Serve Monero visitors at Defcon 30

What

This CCS proposal absorbs most of the costs of serving Monero content to thirty thousand visitors at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas (30th anniversary.)

https://www.defcon.org/
https://www.cryptocurrencyvillage.net/

Who

Cryptovangurlie and MSvB.

These people staffed the Konferenco and Cryptocurrency Village at Defcon last year.

Why

Monero thrives on the contagious enthusiasm inspired by outreach at events.

All of us have grown experienced at serving Monero and related communities at events. We want to leverage our experience and accept the challenge of serving a massive 30K group of bright, enthusiastic hackers of all ages with Monero outreach and education.

How

After negotiating with event management for eight months, we secured an assignment. All Defcon activities are moving to Caesars Forum this year, and we will move from the village area to the vendors area. We are the only cryptocurrency or blockchain group in this area.

Reason

We conduct outreach at events like Defcon, in order to educate and remind people of the beneficial nature of cryptocurrency and the value of privacy technology produced and distributed by the Monero Project.

Expectation

A giant line will develop in front of our stand area, with hundreds waiting to receive items. While waiting they will observe a banner and a hanging display rack of project cards, designed, Monero branded, and professionally printed. We've invited groups like Feather Wallet, Monerujo, Cake, Haveno, Outreach, and Hardware to provide information for the display.

Each of our visitors will have the chance to ask questions about Monero, to one of three to five staff members. Other non Monero groups will coproduce the vendor area and will help reduce the workload of serving a massive amount of visitors.

Technology

Any Monero group is welcome to participate regardless of technology. A separate CCS will determine if all, some, or none of Monero items are distributed free of charge (as we've done in the past) or for a paid exchange. With paid items, it's likely that we offer a discount of some kind on conditions (under age children or paying with XMR.)

Although non Monero groups are generally welcome, we will only focus development of this option if the Monero Community decides to reject our participation at Defcon as stated. If all Monero CCS submissions succeed we will probably decline chain analysis and KYC groups, violating the open door policy to avoid disorder.

Production

This CCS relates only to the production of the stand itself, the display rack of Monero project information, and the on site delivery.

The production of items to distribute (aside from the display rack and cards) are described in a separate CCS.

License

The parts of stand design under our control is licensed CC-BY-SA-4.

There will be a vast number of other licenses (hopefully all Opensource) corresponding to images, merchandise, and materials.

Budget

Item	USD	Description
Staff accomodation	1800 USD	2 hotel rooms near the venue
Staff air travel	1200 USD	One international and one national
Staff food costs	500 USD	Approximately 50 USD per staff per day
Staff entrances	740 USD	Entrance badges for three staffmembers
Stand area	1170 USD	Cost of one table in Caesars Forum
Stand signage	400 USD	Estimated cost of Monero branded signage
Commerce	360 USD	Optional commerce and ecommerce service costs
Stand printing	400 USD	Estimated cost of display rack and cards
Stand storage	630 USD	Estimated cost of warehousing and storage
----	----	----
Total	7200 USD	Total production cost of Defcon service

We assume a price of 124 USD per XMR currency for a expected total 58 XMR.

To reduce fluctuation risk, an exchange loss of 25% is assumed.

Milestones

The funded amount will be paid in three milestones, once production planning concludes, once staff have arrived at the venue, and lastly once the last planned Defcon event day ends.

Communication

Public reports and progress will be published on the Libera #monero-events room or equivalent Signal or Telegram channels.

We reached a 90% rate of abandon on periodic village meetings, so we won't schedule any at all this year.

This engagment is listed in all Defcon official communications under the name Cryptocurrency Hackers. You can find us in the vendor area near the west docks of Caesars Forum.

Participation

All Monero community members are welcome to visit us, regardless of success or failure of this CCS or their inclination to abandon work duties.

If you want to be near our area, then book a room at Harrah's or the Linq. Use the Defcon hotel booking site to save money.

Programmes

All of the Defcon programmes that we usually negotiate acceptance for:

Demolabs
Contests
Services
Villages
Workshops
Events
Parties

...are cancelled. We almost always cancel these programmes after acceptance anyway, due to staff absence, negligence, abandon, or atrophy.

Any program that a Moneron succeeds at planning in the coming weeks will either be scheduled for Defcon 31 or consume resources outside of the official Defcon programmes.

Disclosures

Some of this engagement will be managed or occupied by other groups who pay for their own travel and stand costs.

Items may be offered by producers in the Monero community according to space available. Payment policy is set and enforced by Defcon management.

Devolution

Is devolution even a word?

Our Defcon engagements usually experience a rate of Monero community abandon of about 4:1 (one staff taking five roles to contain damage as people abandon meetings, duties, and obligations.) This year we have reached abandon of about 10:1 which makes it impossible to do anything advanced.

We will have no speaking program, no workshops, no streams, and no nonphysical media transmission except the website. A party or family casa is very unlikely.

We can consider a party, village, TCP/IP service, contest, workshop, and other things for 2023 if the community shows progress on Defcon level quality. This is what we negotiated with DC managers, and we are very optimistic to have our best content and best behaviour developing in the year leading to DC31.

Wallet special disclosure

Lots of community members request cancelation or reduction when their favourite or most hated wallet project is present or not.

• Several kinds of Monero wallets will be displayed or distributed.
• Bitcoin wallets such as Spectre, Swallow, or Samourai may participate.

Defunding

All of the costs absorbed by this proposal are due in EUR or USD fiat currency. If the XMR exchange rate causes loss then we will defund according to need, reducing the amount of travel compensation offered to staff working free of charge.

To reduce such fluctuation risk, an exchange loss of 25% is assumed.

Overfunding

If more funds are collected than needed, we will try to use them in an appropriate manner. For example, we may purchase more items to distribute free of charge, increase the XMR paying customer discount, plan a staff mini retreat to the shark tank, or invite on site Monerons to a meet the staff lunch.

It's also possible that we try to return any overestimated amount to the general fund.

Cancellation

As usual, it's our option to cancel the Monero part of this opportunity. Cancellation of this CCS is at the core team's discretion. Cancellation would save us money, so it's a valid option to consider.

Contingency

Cancellation after funding is very unlikely but we have a plan just in case.

If our appearance or the whole Defcon event is cancelled after this CCS is funded, the contingency plan is to use the stand production and products for a similar event such as HCPP Praha in September 2022. Flights and accommodations could be rescheduled.

Response

In this CCS, we may offer answers to questions and attacks less than we usually do. Instead, we are spending the precious hours on developing and producing the engagement.

We recommend reading IRC logs (announcement in May) or viewing the Konferenco presentation (Defcon state of affairs) on Sunday 19 June 2022.

Expiration

This proposal expires on 5 July 2022.