Ethereum's first Devconnect event wrapped up in Amsterdam in mid-to-late April 2022, bringing together developers from across the ecosystem for eight days of technical workshops, coworking sessions, and specialist talks. Unlike the Ethereum Foundation's flagship Devcon conference, Devconnect had no central organizer and no single agenda. Independent teams each hosted their own sessions across multiple Amsterdam venues, including Beurs van Berlage, Tolhuistuin, and Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. The format was designed to prioritize technical depth over broad programming, and it set a template with consequences well beyond the Netherlands. Session recordings were made available through StreamETH and individual event websites.

"When we announced Devconnect, we envisioned the ecosystem coming together for depth-first and fruitful discussions, and to learn while making serious progress on specific subjects," the Ethereum Foundation wrote in its May 30 wrap-up post. Topics ranged from Layer 2 scaling and MEV (maximal extractable value, the profit that miners could capture by reordering or selecting transactions in a block; after Ethereum's transition to proof-of-stake in September 2022, this role passed to validators) to DAO governance, public goods funding, and Solidity smart contract development.

Running alongside the main event, the ETHAmsterdam hackathon drew more than 1,100 participants from 56 countries. Developers submitted 165 projects and competed for a prize pool exceeding $400,000, supported by 100 ecosystem mentors. Thirty-one percent of attending developers were new to Web3, a figure that suggests the event pulled in participants beyond the established Ethereum core.

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The Merge Was the Subtext

Devconnect took place roughly five months before Ethereum completed its transition from proof-of-work mining to proof-of-stake validation, the upgrade known as "The Merge." The technical sessions on staking, client diversity, and proposer-builder separation were not theoretical. They were final coordination work before one of the most consequential software upgrades in blockchain history.

Tim Beiko, an Ethereum core developer, put the stakes plainly: "Moving from mining to stake-based validation would reduce the carbon footprint of Ethereum by more than 99%." The Merge, completed in September 2022, also cut new ETH issuance by approximately 90 percent through the shift to validator rewards, a meaningful structural change to the network's economic model.

Post-Merge on-chain data bore out the coordination work done in Amsterdam. MEV-Boost, the relay software discussed extensively at Devconnect, was adopted by roughly 90 percent of Ethereum blocks after the upgrade, directly shaping how validators capture revenue today. Matt Nelson of Consensys described the network health priorities emerging from those discussions: "More clients and diversity of validators and rich set of L2s." For smaller independent stakers, those Amsterdam sessions set the architecture they operate within today.

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Why the Format Matters Outside Europe

The decentralized hosting model of Devconnect carries practical significance for developer communities across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, in cities ranging from Lagos and Nairobi to Mumbai, Karachi, and Dhaka. Conference sponsorship and attendance costs can pose significant barriers for teams in those regions, and the Devconnect format addresses that problem directly: because any team can host a sub-event under the broader umbrella, it offers a lower-cost replication path. One example from Amsterdam: Mina Protocol's zKHappyHour drew approximately 350 attendees as an independent session within the week, organized separately from the main program.

Africa currently accounts for roughly 3 percent of global blockchain developers as of 2022, according to Electric Capital data, despite having some of the world's highest per-capita cryptocurrency adoption rates driven by remittances, currency instability, and mobile-first infrastructure. Nigeria alone represented 3 to 4 percent of new global Web3 developer output by 2025, with 86 percent of those developers under age 27. India's developer share sits at approximately 12 percent of global crypto contributors as of 2024. Both regions are building on the same Ethereum stack, including L2 infrastructure and smart contract tooling, that Devconnect put at the center of its technical sessions.

Community advocacy for bringing Devconnect itself to Africa has already surfaced in formal channels. A thread on the official Devcon Forum proposed Kampala, Uganda as a future host city. That proposal reflects growing interest in regional Devconnect-style gatherings, a trend that the Amsterdam model's low barriers to entry appears to have encouraged.

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Looking Ahead to Bogotá and Beyond

The Ethereum Foundation used its Devconnect wrap-up to flag Devcon 6 in Bogotá, Colombia as the next major milestone, scheduled for October 2022. The selection of Bogotá was widely noted as a significant pivot toward the Global South, representing the first time the flagship Devcon event was held outside Europe or North America. The event drew more than 1,400 attendees from 62 countries, with 31 percent coming from Latin America.

The Foundation also launched its Devcon Scholars Program ahead of Bogotá, offering full funding covering tickets, travel, accommodation, and visa support to developers who could not otherwise attend. The program required only English communication and targeted underrepresented geographies explicitly. For developers in South Asia and Africa navigating the cost and visa friction of attending events held in Western Europe or North America, the scholars framework represented a meaningful expansion of access. Taken together, the Amsterdam decentralized format, the Bogotá location choice, and the Scholars Program point toward an Ethereum development culture that is becoming genuinely global, extending well beyond the handful of Western tech hubs where the network's early infrastructure was built.