The annual Ethereum hackathon in Denver, Colorado was concluded yesterday with a number of significant project developments and renewed optimism for the ETH 2.0 launch.

DeFi Dominated Ethereum Hackathon
The annual ETHDenver event came to a close last night with a series of celebrations for the winners of programming contests and renewed hopium for the next iteration of the world’s most popular smart contract and decentralized application platform.
The conference, previously termed a hackathon, attracts big sponsors and developers from across the globe that compete in building projects on the Ethereum network. Leading up to the weekend event was ‘BUIDL week’ hosting workshops and tech demos and panels for the growing blockchain community.
Among the usual categories for gaming dApps, IoT, smart contracts, scaling, and add-ons for popular platforms such as MetaMask, there was a large focus on DeFi this year.
Decentralized finance has been the fastest growing thing in crypto last year and that momentum has continued into 2020 with a recent record high of $1.2 billion total value lockup hit over the weekend.
One unfortunate outcome for one company in attendance was the exploitation of DeFi lending protocol bZx which took down its Fulcrum trading platform following a 10,000 ETH ‘flash loan’ being taken out by the attacker.
Staked CEO Tim Ogilvie who works closely with bZx said;
“There are big risks. It’s a new category, it’s moving fast and that means some things are going to break,”
Speaking on Saturday, Vitalik Buterin also shared his views on the DeFi markets and where things are heading;
“I think the DeFi applications that see the most use are the simplest ones…stablecoins, synthetic assets, decentralized exchanges,”
Most wanted more clarification on the long awaited migration to ETH 2.0 and the Ethereum co-founder had a few things to say on that as well.

.@VitalikButerin and @jeffjohnroberts discussing ETH 2.0 and beyond! #ETHDenver #imapegabufficorn pic.twitter.com/kec5scdXUR
— ETHDenver (@EthereumDenver) February 16, 2020

Vitalik on ETH 2.0
Buterin expressed his optimism for the Serenity launch date, stating that he definitely thinks ETH 2.0 has been proceeding quite quickly and regularly in the last few months.
Acknowledging that scaling solutions were long overdue he added that new options such as rollups are being implemented to facilitate growth on the network before the new blockchain can go live.
“I hope that ETH2 gets released quickly…but even if it takes five years, rollups will give us some leeway until sharding goes live,”
Buterin was then asked about his role and whether the project could survive without him. Due to the influx of new researchers contributing to Ethereum he was confident that it could definitely survive without his input and has been largely ‘hands-off’ for many community debates.
Ethereum prices have continued to correct falling below $245 during Monday morning trading in Asia.
Will ETH 2.0 see the light in 2020? Add your thoughts below.