Who would have imagined encountering Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, in a random cafe in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province? Yet, there he was.Recently, photos of him working in a cafe in Korea have spread through X, making headlines domestically. People wanted to know why he was here, and what he was doing.Clearly, he wasn’t visiting Korea without a reason. He was invited to deliver keynote speeches at BUIDL Asia, a Web 3 conference held on March 27, and at ETH Seoul, a 3-day hackathon that took place starting March 29.The invitations were extended by Erica Kang, CEO of Kryptoplanet, who was instrumental in organizing both events.”The events were supposed to be low-key, yet the photos went viral. The articles explained why he was there. I am thankful for the credit,” Kang told The Korea Times during the recent one-on-one interview.As a community festival for crypto builders, this year’s event has hosted various figures in the industry, including Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, Nick White, COO of Celestia Labs, and many more. Kang has been hosting this event in Seoul since 2018.
“I built this brand from scratch. It was so hard at first. Nevertheless, I kept it very strict that the content has to be fully technical,” Kang recalled. She gained recognition from different protocols after hosting numerous meetups in Korea since 2017. For three years, she has organized meetups where 50 to 80 people could gather once every month. As the market was nascent, many protocols or builders were not big enough to host their own conferences, making Kang the go-to person for them.As the meetups grew larger, Kang came up with the idea of consolidating them into a single, larger conference.”I felt that Asia was missing the ‘build’ aspect, meaning the technical narrative and technical content. That was lacking, especially in Korea, whereas I saw many of those in the U.S. or Europe. If I host this here, it would be the first one in Asia. It could become a melting pot of diverse people, together on a single platform,” Kang said.Starting from this year, Kang also began hosting the SheFi Summit, a community event for women working in Web 3, in Seoul.”As this sector is highly innovative, many people assume it would have a significant number of women and a balanced gender representation. However, it is not. The environment can be quite macho, and it’s hard to make your way and brand as a woman,” Kang said.Building a community for individuals who share the 슬롯놀이터 same values is thereby crucial, Kang said.