Flight3 founders talk Zebu Live, London’s revival, and the crypto market downturn
13 hours ago7 min read0 comments

In the heart of London, a city once whispered to be losing its crypto crown to sun-drenched hubs like Dubai and Lisbon, a palpable energy is crackling back to life, and at the epicenter of this revival are Harry and Jolyon Horsfall, the visionary founders of Flight3, as they put the final touches on Zebu Live. This isn't just another conference; it's a statement of intent, a gathering of the tribes meant to reaffirm London's position as a global Web3 nerve center, and the Horsfalls are its chief architects, operating with the calm determination of seasoned builders even as the broader market weathers another brutal downturn.They see this not as a contradiction but as a feature of the space they love—a necessary pruning that burns away the speculative chaff and allows foundational projects, those built on the robust, community-governed principles of decentralized autonomous organizations and the programmable promise of Ethereum's smart contracts, to finally shine. It’s a philosophy that echoes the early days of Ethereum itself, when Vitalik Buterin and his co-founders envisioned a world computer not for moon-boy speculation, but for a fundamental re-architecting of trust and coordination; the Horsfalls channel that same pragmatic optimism, viewing the current market crash not with despair but as a clarifying force, a return to the bedrock ethos of 'building' rather than 'trading.' Their preparations for Zebu Live are meticulous, a symphony of logistics and curation aimed at fostering the kind of serendipitous collisions that spawn the next generation of killer dApps and DAOs, focusing on the deep, technical workshops and governance debates that truly move the needle, rather than the superficial hype that characterized the last cycle. This London revival they speak of isn't merely about geographic location; it's about a revival of first principles, a re-commitment to the open, composable, and global financial system that drew so many of us into this space in the first place.They are betting, and betting big, that the community is hungry for this substance, that beneath the red candlesticks of the charts, a resilient and more sophisticated ecosystem is quietly assembling itself, one focused on real-world asset tokenization, scalable Layer-2 solutions, and the intricate dance of on-chain governance—topics that will dominate the stages and hallways of Zebu Live. In this, the Flight3 founders embody a new archetype of crypto leadership: less the brash, anonymous trader and more the thoughtful, ecosystem-weaving steward, understanding that true, lasting value isn't printed by a meme coin but is painstakingly coded, debated, and community-validated over time, a process as complex and beautiful as the generative art now finding its home on-chain. The market downturn, in their view, is simply the storm that clears the air, making the path forward for those building the decentralized future that much clearer, and London, with its unique blend of deep financial capital and a burgeoning, world-class tech talent pool, is the perfect ground zero for this next, more mature chapter of the Web3 story to be written.