We’ve spent the last few years attending Web3 events across different regions, formats, and ecosystems — from hackathons and side events to massive week-long gatherings that turn entire cities into temporary crypto capitals.
However, stages and keynote addresses did not provide the majority of the value we received. It originated from discussions: founders talking about their achievements and shortcomings, developers explaining the rationale behind their ecosystem selection, marketers realizing which events had no purpose and which ones subtly changed everything.
For a long time, we believed the usual signals. If everyone was talking about an event on X/Twitter, it had to be worth attending. If a conference had famous speakers and big sponsors, it had to be valuable. That assumption cost me time, money, and focus. Over time — and through advice from founders who had already made those mistakes — we learned something important.
This article explains how we now decide which Web3 events are worth attending — in other words, how to choose Web3 events that deliver real value. It’s based on lived experience, repeated patterns, observed outcomes, and many honest conversations. If you’re an early-stage founder, developer, or marketer, this is written for you.
Why Most Web3 Events Aren’t Worth Your Time
Web3 moves fast, but attention and energy are limited. Every event you attend takes time away from building, shipping, hiring, and learning.
We’ve met founders who were constantly traveling, moving from one conference to the next. Months later, their product hadn’t meaningfully changed. They were busy, not making progress.
We’ve also met founders who attended one or two carefully chosen events a year and came back with clarity, real partnerships, or momentum that carried for months. What separated them was how intentionally they picked where to spend their time.
The right Web3 events can:
- Compress months of learning into a few days
- Create trust faster than online conversations ever will
- Put you inside an ecosystem instead of watching it from the outside
- Lead to compounding relationships, not one-off connections
The wrong events do the opposite. They drain focus, fragment attention, and create the illusion of progress.
Step 1: Be Brutally Honest About Your Goal
Before opening an event website, booking flights, or asking for tickets, ask yourself one question.
Why am I going to this event?
This question sounds simple, but it is the most important one. Most founders skip it. Going through countless conversations, we noticed that founders who extracted real value always had one primary goal. Not five. One.
Common primary goals include:
- Building or validating a product
- Meeting developers or potential co-founders
- Finding early users
- Exploring grants or accelerator programs
- Fundraising or investor introductions
- Partnerships or integrations
Trying to optimize for all of these at once usually leads to shallow outcomes.
Hackathons like ETHGlobal events are ideal if your goal is building. Several founders told us their project only became real once a hackathon forced them to focus, cut scope, and ship.
Large conferences like Token2049, Consensus, or ETHCC make sense when your primary goal is fundraising, partnerships, or visibility. They are expensive and overwhelming if you attend without meetings scheduled.
If you cannot articulate your goal in one sentence, that is usually a signal to skip the event.
Step 2: Understand Event Formats and Stage Fit
Another repeated lesson from founders was this: early-stage teams should not attend events the same way late-stage companies do. At an early stage, relevance beats reach, and access beats scale.
Hackathons
When founders talked about events that genuinely paid off, hackathons like ETHGlobal and BNBHack came up more than anything else. They pull builders, mentors, sponsors, and ecosystem teams into the same place for a short, intense stretch of time, which naturally pushes conversations toward real problems and real decisions. Feedback happens in the moment, incentives are clear, and most people are there for the same reason: to build something that ships.
We met founders who:
- Found co-founders at hackathons
- Won non-dilutive funding through bounties
- Got direct feedback from protocol teams
- Turned hackathon demos into funded startups
Hackathons are exhausting, but for early-stage teams, they often punch far above their weight.
Developer-first Conferences
Events like Devconnect attract people who are actively building and thinking long term. Founders describe Devconnect as less of a conference and more of a temporary city for builders. If your goal is ecosystem alignment, serious learning, or collaboration, this format is extremely valuable.
Ecosystem-specific Conferences
Ecosystem events like Solana Breakpoint or NearCon serve a different purpose. They gather builders, foundations, and partners around one chain. Founders building deeply within one ecosystem consistently said these events helped them:
- Meet core contributors and foundation teams
- Understand ecosystem priorities
- Get visibility for grants or programs
- Build credibility within that ecosystem
Solana Breakpoint was often mentioned as valuable for teams already committed to Solana. The conversations are focused and decision-makers are present.
Large Industry Conferences
Events like Token2049 or Consensus can be useful, but only with preparation. Founders who benefited treated them like calendars full of pre-booked meetings. Those who showed up hoping for serendipity usually left disappointed.
Step 3: Evaluate the Audience
One of the best pieces of advice we ever received came from a founder at a side event in Paris: “Ignore the headline numbers. Ask who actually shows up.” Event marketing focuses on size, speakers, and sponsors. None of that guarantees relevance.
When we evaluate events now, we look for:
- Who the event is designed for
- Who sponsors it and why
- Whether decision-makers attend
- What conversations typically happen there
ETHGlobal attracts builders. Devconnect attracts contributors and researchers. Solana Breakpoint attracts Solana-native teams. Token2049 attracts funds and large companies. If your product targets developers, an event full of traders will not help you. If you are fundraising, an event full of students will not move the needle.
This is where Web3Voyager becomes useful. Instead of chasing hype on social media, use it as a central place to compare Web3 events by ecosystem, region, and format. Patterns become obvious quickly.
Step 4: Look for Real ROI Signals
Founders who consistently extracted value from events looked for the same signals. These included:
- Strong side event ecosystems
- Workshops, office hours, or mentoring sessions
- Clear participation paths instead of passive talks
- Ecosystem or protocol-backed sponsorships
ETHDenver stood out in many conversations because the main event is only part of the experience. The surrounding week is filled with smaller, focused gatherings where real conversations happen.
Several founders told us their most valuable meetings happened at side events they almost skipped. If an event offers no clear way to engage beyond listening, that is usually a red flag.
Step 5: Calculate Opportunity Cost
Early on, we focused almost entirely on ticket cost. Founders quickly corrected that mindset. The real cost of an event includes:
- Travel and accommodation
- Lost product development time
- Mental and physical energy
One founder put it perfectly: “If I spend a week at an event, something else does not get built.” That sentence changed how we plan our year. We now attend fewer events, but engage much more deeply.
Mistakes Founders Warned Us About
Across dozens of conversations, the same warnings kept coming up:
- Chasing hype instead of relevance
- Attending too many events in a short period
- Going without a clear plan
- Expecting outcomes without follow-up
- Treating events as marketing instead of relationship building
The founders who benefited most treated events as long-term investments. They followed up, stayed in touch, and built trust over time. Thanks to them, today our process looks like this:
- Define one primary goal
- Filter events by format and stage fit
- Check audience alignment
- Look for engagement signals
- Assess opportunity cost
If an event fails at least two of these steps, we skip it.
Final Thoughts
Web3 events can either move you forward or pull you off track. The difference is rarely the event itself, but how and why you decide to be there. The most useful advice we ever got was straightforward: spend time where your future collaborators already are.
When you’re clear about what you want and selective about where you show up, Web3 events can save months of trial and error. When you’re not, they turn into expensive distractions.
If you’re figuring out how to choose Web3 events, that judgment matters more than any speaker list or sponsor logo. Choose carefully.
