With EthDenver 2024 coming to a close, we’re thankful for another year of vibes, insights and best of all, hacking. There was an electricity in the air and builders were buzzing with newfound energy and excitement. If last year was about passion, this year is about momentum. As we see a hopeful upturn in the market, builders are pushing limits like never before. Let’s just say we left Denver stoked.

Embracing the Action

Pinata takes a "boots on the ground" approach to events like EthDenver. So, if you were searching for us at a booth, we apologize for missing you – we were busy hacking at the BUIDL Hub! Luckily, we were still able to connect with many developers who were building awesome projects with Pinata. We see you! 💪 We love hacking because it allows us to dogfood our own products, ( i.e. Pinata Hub and  Frame Analytics)  - check them out if you haven’t already - and connect with developers in a more meaningful way. Plus, we just like to hack. Can you blame us?

What We Built: Swooop.

Pinata aims to build developer tools that make IPFS easy and now we are extending that mission to Farcaster. We saw a lack of native iOS Farcaster clients built with Swift, so we decided to make our own using Pinata’s Hub and Farcaster API.  Basically, Swooop was built as a reference implementation for other developers who want to build Farcaster clients using Swift UI. We’re pretty proud of it, so take a look at the source code here.

Key Takeaways

Farcaster Frames

The most commonly asked question at EthDenver: “Are you on Farcaster?”. After Denver it is evident Farcaster has created a ricochet effect in the ecosystem. Collaboration and innovation are at an all time high and we’re here for it.  If you’re unfamiliar with Farcaster Frames, catch up, they’ve taken the web3 dev world by storm for the past month or so.  Not to brag, but we’ve also launched multiple products to support Farcaster including, Farcaster API, Farcaster Hubs and Frame Analytics with our Pinata FDK (just to name a few 😉).

NPC Day

Pinata participated in NPC Day this year by demoing our on-chain game, Cosmic Cowboys. Shoutout to Future Primitive for a killer event! Cosmic Cowboys leverages the power of ERC-6551 and AI to create a dynamic on-chain gaming experience. We were blown away by the other speakers and their impressive solutions to many of the problems we faced ourselves while building Cosmic Cowboys. One project we really loved was Ritual, a solution aiming to seamlessly integrate AI into smart contracts.

Base

Base (Coinbase Layer-2 scaling solution) had a strong presence at EthDenver, with many builders leveraging the L2’s quick transaction speeds and low costs. Coinbase also launched an impressive embedded wallet built on top of Base this week. Their new feature, powered by “Wallet as a Service” - (WaaS), will allow developers to create white-labeled embedded wallets, abstracting the complexities of crypto to mimic more traditional login flows, such as email and socials.

Vibes ✨

We say this every year, but this year we really mean it! The vibes at EthDenver were amazing and we’re so excited to see the Farcaster community grow. Events like EthDenver are so important to put a face to the handle and rally the spirit of web3 building. On a side note - we loved seeing more women involved and occupying space at EthDenver. Notably the GM Farcaster squad, we love your work, keep killing it!

Looking to the Future

As we move through 2024, we plan to harness the bull market energy and follow through on our promise to make IPFS, and now Farcaster, as easy as possible! Keep an eye on our docs, we plan to ship fast. Until next year friends!