The Ethereum Foundation held the sixth edition of its developer conference at the Agora Bogotá Convention Center in Colombia from October 11 to 14, 2022. More than 6,000 developers, researchers, and builders attended in person, with an additional 60,000 viewers watching via global livestream. The choice of Bogotá was deliberate: it was the first time Devcon had been held in Latin America, and it arrived just weeks after Ethereum completed its long-anticipated shift from energy-intensive mining to a staking-based consensus system, an upgrade widely known as "The Merge."

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The Merge Set the Tone

The Merge, completed on September 15, 2022, dramatically reduced Ethereum's energy consumption by replacing mining with a staking system where validators lock up ETH as collateral to confirm transactions. The opening ceremony at Devcon VI centered on that milestone. Danny Ryan, then a senior researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, delivered a keynote examining the implications for Ethereum's consensus layer going forward.

Even the conference Wi-Fi reflected the week's priorities. The password, "runafullnode," referenced the practice of operating independent software to validate the entire Ethereum blockchain rather than relying on a centralized provider. It is a small detail, but one that signals who Devcon is aimed at: people building the infrastructure, not just using it.

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Why Bogotá?

Devcon has historically rotated through cities including Berlin, London, Shanghai, Cancún, Prague, and Osaka before a three-year pause forced by COVID-19. Returning in Latin America was a statement about where Ethereum's real-world impact is most visible.

Colombia ranked 15th globally in Chainalysis's 2022 Crypto Adoption Index, while Brazil placed 7th and Argentina 13th. These are markets where inflation, limited access to traditional financial services, and high remittance costs have driven crypto adoption well ahead of regulatory clarity. Latin America received an estimated $562 billion in crypto value in the year to June 2022, a 40% increase year over year.

The regional character of the week extended to the days before the main program. On October 10, community organizers held ETHLatam Day at the Ágora venue, a gathering separate from both the main conference and the ETHBogotá hackathon organized by ETHGlobal (October 7 to 9), and a demonstration of the depth of the regional ecosystem.

Vitalik Buterin used a keynote session to outline Ethereum's post-Merge development roadmap in four phases: the Surge (scaling through rollups, which process transactions in batches off the main Ethereum chain before settling on it), the Verge (introducing Verkle trees, a shift in how the chain's state is cryptographically represented to make nodes lighter), the Purge (reducing historical data to lower the cost of running a node), and the Splurge (account abstraction and broader user experience improvements). On the question of account abstraction, a feature that would allow wallets to pay transaction fees in stablecoins rather than ETH, Buterin was direct: "There's a lot of reason why L2 is our very natural testing ground for account abstraction. I don't see many competing approaches for how to solve the problem of 'I have a smart contract wallet and I want to be able to send something without going through a third party.'"

Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also delivered a keynote titled "The Value of Cryptocurrencies in Supporting Human Rights," a session whose subject matter aligned directly with the economic realities driving crypto adoption across the Global South.

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On-Chain Activity and Inclusion Efforts

The conference integrated several blockchain-native features. Attendees received ERC-721 tokens (a standard for unique digital records tied to a specific wallet address) as verifiable proof of attendance. An on-chain raffle drew 268 participants competing for early ticket access. The Ethereum Foundation also retired 403.9 tonnes of CO2-equivalent carbon credits through a decentralized application, making the offset verifiable on-chain rather than dependent on a third-party certificate.

The Scholars Program covered 50 individuals in full, paying for flights, accommodation, visa fees, and a daily stipend. Half of the cohort came from Latin America, and 70% participated in ETHBogotá, the parallel ETHGlobal hackathon held October 7 to 9. Pakistan was the notable South Asian country represented, with Mashal Waqar, co-founder of media company The Tempest, among the featured participants.

The program's structure points to a real and persistent problem. India ranked second in Chainalysis's 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index and had placed first for grassroots adoption for multiple consecutive years, a distinction that makes South Asian underrepresentation in the scholarship cohort all the more notable. Africa presented a similar gap: no African scholars appeared in the Ethereum Foundation's published wrap-up materials despite significant community activity in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya. Nigeria alone would go on to account for roughly 3% of global Web3 developers by 2024, with 28% year-over-year growth in its developer base. These figures emerged in later reporting and were not available at the time of the conference.

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Looking Ahead

The technical themes most discussed at Devcon VI, including ZK-rollups (scaling tools that use cryptographic proofs to compress transaction data while preserving privacy), account abstraction, and post-Merge staking infrastructure, all carry direct relevance for developers in markets where transaction costs, onboarding friction, and currency instability are everyday constraints rather than theoretical concerns. The broader shift in who is building on Ethereum reinforces why these questions matter: the share of non-Western crypto developers grew from 18% in 2018 to 36% in 2023, placing Bogotá within a longer arc of geographic expansion rather than treating it as an isolated gesture. Closing the gap between grassroots developer momentum in Africa and South Asia and formal participation in events like Devcon is among the clearest items on Ethereum's unfinished agenda heading into the next conference cycle.