not remember what you do for them. They remember how you make them feel. When you help someone learn ZK proofs or debug a smart contract, they don't just remember the solution. They remember who helped them when they needed it.
That memory becomes a bridge. And bridges compound.
Beyond Talks
0xVillagers explored Western Turkey together â day trips to Ephesus and the Temple of Artemis, soaking in a deep sense of history. We had traditions like 4PM Cake Time and meetups at "the Abacus" that slowly became part of our shared routine.
Over 4 days, 48 of us from 15 countries became a web3 commons. No single country made up more than a third of attendees. We didnât just talk decentralization; we lived it. This is what it looks like to inhabit space intentionally.
What We Learned
People will travel across the world for something that feels meaningful and human. The math village in the mountains was a strong enough pull for people to show up, and once they did, they created something bigger than all of us. The magic came from how light the structure was. It reminded me of BAF meetups: less agenda, more time together, better outcomes.
Communities can be seeded from shared experience. And from that experience, an online network can emerge that actually means something. Itâs hard to build a good online community from scratch. Itâs easier to start from a memory.
From Many-to-Many to Network Effects
Traditional conferences are one-to-many: speakers broadcast to audiences. But value doesn't scale that way. It scales when 48 people from 15 countries form direct connections with each otherâwhen the PhD student helps the self-taught dev, when the protocol researcher collaborates with the builder.
This is the secret: the more people building in an ecosystem, the more people build in that ecosystem. 0xVillage created 1,128 potential connection points (48 choose 2). A panel with 5 speakers and 100 attendees creates 105 connection points.
We didn't optimize for reach. We optimized for depth. And depth creates the kind of trust that pulls people back, that makes them invite others, that turns attendees into organizers.
Why IRL Still Matters (But Not How You Think)
I've watched teams blow millions on conference booths that reach dozens. A single tutorial video hits 100,000 developers. The math is brutal: digital content is 500x more efficient than most IRL events.
But 0xVillage proved the inverse truth: use IRL to build relationships that make digital content spread. Those 4 days created bonds strong enough that when someone from 0xVillage shares something online, their network actually pays attention. Trust was built over Turkish tea and late-night chalkboard sessions, not Zoom calls.
The ROI isn't in the talks. It's in the fact that 48 people now genuinely want each other to succeed.
The Superstar Problem
Every successful ecosystem has superstarsâthe prolific builders, the clear explainers, the connectors. Most organizations try to hire them. We did something different: we gave them a space to become superstars.
The people who stepped up at 0xVillageâwho led spontaneous workshops, who organized the Ephesus trip, who made 4PM Cake Time a traditionâweren't invited because they were already known. They emerged because the structure was light enough to let them lead.
This scales differently. Instead of one team organizing everything, you're seeding 48 potential organizers. Some will run their own events. Some will write tutorials. Some will just remember what it felt like and recreate it in their local communities. That's how movements start.
Looking Forward
A big thank you to Dilara Savut from Nesin Ä°stasyon for helping us significantly both before and during 0xVillage. Shoutout to UlaĆ ErdoÄan for his support in the early stages.
Special thanks to the Ethereum Ecosystem Development Program for their financial support.
We want to keep building. Not by scaling quickly, but by deepening the roots. Nesin Villages gave us a place to start. The values of peer-to-peer collaboration, trust, open-ended inquiry â theyâre embedded in the soil there.
Weâre lucky to have hosted this first version of 0xVillage. Friends were made, Turkish tea was shared, and a future was glimpsed. Now itâs just a question of what we co-create next.
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