Zk Av Club Field Report: Berlin Blockchain Week 2026
Berlin Blockchain Week 2026 was our fourth Zk Av Club Recording Station activation, and our second during Berlin Blockchain Week.
Across Neo Cypherpunk Summit, DappCon, Blockspäti, and Brew Privacy Matters, we recorded conversations, experimented with decentralized livestreaming, met new collaborators, and kept developing the Recording Station as something the club can run collectively.
We made fewer recordings than last year, but more people took part. Some of the best conversations weren’t ones we planned. People brought friends over, continued conversations at the station, made things while talking, brainstormed problems, or simply sat down and used the space.
That feels like progress: people are finding their own reasons to use the Recording Station.
At DappCon, club regulars found interesting conversations in the crowd and brought people over. One Web3 Privacy Now contributor finished a session by saying it was the first time, but not the last, that he’d use the station.
At Blockspäti, some of the most interesting conversations came from artists and other non-coiners, touching on privacy, art, craft, deplatforming, and debanking. People also stopped by throughout the week to look at the setup, take pictures, ask questions, and find out what we were doing.
More people are running the station
One of the clearest changes this year was that more of the Recording Station happened through the wider club.
Club regulars (@robmarn @zerodartz @IrenaS @j32804) helped run it, found conversations worth recording, brought people in, and took responsibility for different parts of the setup.
We also had three newcomers join us across the week who had little or no production experience. They started with production-assistant work and, alongside more experienced participants, helped run cameras and mics and worked through the recording workflow with people who came to use the station.
That matters to us. The Recording Station isn’t only something people can come use to record a conversation. It’s also a place where people can get involved in production, learn the setup, and gradually take on more of the work themselves.
That’s much closer to what we’ve been aiming for: something different people can use, run, learn from, and shape.
Partnerships and experiments
Our first direct collaboration with Web3 Privacy Now went well and gave us something to build on.
We also returned to decentralized livestreaming with Swarm. After an unsuccessful attempt last year, we used a simpler setup at DappCon and got multiple streams running.
The Swarm team came down to talk with us about what we were doing, and later used one of the problems we encountered as a real-world example during a workshop. That kind of exchange is useful: we get to try the infrastructure at a live event, and the people building it get feedback from what happens.
We’re now talking about more experiments together, including a dedicated Zk Av Club channel on Swarm.
Berlin also opened up a few other possible event and media collaborations.
Improving the workflow
A lot of the progress was practical.
We got more disciplined about checking cameras, audio, storage, batteries, cables, recording formats, and synchronization before conversations. We also improved the multi-camera and isolated-audio setup.
There were still problems, but we’re getting better at catching them earlier and learning from them.
We also tried a private Recording Station signup using Zcash shielded memos.
Nobody used it.
That was useful feedback. We put QR codes into the event without doing much to introduce the idea, so there was little reason for anyone to change how they approached the station. We may try it again somewhere we have more time to explain it.
What we took away
The Recording Station continues to work best when it feels less like a media booth and more like a small camp inside an event.
People hang around. They bring others over. Conversations happen that we didn’t plan. Club regulars help run things. Newcomers learn by doing. Other projects find ways to work with us.
Those tell us more about how the Recording Station is developing than the raw number of recordings.
We also started making short pre-event check-ins while setting up and testing equipment. Some of those will go into the archive as a record of the club itself: what we were trying, what was changing, and what we were learning.
This Berlin activation felt like another step toward the Recording Station working the way we intended: something the club can run, and others can use in their own ways.
— Zk Av Club 
For more about what happened during Berlin Blockchain Week 2026, and the rest of the month, check out the Zk Av Club June 2026 Grant Milestone Report.
