Meet the Citizens of Consensus

A look at some of the people who attended the conference this year.

Attendees at Consensus 2023 included Starfox, an artist who was part of the UNFK art/protest project and who also played in a David Bowie-esque glam rock band. Dustin Lee, who drove down from Idaho to gain visibility for his Web3 marketplace DeStore, which combined crypto with Shopify and used the NFT-focused RMRK protocol. Clemente Varas and Easy Eats, a cowboy duo who both worked as content producers for Bodoggos Entertainment, a unit of Nick O’Neill, and who were both known for their catchphrase "choose rich." David Quinn, the founder of Austin Embroidery in North Austin, who first connected with Generative Goods at SXSW. Daniel Calderon, who wrote code for Generative Goods, which created unique one-of-a-kind physical items like hats and clothes (with a digital counterpart that can be traded). The company was headquartered in Marfa, Texas, and was more of a proof-of-concept today but hoped to one day get its algorithmically produced merchandise in store. David Bischoff, the community lead of TronDAO, the decentralized organization that technically comprised anyone who held TRX tokens, who said he met a woman from Africa who said European banks were often unwilling to accept wires from local institutions and that TRON had become a lifeline for her. TronDAO's senior ecosystem dev and investment team lead Hunter Rogers, who agreed that the job took a lot of coffee but that he loved it. Both were paid in USDT on Tron. Thibault Palomares and Galen, who fully acknowledged that their meme coin had an inimitable ticker: $USA. Before leading a “community takeover” of the project four weeks ago, the two were both artists and professional meme coin traders. They were still both, but now they also carried the responsibility of running a charity that used the profits from $USA to donate to charities that supported military vets. So far, it had raised over $38 million. Jen Wheatley, who fell in love with Polygon the first time she interacted with it when introduced to it by Moonbeam co-founder Katie Butler, having come from the “Ethereum world” beforehand. A public relations professional with about 15 years of experience, Wheatley was now a director of marketing communications at Disruptive. The Pink Alliance, which was trying to do the metaverse differently. While most metaverse projects tended to focus on gaming, they were trying to incorporate comic book culture, co-founder Rasul Elder said. The system was looking to connect Ethereum to Solana to Polygon to Ordinals.