At Consensus 2023, CoinDesk tackles the biggest issues in crypto

This week, around 12,000 people will gather in Austin, Texas, for Consensus – the largest and most influential annual conference of the global digital resource community. While sessions featuring big names like Chelsea Manning, Balaji Srinivasan and William Shatner are sure to draw big crowds at the Austin Convention Center and from virtual ticket holders, some of the most important conversations will happen offstage.

For Consensus 2023, CoinDesk is adding something new and timely: Intimate group discussions, where a cross-section of interested parties – including developers, investors, government officials, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations – will seek solutions to the crypto industry’s toughest problems. challenges. Coinciding with CoinDesk’s 10th anniversary, it reflects a commitment to use our convening and publishing power to help the Consensus community move the industry forward in a collaborative and constructive manner.

The 11 discussions will attack the most pressing issues challenging the industry today, including the newly pressing topic of regulation, striking the balance between privacy and transparency, how to bring self-defense to the mainstream, and the future of crypto media.

Sometime after the event, we will publish the findings of the deliberations in CoinDesk’s first-ever Consensus @ Consensus Report, intended to point a way forward for an industry rebuilding in the wake of a devastating downturn.

Examples of topics include: protecting users’ privacy rights while furthering the goals of law enforcement and regulators; making good on crypto’s early promises of individual empowerment and social inclusion; use technology to meet environmental challenges within and outside industry; and build and manage new forms of digital communities.

We plan to make the discussions a routine feature of the conference, reinforcing Consensus’ status as the annual gathering of the crypto and blockchain community’s far-flung, diverse stakeholders where they collectively try to find common ground for the year ahead.

Given the many unresolved issues around standards, regulation and technology exposed by last year’s turbulent downturn in the crypto markets, we see this as an important contribution for CoinDesk and Consensus to advance the technology in the broadest public interest.

Four of the offstage talks will be invitation-only and subject to the Chatham House Rule, meaning the ideas conveyed in the room can only be reported without attribution. This is intended to provide those participants whose institutions have a tight rein on their public statements a safe space for honest, constructive discussion.

We call these sessions “charrettes”, an architectural term defined by Oxford Languages ​​as “a meeting where all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map out solutions.” In the spirit of openness that defines the crypto community at its best, select representatives from the charrettes during the conference will take to the stage to share and discuss the takeaways from their talks.

Participants in the charrettes were chosen by CoinDesk’s content staff, based in part on the recommendations of an advisory board.

Four other discussions, known as brainstormers, will be town hall-style sessions open to all consensus participants with invited speakers leading the conversations. Three others, known as conventions, will have a hybrid structure, combining roundtable discussions with interactive discussions.

A select group of CoinDesk staff will be assigned to listen to each of these discussions and then summarize and synthesize the takeaways in the Consensus @ Consensus Report, scheduled for publication on June 5.

It is a challenging but exciting time for the industry, characterized as never before by economic, political and technological changes. At CoinDesk, we don’t tell people how to tackle these challenges, but believe that by encouraging honest, constructive multi-stakeholder dialogue like this, we can help advance a collective effort to do so in the interest of humanity.

Here is an overview of the 11 sessions: