Fork the Frontier
An invitation to ETH Boulder for explorers of art, science, and technology
ETH Boulder is an experiment.
A small gathering—200 to 300 people—at the edge of art, science, and technology. No main-stage posturing. No corporate theater. Just builders, artists, engineers, and explorers who believe creativity is a contact sport—and that breakthroughs happen when strange minds collide.
This is not for everyone. If you want polished booths, branded tote bags, and a calendar packed with sponsor pitches, you will be disappointed. If you’re curious, playful, and allergic to soulless conferences, you will feel at home.
ETH Boulder is about cross-pollination. Engineers talking to artists. Scientists trading insights with musicians. As Matt Ridley says, innovation happens when ideas have sex. ETH Boulder is a breeding ground. Bring your best ideas. Let them collide. See what new “baby ideas” are born.
My friend Kevin Owocki—founder of Gitcoin—and I have been searching for the right moment to bring our communities together.
The Artizen community: artists, storytellers, creators. And the Gitcoin community: engineers, scientists, open-source builders. Distinct cultures, but same tribe. Explorers at the frontier of innovation. People who care deeply about funding what matters most. People who believe creativity—whether expressed as code, art, or research—is how progress actually happens.
Back in 2018, Gitcoin gave me confidence I wasn’t alone. Kevin was taking a radical idea—quadratic funding—and turning it into real infrastructure. I didn’t want to build Gitcoin. But it rhymed with what I’d been working toward for years. We met. We became friends. Kevin invested in Artizen. Mostly, we kept circling the same question: when is the right moment to bring these worlds together?
That moment arrived when Kevin decided to fork the frontier.
ETH Denver began as something rare—grassroots, messy, alive. Ostensibly for Ethereum developers, but really a magnet for frontier explorers: artists, scientists, musicians, regen thinkers. A festival more than a conference. Famously, Vitalik Buterin once wandered the event in a Bufficorn suit.
But scale has gravity. Over time, ETH Denver became polished, corporate, and hollowed out. Last year’s “Year of the Regen” felt more like branding than belief.
So Kevin did something honest—and brave. He forked it.
When Kevin floated the idea, I texted him immediately. Artizen was all in. This was the moment we’d been waiting for.
ETH Boulder will be intimate. Experimental. A little risky. A robot Fight Club produced by theater kids. Sound journeys. Collective murals. Choirs built from the crowd. Tea ceremonies. Saunas. Open-source coordination sessions. Experiments in public goods, resilient infrastructure, and local community building. Serious ideas, handled playfully. Playful ideas, taken seriously.
It might be a disaster. First years often are. But building on the frontier requires risk.
ETH Boulder is a gathering of explorers in one of America’s great frontier towns. If you’re exploring the outer edges of art, the limits of science, or the future of technology—and you’re looking for your people—we want you there. Come help us see what happens when the right people show up.