Hello everyone!
It’s been two weeks since we said goodbye to the incredible Blockspäti Berlin. We’ve compiled a reporting document that captures our efforts and the results of Zcash’s first major IRL activation: who came, what they built, what worked, and what we learned for next time!
If you’d like to read the full doc we’ve uploaded it here.
If you’d like to see all the photos from the event, you can find them here.
Thank you for trusting us with this event, and a huge thanks to the Zcash ambassadors, the ZK AV Club and everyone who spoke, partnered, danced, and transacted with us.
The BlockSpäti Report
Zcash Activation, Berlin, June 17-19, 2026
Prepared by WebZero for the Zcash forum
The BlockSpäti key artwork, hand drawn.
1. Introduction
The BlockSpäti was a three-day activation held in Berlin during Berlin Blockchain Week, June 17-19, 2026, designed to bring Zcash to a new audience while deepening engagement with the existing community. The event combined a curated privacy-focused agenda with side events, merchant onboarding, partnerships, art, and entertainment drawn from across the European ecosystem.
Berlin is the home of WebZero. Although the team operates events globally, the core team lives here and has a strong community presence, and it was a pleasure to be trusted to co-host Zcash’s first major full IRL activation.
This report summarises attendance, audience composition, merchant results, marketing performance, and attendee feedback.
2. Key Statistics
Of the 930 visitors who attended across the three days, 537 attended Zcash-specific programming. One in five wristbands scanned on the Zcash main day belonged to a returning visitor, indicating that a meaningful share of the audience came back for more than one day.
3. Audience & Demographics
Attendees for the Zcash main day Luma were surveyed at registration. Respondents answered the question “What describes you best?”, giving a complete picture of who was in the room.
Figure 1: Self-described roles of Zcash main-day survey respondents (n = 737; counts approximate).
The audience was strongly builder-heavy. Developers, technical founders, and non-technical founders together made up roughly 58% of respondents, meaning nearly six in ten attendees were technical builders or company founders. Marketers and business-development professionals added a commercial layer of around 19%, while investors, artists, students, and media each sat in single digits, together accounting for roughly 21%.
This was a technical, product-building crowd rather than an investor- or press-dominated one. For future editions, the strongest positioning will lead with developer and founder value in tooling, infrastructure, and technical depth, while the smaller investor and media segment remains strategically useful for fundraising and coverage.
Awareness of Zcash
Respondents were also asked whether they had heard of Zcash before the event (712 of 737 answered, a 97% response rate).
Figure 2: “Heard of Zcash before?” (712 of 737 answered; shares approximate).
The majority had already heard of Zcash, with developers, technical founders, and founders the most prominent among them. At the same time, close to one in five respondents were hearing about Zcash for the first time, evidence that the event succeeded in reaching a genuinely new audience rather than only the existing community.
Community growth
Figure 3: New attendees versus returning members.
Half of the audience were returning attendees from previous WebZero events, and the other half were a newly captured audience. This split is exactly what a successful activation should look like: the returning half shows a loyal community that trusts WebZero events enough to come back, and provides a warm, credible room for Zcash to speak into. The new half represents hundreds of people, largely builders and founders, encountering the Zcash ecosystem in person for the first time. Every future Zcash touchpoint in Berlin now starts from a larger, warmer base.
Side event reach on Luma
Beyond the main day, the full programme of Zcash side events was listed on Luma, and the listings themselves proved a meaningful discovery channel, generating a combined 14,889 impressions.
The main day and the opening and closing parties led the way, while the spread of side events, from Privacy Späti to the run club, producers lab, and co-working sessions, helped keep the venue busy across the full three days.
Crypto Nomads partnership
WebZero entered a partnership with Crypto Nomads which bumped the Zcash main Luma to the top of the Crypto Nomads Berlin Blockchain Week 2026 listings, a core side-event directory for crypto events, complete with its own header banner. This placement accounted for 10% of all registrations. It would usually cost 2,500 USD, but thanks to WebZero’s long-standing relationship it was provided for free.
Listings visibility
All Zcash side events were also listed across the major side-event platforms:
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Berlin Blockchain Week main site
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W3 Hub, the Berlin Blockchain Festival “Alliance”
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BBW Luma calendar
WebZero was in direct contact with the founder of Luma to resolve why Zcash events were not appearing in the “What’s happening in Berlin” listing, and to push for one unified Berlin Blockchain Week calendar on Luma, since the previous year’s archived calendar was still ranking highly in search and causing confusion.
