Happy Monday, everyone. The annual pilgrimage known as EthDenver wrapped up this weekend and, after two days of diving into the festivities, I came away heartened by the optimism and the sheer vitality of the scene. Sure, there was cringe aplenty and I'll never quite get used to grown men dressed as unicorns, but the raucous event felt as big as a Broncos game and was a reminder that—even after its annus horribilis—crypto is very much thriving.
While the event was dedicated to all things Ethereum, it also featured dozens of booths and people plugging rival blockchains, including the Near Protocol, which launched a "product-first operating system" designed for browsing Web3 products like exchanges and NFTs. All of this reminded me of a question that's long nagged at me: Why are there so many blockchains in the first place?
