Held on May 9-11, 2025, at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, the third ETHDam conference offered more than just panels and presentations. It captured the spirit of freedom, collaboration, and diversity that defines the Ethereum community.
It was also a great opportunity to connect with like-minded developers, entrepreneurs, and investors, and to explore meaningful opportunities for future collaboration..
ETHDam: No hustle, just business
First and foremost, the event felt genuinely cozy. This wasn’t the kind of conference people attend to show off. And in a crypto space often clouded by noise and inflated egos, that was both refreshing and sobering. ETHDam is for doers, not dreamers.
GetBlock x Zetachain meeting
We were also struck by the diversity and warmth of the event itself. The crowd ranged from pure cryptography nerds to adoption evangelists, DevRels, engineers, and more. But the real diversity was in the companies represented.
From industry heavyweights like Cyber Capital, and Polygon to incredibly promising early-stage teams - we had dozens of meaningful conversations about all things blockchain. Huge shoutout to my Lead Tech PM, Dmitri, who was instrumental in those discussions.
Once again, this reinforced the kind of diversity crypto truly needs. This isn’t a space for tearing each other down - it’s one for building together, through collaboration and mutual support.
Scam protection and privacy in strong focus
Some of the most inspiring conversations we had were with privacy pioneers like Cake Wallet, top-tier security experts from Hacken, and adoption leaders such as Trust Wallet and Bitvavo alongside numerous passionate local teams from the Netherlands and neighboring countries.
As in previous years, privacy remained a core theme across talks, panels, hackathon challenges, pitches, and expo booths. But what stood out this year was a stronger focus on scam protection, especially for everyday cryptocurrency users. Creative, sometimes unconventional, but often elegant solutions were presented to keep user funds out of the wrong hands.
At GetBlock, we had something to contribute as well. For privacy coin access, we offer full node support for Monero (for clients on dedicated plans), and ZCash and Dash for all users. Our ZCash infrastructure comes with the Yellowstone gRPC plugin, and Dash is available via Blockbook API. Privacy-first builders can save valuable time by deploying directly through our infrastructure.
To wrap it up. ETHDam was a powerful reminder of what Web3 is meant to be. Amsterdam’s energy, bold, strange, vibrant, and diverse, felt like the perfect match for the ethos of the event.
You could feel it in the air.
Next stop: ETH Belgrade!
