NEARCON Lisbon 2022: Was It Worth Visiting?

NEARCON 2022 was one of the more interesting crypto conferences to land in Lisbon during the last cycle. It took place from 11 to 14 September 2022 at Cais da Viscondessa, close to Santos-o-Velho, and Crypto Lists followed it both as a crypto media site and from a very local angle: the venue was only a short walk from our co-founder Markus Jalmerot’s neighbourhood in Santos.

This article has been updated as a 2026 archive and local review, not as a live ticket guide. The original event has already passed, so the useful question today is different: was NEARCON Lisbon worth attending, what did it show about the NEAR ecosystem, and what can future crypto conference visitors learn from it?

Crypto Lists view: yes, NEARCON 2022 was worth a visit if you were already interested in Web3, developer ecosystems, blockchain infrastructure, NFTs, DAOs or the NEAR Protocol. It was less useful for casual investors looking for quick price tips. The value was in the people, the hackathon, the builder culture and the Lisbon setting.

Lisbon – a web3 hub in Southern Europe

Lisbon made sense for NEARCON. By 2022, the city had already become one of Europe’s most active crypto and Web3 meeting points, helped by good weather, a strong international community, English-speaking locals, a busy startup scene and a steady flow of founders, developers and investors moving through Portugal.

NEARCON also arrived at an interesting time. The 2021 crypto boom had cooled, prices were weaker, and the market was already becoming more selective. That made the event’s theme, Building Beyond the Hype, feel more relevant than a normal bull-market slogan. The better conversations were not about “number go up”, but about infrastructure, usability, developer tooling and whether blockchains could support real applications.

The official NEAR Foundation recap described NEARCON 2022 as having more than 2,000 attendees, with ecosystem announcements, project demos, an IRL hackathon and a broad conference programme across the NEAR ecosystem. You can read the official event recap on the NEAR Foundation blog.

Rating: 9.33/10
Supply: 691,277,221 / 1,000,000,000
Release date: August 26, 2020

Description: Discover NEAR’s native token and learn about the NEAR network.

Risk warning: Trading, buying or selling crypto currencies is extremely risky and not for everyone. Do not risk money that you could not afford to loose.

›› Read Near Coin review›› Buy or Sell NEAR here

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Visit Santos – The neighbourhood around NearCon

Santos-o-Velho, usually just called Santos by locals, was one of the best parts of the NEARCON location. It is close enough to central Lisbon to feel connected, but still has its own neighbourhood character: embassies, design shops, small cafés, older Portuguese buildings, renovated apartments and a mix of locals, expats and long-term foreign residents.

The French Embassy sits in the area, and Santos has long attracted French, British, Scandinavian, Italian, Dutch, German, Brazilian, American and Portuguese-speaking residents from different backgrounds. For conference visitors, that mattered. You could leave the venue and be in a real Lisbon neighbourhood within minutes, rather than being trapped in a sterile hotel district.

Local note from Crypto Lists: Santos is not the most polished part of Lisbon, and that is part of the appeal. It has cafés, restaurants, old streets, small squares and the river nearby. For a crypto conference, it was a much better fit than a generic business centre outside town.

Coffee, Lunch or dinner in Santos

If you visited NEARCON in 2022, Santos was easy for coffee, lunch and dinner between sessions. Some places change over time, so always check current opening hours before using this as a modern restaurant guide. Still, the area remains a strong base for anyone attending events around Cais da Viscondessa, Santos, Alcântara or the Lisbon waterfront.

Coffee and breakfast: La Boulangerie was a strong choice for croissants, especially almond croissants. Heim Café worked well for brunch and French toast. Mila had a relaxed international feel, smoothies and a good atmosphere. Fauna & Flora was popular with tourists and brunch visitors, while EleEla was another good local coffee stop.

Lunch: Yallah was a good casual option for Israeli food. Zappi offered variety, though for more classic Italian food, Il Matriciano near the parliament area was a better pick if you did not mind walking a bit further or taking a short ride.

Dinner: Mattë Lisboa worked well for sushi and a more stylish evening meal. Koji Lisboa was another sushi option at a slightly lower price point. Clube de Jornalistas had a more traditional Lisbon feel, with a cosy garden setting. Da Noi was also worth considering around Santos. For classic Portuguese meat or bacalhau, Café de São Bento was the old-school choice, known in Lisbon for decades.

NearCon Ticket Access

In 2022, NEARCON ticket demand was strong enough that early-bird tickets sold out before the event. Beta General tickets were listed at around $460 through the official event site, and some ecosystem projects shared discount codes through their own channels.

Because this is now a historical article, we have removed the old discount-code angle from the main recommendation. Old event ticket links and social posts can become dead, misleading or irrelevant. That is exactly the kind of small outdated detail that can make an archive page feel abandoned.

The most useful lesson for future crypto conferences is simple: do not judge only by speaker names. A good crypto event also needs useful hallway conversations, founder access, side events, a strong venue and enough real builders to make the trip worthwhile.

NearCon Hackers’ Invitation To The IRL Hackathon

The hackathon was one of the better reasons to attend NEARCON 2022. Crypto conferences can easily become panels, sponsor booths and vague market talk. A live hackathon changes the energy because people are actually building something under time pressure.

NEARCON invited hackers to join a 48-hour in-person hackathon, with applications open to small teams and individual builders. The original offer included access to the event, mentoring, hacking space, NEAR token support and the possibility to present projects live. For developers, that was arguably more valuable than sitting through every main-stage session.