4. Agenda & Speakers
WebZero curated the agenda and managed speaking schedules with the Zcash team for the dedicated privacy day on the 19th. The Privacy Späti invited attendees to spend an afternoon with the people building and using privacy infrastructure: the protocols, the wallets, the networks, and the arguments for why it all matters.
The speaker line-up featured:
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Vi Rollergirl, Zcash Ambassador
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Mylo Bennett, Zcash Ambassador
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Rose O’Leary, Co-Founder, DarkFi
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James Zaki, Engineer, Logos
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Richard Carback, Co-Founder, Quip Network (flew out especially for this event)
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Max Hampshire, DevRel Lead, NymVPN
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Kate Stapleton, Head of Ecosystem, Fhenix
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Beth McCarthy, Strategic Partnerships, DWeb Camp
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Brett Scott, Monetary Anthropologist & Author
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Raul Romanati, DoD, Ethereum Foundation
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Paul Dylan-Ennis, University Lecturer, University College Dublin
5. Merchants & Zcash
WebZero carried out field research to bring real-world commerce into the event, contacting more than 15 merchants and visiting stalls across fairs and parks in Berlin to convince vendors to come to the BlockSpäti and accept ZEC.
Figure 4: Merchant onboarding funnel, from outreach to live ZEC acceptance.
Of the six vendors who took part on the day, three successfully accepted Zcash and were onboarded to Zodl: Clem the tattoo artist, Paul from Ceramic Kingdom, and a jewellery maker. These are working merchants now able to take ZEC payments, a concrete, durable outcome of the activation.
Clem the tattoo artist at work, captured by media partner Little Unusual.
The Ceramic Kingdom “MAKE STUFF” workshop, shared by the merchant on X.
6. Partnerships, Side Events & New Audiences
To enrich the existing community, attract the best of the industry, and encourage a diverse audience mix from across Europe, WebZero brought in partners who sponsored to offset costs, hosted side events, or contributed entertainment and art.
Partners included:
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Gnosis
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Bitrefill
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Starknet and ecosystem partners (Bitwala and GreenMining DAO)
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DeveloperDAO
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Artizen
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Little Unusual Germany (media partner)
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Refraction and LUKSO, Punk.fun (DJs), a Brazilian artist (artwork), and Address Berlin (fashion house)
Sponsorships from outside the Zcash ecosystem were invited both to make the budget work and to keep the venue consistently busy all day long with fresh faces from all verticals.
We hosted music workshops, a run club and a fashion show to enrich the audience further. A comment we received was that “it didn’t feel like a bear market event” and this was largely down to the strategy of inviting different niches and interest groups to participate.
7. Branding, Merchandise & Activations
Branding and visibility
Zcash was the main branding partner, with full branding displayed throughout all three floors of the Späti across all three days, an upgrade on the two days set out in the initial proposal.
The main illustration was hand drawn, with each individual character taking two weeks to create. The artwork reflects Berlin culture tied into Zcash: Chancellor Merz, the Ampelmann, the Berlin club scene, privacy angels, a zebra, and a wizard.
Digital design
The branding was not confined to the venue. In the weeks leading up to the event, WebZero created individual speaker announcements to help amplify the event and each speaker’s participation.
Hand Drawn Event poster designs for the BlockSpäti programme.
Individual speaker announcement cards shared in the run-up to the event.
Attendance cards
WebZero built blockspati.joinwebzero.com, an attendee card generator designed to help the event go viral. Twenty-five people posted their personalised cards on their own X channels in exchange for a free fan.
The BlockSpäti banner generator: “Share you’re attending!”
On location: custom Zcash beer, kimono, fans & LED signs
Physical touches carried the brand through the venue: a custom Zcash beer, Zcash kimonos, 100 custom Zcash hand fans, and three LED signs. A post of the custom beer alone generated 3,000 impressions on X from the Zcash socials.
The custom Zcash beer: arrived late for the activation thanks to DHL.
Custom LED signage throughout the venue.
Zcash fans were all the rage in the heat.
WebZero fashion store launch with Cipherpay
To match the launch of the BlockSpäti, WebZero launched a Zcash integration with Cipherpay and displayed sample merchandise that could be redeemed for ZEC directly at the venue. Through this method, Zcash watches and a WebZero t-shirt were sold.
