Three Years of the Crypto Academic Camp

June 14-19  //  Edge Esmeralda  //  Healdsburg, CA
‍Edge City x Uniswap Foundation - We're doing it again.

The third Crypto Academic Camp is happening this June. One week in the Sonoma County redwoods, working on hard problems together.

Before we get into what's next, here's what two years have actually produced.

Two years in. Here's what happened.

2024: We tried something

The idea was simple. Take 80+ of the leading cryptocurrency and systems researchers in the world. Put them in the same place for a full week. Not a conference. No panels.  Just a camp in the redwoods where people actually have time to think together.

Three papers came out of it, and the network effects were immediate: Vaughn McKenzie connected with the Uniswap ecosystem through the camp and became a grantee for his Butter/Governance Games, and Marksu Schmitt, founder of Propellerheads, integrated V4 hooks as their core infrastructure.

Biggest lesson: the format matters more than the programming. Give smart people time and space together, and they'll figure out what to work on.

2025: We went deeper

For the second year we did something counterintuitive. Instead of going bigger, we went smaller. 35 researchers. 13 universities. One week.

The roster included researchers from Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, UVA, BU, Stevens, Duke, and UCSB. Over 30% of the cohort had never touched DeFi research before, which was the whole point. We wanted people with serious technical depth who could bring fresh eyes to old problems.

Four real research threads came out of it:

Ruizhe Jia (Stanford), Jason Milionis (Columbia), and Zachary Feinstein (Stevens) started building rigorous metrics for LP performance and risk.

Jason Morton and Daniel Moroz (Harvard) explored blockchain infrastructure that self-adjusts its parameters in response to demand. The pitch: constant-fee UX for users, dynamic scaling underneath.

Another group went after the bad equilibrium problem in oracle design, proposing a game-theoretic mechanism that links regulated and unregulated markets through shared tokens.

And that's just the research. The relationships built at these camps have rippled way beyond these immediate projects in a meaningful way that typical conferences don’t allow for.

Don't take our word for it

‍

"I had an incredible time at the crypto camp. Thank you so much for inviting me and for organizing it beautifully. I loved it there!" - Jason Milionis, Columbia

‍

"Thanks for organizing this fantastic event. Can't wait to keep the conversation going." - Matheus Ferreira, UVA

‍

"I loved getting to dive deeper on a topic while here and have more of an appreciation for how much Uniswap cares about research." - Jason Morton, EZKL

‍

This is part of something bigger

‍

Edge City x Uniswap Foundation has partnered for several other major events across 2024-2025 besides Crypto Acedemic Camp, including: Three GovSwap events (people keep calling it their favorite event at every conference). Governance Games led by Butter. Uniday at Devcon 2024 - ended up being one of the most talked-about events of the whole week. Participants have included Vitalik Buterin, Mike Neuder, Robin Hanson, Karl Floersch, Benjamin Jones, and Jinglan Wang on stage.

The Crypto Academic Camp is the research engine of this whole thing.

Round three.

Mid June
Healdsburg, CA at Edge Esmeralda
‍Invite-only
‍Edge City x Uniswap Foundation

This is invite-only, but we always leave room for people who make a strong case. Here's what we look for:

You're doing real research. Cryptocurrency, mechanism design, protocol economics, game theory, or something adjacent. You don't need DeFi experience - some of our best participants came from totally different corners of CS and math.

You have the credentials. University or research lab. PhD students, postdocs, faculty, industry researchers at crypto-native orgs - all welcome.

You want to collaborate, not present. This isn't a stage. It's a workshop. Small groups, open problems, sleeves rolled up.

If that's you, email us:

Telamon - telamon@edgecity.live

Send your name, affiliation, a link to your work, a couple sentences on what you'd dig into at camp, and why you are a good fit. Rolling review. Limited space.