What an absolute blast HiveFest 9 was. From the incredibly beautiful scenery to the connections that we made with everyone at the event, we couldn't be happier. Our team had the opportunity to meet people from the community and build meaningful relationships with other projects. We were thrilled to showcase our brand new technology in person and show off what we've been building for the past year. Even if unfortunately you were not able to be there in person, the entire event was live-streamed so you can still see everything that we showed off. Join us on our journey in this post.
The VSC team is a diverse group in more than just a few different places of the world, so there's not an actual "road" to Split, Croatia. There was definitely a lot of distance, though, and that means a ton of flights, hotels, and jet lag. We thought it would be fun to share some photos from some of our team members' travels and share some of those experiences with you. We started our travel a few days in advance as we knew there would be multiple flights, and there was always the possibility of a flight delay. Once in the air, though, the breathtaking views took over and all that was left to do was enjoy it.
Day flights turned to night, the small snacks and drinks came down the aisle again. We had almost arrived and the anticipation was building.
After many hours in the sky over, we had arrived in Germany and it was time to get ready for the event. We still had a little bit of preparation to do before our presentation was ready so we spent our first day working on that. Geo even had a chance to go to Wurst. Definitely not the "Wurst" part of the trip, as the food was surely awesome.
After a final flight, we had arrived in Croatia at our Airbnb and it was almost go-time. Opening drinks and the first meetup were a blast. Having the opportunity to connect with people prior to the actual presentation days is always a great way to break the ice. Once opening drinks concluded, we headed off to rest before day 1.
While we did not present on day 1, we did have the opportunity to see some great presentations from hardcore Hivers and projects at Gallery Meštrović. We took this as a chance to get a peak into some projects for potential collaboration or partnerships. VSC is always on the lookout for possible collaborations, and where better to find them than HiveFest? After information and presenting the "5 time attendee" awards to those who have gone to 5 different HiveFest events, there was a panel discussion between developers.
After the panel discussion, we saw presentations from Worldmappin, Miss Bitcoin and McSamm, and Khal from Inleo. There were many presenters talking about the awesome projects they're working on. We won't bore you by listing out every single presentation and speaker, but we did want to share some photos from the day 1 presentations. We also wanted to highlight some of the projects already working on integrating VSC network, such as Hive Keychain 
Hivefest was a memorable experience. Getting introduced to a strong community of people, where everybody treated each other with so much kindness and interest in what they are doing was stunning. - Platinium
Without being able to take you there ourselves, it's really hard to express the level of dedication that this community has to the platform and overall decentralization. We truly are a decentralized network state when you think about it, and the community is very passionate about freedom. HiveFest is not your average crypto or blockchain conference by any means. From the incredible locations and venues to the bond you will feel with the community... It is truly priceless.
On day 2, it was time for the VSC team to take the stage after 
The next demonstration we had was the most exciting. What we showed off was the ability to buy HIVE in 30 seconds using CashApp!
This takes advantage of the Bitcoin Lightning feature built right into CashApp. Our DeFi frontend lets users enter the amount of HIVE they wish to purchase, and then generates a Lightning QR code. All the user has to do at that point is scan the QR code and authenticate using their device. CashApp is one of the most-commonly used financial applications in the US with over 60 million users, and it makes buying HIVE extremely easy because most users have already completed KYC in the app.
Of course, we highly recommend checking out our entire presentation below to get the full experience of everything we talked about. You definitely do not want to miss watching the demonstrations!
After our presentation, there were many more projects to go. It was also a pleasant surprise to see that Dash made an appearance as one of the first non-Hive presentation. Here are some additional photos from day 2.
Once all the presentations had come and gone, it was time to move on to having a little bit of fun. We had the opportunity to go on an incredible boat ride, which may have been in extremely cold weather as you can see. We got nice and cozy with everyone.
As you can imagine, we also did our fair share of goofing around. After all, this is about community and connecting with one another.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and HiveFest concluded in what seemed like a blur. Now we have to get back to hardcore coding and make sure that next year's demonstration will be even bigger. We thoroughly enjoyed our time presenting and connecting with so many different individuals. Hopefully you enjoyed our demonstration and can see the power of smart contracts for Hive.
Let us know what you think! Are you excited to buy and sell HIVE using CashApp?
@bil.prag
@louis88