Judges and ecosystem names connected to the hackathon included NEAR, Aurora Labs, Electric Capital, Human Guild, Brave, Mintbase and other Web3 teams. The most important part was not only the prize structure. It was the ability to test an idea, speak with people already active in the ecosystem and get feedback quickly.

Crypto Lists takeaway: if you are deciding between a normal conference pass and a builder-focused track at a future Web3 event, the builder track often gives better long-term value. You meet fewer tourists and more people actually trying to ship something.

The blockchain behind NearCon

NEARCON was built around the NEAR Protocol, a proof-of-stake layer-1 blockchain designed with a focus on usability, scalability and developer-friendly infrastructure. NEAR uses a native token, NEAR, for transaction fees, staking, storage and network activity.

The NEAR documentation explains that the NEAR token helps secure the network through staking, pays for computation and storage, and can be used as a medium of exchange inside the protocol. The same documentation also explains that NEAR charges transaction fees in NEAR and uses gas to price execution on the network; for readers who want the technical version, the official NEAR token documentation is the best starting point.

The NEAR blockchain has been used for tokens, NFTs, apps and ecosystem projects that need lower-cost transactions and a more user-friendly account model than many older chains. One of NEAR’s better-known usability features is human-readable account names, which are easier for normal users than long wallet addresses.

You need NEAR tokens to use the network directly. The token is used for fees, storage and staking. NEAR’s original economic model began with a 1 billion token genesis supply and protocol-level issuance for validators, with transaction fees burned to offset part of that issuance. That detail matters because it separates network usage from pure token speculation.

What we would change from the old article: the original version listed exchanges such as FTX, which is obviously not appropriate to keep in an updated 2026 version. For pages that are part of a reinclusion effort, old exchange lists are a risk unless they are checked and updated regularly.

Building Beyond the Hype

The event’s theme, Building Beyond the Hype, has aged better than most 2022 crypto slogans. The market later proved why it mattered. Projects with no users, no revenue and no serious community struggled. Infrastructure teams, developer tools and serious ecosystems had a better chance of surviving the cycle.

That does not mean NEARCON was perfect or that every project shown there became important. No conference can guarantee that. But the tone was healthier than the worst parts of the 2021 market. The best parts of NEARCON focused on what people could build, how to improve user experience, and how to bring more normal users into crypto applications without making everything feel technical.

From a Crypto Lists perspective, that is the right kind of event to cover. We are more interested in conferences where you can learn something concrete than in events that only exist for hype, token promotion and VIP selfies.

Confirmed Speakers and Topic Agenda

NEARCON 2022 included speakers and participants from Google Cloud, CryptoMondays, Electric Capital, Hashed Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Octopus, Brave, Aurora, Pagoda, Human Guild, SailGP and regional NEAR hubs. Names mentioned in the original programme included James Tromans, Lou Kerner, Maria Shen, Baek Kim, Haseeb Qureshi, Vivi Lin and Brendan Eich, among others.

The strongest topics were the ones that still matter now: bridging Web2 and Web3, blockchain sustainability, why developers build on NEAR, DeFi, the blockchain trilemma, stablecoins, NFTs, sports fandom, DAOs and how AI might reshape crypto. Some of those themes were early in 2022, but several became even more relevant later.

What aged well: AI and crypto, chain abstraction, sustainability, stablecoins and user experience.

What aged less well: generic NFT hype, overly optimistic bull-case token panels and broad “future of Web3” sessions without practical examples.

Best audience: developers, founders, ecosystem contributors, analysts and people who wanted to understand NEAR beyond the token price.

Less ideal audience: beginners who only wanted a simple explanation of whether NEAR would go up or down.

NearCon Agenda

The 2022 schedule started with a registration party on 11 September, followed by the main conference from 12 to 14 September. The event combined daytime content, networking, waterfront happy hours, food, drinks and music near the river.

The location helped. Cais da Viscondessa sits close to the river, Santos and the wider Lisbon conference corridor. That gave NEARCON a more relaxed setting than many indoor-only crypto events. People could move between talks, networking, food, side meetings and evening conversations without feeling boxed in.

The main conference days opened around late morning and ran through the afternoon, with networking and sunset sessions afterwards. For visitors coming from outside Portugal, the best approach would have been to stay in Santos, Estrela, Lapa, Cais do Sodré, Chiado or Príncipe Real rather than far outside the centre.

Final Crypto Lists view: NEARCON Lisbon 2022 was worth visiting, but not for the reasons a rushed crypto investor might expect. It was not about getting one magic token tip. It was about seeing whether a serious ecosystem existed behind NEAR, meeting builders, understanding the culture and enjoying one of Lisbon’s better neighbourhoods while doing it.

As an archive article, the page should no longer pretend the event is upcoming. The stronger angle now is local experience, NEAR ecosystem history and what serious crypto events looked like when the industry started moving from hype toward real building.

FAQ

Was NEARCON 2022 in Lisbon worth visiting?
Yes, especially for developers, founders, NEAR ecosystem members and people interested in Web3 infrastructure. It was less useful for visitors only looking for short-term token price speculation.

Where did NEARCON 2022 take place?
NEARCON 2022 took place in Lisbon, Portugal, around Cais da Viscondessa near Santos-o-Velho and the Lisbon waterfront.

Is this article still useful after the event?
Yes, but only as a historical review and local guide. Ticket prices, discount codes, exact schedules and speaker availability should be treated as old information.

What was the main theme of NEARCON 2022?
The main theme was Building Beyond the Hype, with a focus on Web3 development, NEAR ecosystem projects, infrastructure, usability and long-term blockchain building.

What is NEAR used for?
NEAR is the native token of the NEAR Protocol. It is used for staking, transaction fees, storage and activity inside the NEAR network.