2020: The Year Ethereum Stayed Home

"These folks are in a state of constant BUIDLing" Amanda Cassatt, a ConsenSys alum who launched its Ethereal event series, told CoinDesk in an email.

The community's tentpole event, October's Devcon, announced its next gathering will be in 2021.

This reticence to meet up makes sense due to safety concerns around COVID-19.After all, one of the last big Ethereum events, EthCC, turned out to be the source of a COVID-19 cluster.

"Given our community's interest in events, I could see larger in-person gatherings resuming in 2021," Cassatt predicted, but she also expects hybrid on- and off-line gatherings will be the norm from here on out.

Optimism's Wang agreed on the value of in-person events: "They're great opportunities to meet projects that you've been chatting online with, or random crypto people whose tweets you enjoy."

ConsenSys's Brennan said events served as a kind of punctuation in the year that Ethereum teams could organize their work around.

"Virtual events may be a tougher sell to sponsors, but I'm looking forward to seeing creative solutions emerge for virtual events to offer sponsors value in new ways."

"Most events felt like a distraction to me, if I'm being honest," Spencer Noon, of DTC Capital, told CoinDesk.

"I'm actually pretty bullish on people in the community organizing some awesome virtual events, though."

Rettig in particular noted how virtual events do a bad job of replicating the hallway conference, which is what people really go for.