The DeFi Security Summit (DSS) was a two-day security conference at the Courtyard by Marriott near Mumbai Airport. It ran on 1 and 2 November 2026, just before Devcon 8. I attended as an organiser.
What the event covered
DSS focused on security for decentralised finance (DeFi), the financial apps that run on smart contracts. The published lineup included talks on the state of DeFi security, single points of failure in blockchain security, liveness bugs found with stateful invariants, post-quantum cryptography on Ethereum, and what fuzzing proves about smart contract security. Speakers came from security firms and research teams across the Web3 industry.
My role
DSS was the first time I saw how a large event runs behind the scenes. The summit used two halls at the same time, and each hall had its own talks. Each hall needed a working stream, audio, slides and video, and I helped keep them running.
My tasks were:
- AV support. I helped keep the stream, audio, presentations and video working in both halls.
- Speaker briefings. I briefed each speaker before they went on stage.
- Small jobs. I handled the other small things that came up during the event.
At first this was daunting. Many things had to work at the same time, and a failure was visible to a whole room. The Devfolio team had prepared a lot in advance, and they had built internal helper apps that reduced the manual work. Those apps made the job manageable.
Other highlights
- I caught up with Devfolio colleagues in person after some time apart.
- The food was lovely.
- I met many people who work on Web3 security.
What I took away
Attendees see a calm event, and that calm comes from preparation and tooling.