Zcash watches
WebZero funded a run of Zcash watches from its own treasury, selling them at the door, offering them as an additional reward for completing a Zcash transaction, and listing them for ZEC on the merch store.
The watches also travelled well beyond Berlin. After meeting Mert (CEO at Helius) at Solana Summit, Zoe couriered a watch to his hotel, and his resulting post generated 69,000 organic impressions. A similar care package has been created for Josh Swihart (CEO at Zodl).
Mert’s Zcash watch post: 69,000 organic impressions.
Bonus: projection mapping
Downstairs in the basement, WebZero tested a projection mapper: a kinetic photobooth that visitors could snapshot and post straight to their socials.
The kinetic photobooth in the basement.
Snapshots could be collected via QR code and shared.
8. Marketing & Communications
WebZero’s marketing efforts generated more than 200,000 impressions over the course of the week, combining social content, reposts, and event visibility.
Social media
Following a successful organic pre-marketing campaign, the majority of organic impressions (100k+) on the ground came from user-generated content driven by the kimono activation: guests had to post and tag WebZero and Zcash in exchange for a kimono.
User-generated content from the kimono activation.
The sex worker’s workshop got Germany’s attention on X with the famous InverseBrah account also RT’ing the event. (20k+ impressions combined)
Three video formats were tested for branding on X (a testimonial video, a rave recap, and a Zcash “privacy” post-event video) alongside a wrap-up tweet and opportunistic bonus content. Queues formed outside the BlockSpäti every day and night, and turning this into a bonus post earned a further 4,000 views. A newly created WebZero Instagram account, used to trial reels with a newer audience, generated 10,000 impressions.
Figure 5: Impressions and views by content piece and channel.
WebZero coordinated closely with the Zcash social media team through a shared group for scheduling & sharing posts, which produced significant mentions, including retweets from Zooko and heavy support from Josh.
Testimonial video: 3,300 impressions.
Rave recap: 4,000 impressions.
Zcash “privacy” post-event video: 8,500 impressions as of July 2, 2026.
Bonus post on the nightly queues: 4,000 views.
Wrap-up tweet: 5,700 impressions.
Email campaigns
WebZero sent 10,000 personalised invites across the various Zcash side events from its existing database via the Luma Plus invite tool.
Email campaigns then went to the main zcash Luma before the event & to all zcash-related checkins after. The pre-event campaign (“The Blockspäti is just 2 weeks away”) went to 382 recipients and achieved a 49.3% open rate with a 14.4% click rate.
The post-event campaign (“The Blockspäti is over (for now)”) achieved a 42.8% open rate with a 19.9% click rate.
Figure 6: Email campaign open and click rates.
9. Attendee Feedback
The event received an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 in Luma reviews. Attendees particularly praised the warmth of the organisers, the quality of the food, and the curation of activities.
A selection of five-star Luma reviews.
The two criticisms were Wi-Fi that was too slow for a hackathon and a venue that felt too small and too hot at peak times, both practical points to address in venue selection and infrastructure planning for the next edition. At the same time, WebZero is proud to have given the event real Berlin charm: the venue and location were as authentic as it gets.
10. Lessons Learned
The BlockSpäti taught the team a great deal about the Zcash ecosystem and how to reimagine activations for it. Three lessons stand out for next time:
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Choice of partnerships: continue to make sure each partner is closely aligned with the Zcash ecosystem and its objectives, so every collaboration compounds the core message.
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Smoother activation execution: with the learnings from this first edition, future onboarding activations can be executed more smoothly from day one. Sacha, WebZero’s DevRel, is now fully equipped with Zcash and onboarded.
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BlockSpäti shopfront: the shopfront could have been maintained better. Merchandise arrivals were hit by unprecedented delays to the Berlin post, which affected event organisers across the city, and in turn affected the activation.
Overall, the BlockSpäti delivered on its core aims: it brought a new, builder-heavy audience into contact with Zcash, introduced the project to first-time audiences, onboarded real Berlin merchants to accept ZEC, drove more than 100 wallet downloads, and generated over 200,000 impressions across email and social channels, all reflected in a 4.5-star attendee rating.
It was a successful first major IRL activation and pilot for Zcash, and a strong foundation for the next one.