A good crypto conference is a magical thing and John Paller did it again at ETHDenver 2019. Attendees were energised, focused, sharing, and generally busy as hell as we all gathered together to ‘do crypto’ for 36 hours.

In addition to the hacking, relationship building and information sharing, there was one teeny-tiny project that happened at just one booth and one bar which ended up delivering an outsized impact.

Austin Griffith’s xDai.io wallet played a key role at the event in the form of the ETHDenverWallet. His wallet is a fantastic, wide-scale usability test designed to figure out where we should draw the line between convenience and security. Judging from the number of buffiDai transactions we saw, the rapid adoption from the vendors, and the total sales, it’s a safe bet that the xDai wallet community might have found that balance.

We think so too, if community interest is any judge; we’ve spent a good chunk of the last week coordinating a growing list of teams and organisations from all over the world that are looking to create their own ‘ETHDenver Wallets.’ MakerDAO was thrilled help out and get a front row seat to this level of awesomeness.

Crypto-history will show that in fact, it was you who was ?AF, my friend.

Thanks for letting @MakerDAO be a part of this experiment. Now, get rested up for Phase 2 ? https://t.co/RyiJOYQtqa

— rich@makerdao (@richatmakerdao) February 22, 2019

Check out Austin’s great write-up if you want to see exactly how easy onboarding can be if we take a second look at UX and give users a wallet to buy snacks with instead of a bank vault…

The Plan: buffiDai for Charity

At the event, we spent most of our time busily explaining the nuances of MakerDAO, as well as how the xDai wallet can facilitate the creation of pop-up marketplaces anywhere, for free. It soon occurred to us that the table we were standing was a good place to test this pop-up theory in real-time.

We were giving away swag already, so we had inventory. We had a couple of tablets, so the point of sale system was covered. All attendees were given buffiDai, so we knew they had the funds. We also had foot-traffic... so why not start accepting donations for swag and then donate the proceeds to charity?

At #ETHDenver @MakerDAO has been selling our swag for 1 #BuffiDai
each. So far we've collected $544 for @UNICEF and @Givethio. If you want to help out, send your buffidai here: 0x35661d6a0ecb845111ae94eb7cd016510edd9c53 pic.twitter.com/yaCQ7tW3h7

— rich@makerdao (@richatmakerdao) February 17, 2019

In less than 10 minutes we’d finished setting up our own pop-up crypto market. During the next day and a half we were able to “sell” our previously free socks and hats for 1 buffiDai each. Our transformation from happy-go-lucky crypto-evangelists to fund-raising always-be-closers was in full swing.

Update: Thanks to the generosity and insatiable swag-lust at #ETHDenver, we cracked 1100 Dai! Keep sending your #buffiDust our way and help refugees. pic.twitter.com/1wFqlbuZCA

— rich@makerdao (@richatmakerdao) February 18, 2019

As the main event began to wind down, and dappy hour approached, it became apparent that we were onto something… Why not collect donations at the afterparty as well? Thanks to our good friend Nate McKervey at Splunk (and furiously coordinated by Brian Ethier), they whipped up a full dashboarding tool that not only tracked donations on all the bar’s TVs, they also added a heatmap to display on-chain messages along with the donations. #drinkingforgood was born.

The @MakerDAO Dappy Hour at #ETHDenver2019 was something unlike any other. As attendees purchased drinks or donated to @UNICEF with #xDai or #buffiDai they could share a message and all the TVs rotated through #splunk dashboards to show the results in < 5s thanks to @poanetwork pic.twitter.com/4S0U3IiaNV

— Nate McKervey (@DataPhysicist) February 18, 2019

Because this is crypto, the night wouldn’t be complete without at least one exploit, even if it only occurred in real life. We had a few volunteers running the POS tablets on the crypto-only side of the bar, and when one of them stepped away for a minute an enterprising patron decided to abscond with the funds from the unattended bar wallet.

The evil-doer(s) walked away with about 250 buffiDai for their troubles and then spent some time trading the loot from wallet to wallet to cover their tracks. Ultimately, the money was deposited into the donation address with an added bonus of a few extra tokens it picked up in its travels. We’ve decided to leave the crypto there (and not put it back in the bar tab) as a ‘thank you’ for the cool larceny, and because of our criminals’ heartfelt apology: “Erm”.

Don’t worry, all is forgiven.

Even after the event was over, the crypto community kept on giving:

Got leftover #BuffiDAI from the @EthereumDenver @austingriffith #BurnerWallet? extravaganza? Scan below and send it to @richatmakerdao! It’s all going to @UNICEF and @Givethio ?

New tally is ~ $1,600 ? https://t.co/QXb6fmzdnr

— Simona Pop (@Sim_Pop) February 18, 2019

We continued to receive donations from people on the long trek home who were sending us screenshots of buffiDai coming in from airports all over the world.

The Take

After the crypto-dust settled, and the numbers came in, we found that simply by picking a handy opportunity, setting up a tablet and selling some swag, we were able to raise 3066 buffiDai, 72.96 xDai, 2 Dai, through 1154 individual donations.

After converting the tokens into real money, i.e. Dai, we split the pool of $3141.04 evenly between UNICEF.fr (TX)and GRACEaid (TX) with an average transaction fee less than 5 cents.

As a side note: our donation to GRACEaid was done through the amazing Giveth.io dapp, take a look around their site to discover other worthy causes.

Thanks to everyone involved at ETHDenver and to all of the gracious attendees for reminding us just how generous the crypto community can be. Special shout out to some of our most generous patrons: @AnettRolikova, @TrustlessState, @davecraige, @theflyinghutch, and @A_D_I.