Building on Ethereum: Human vs. AI — Who Wins?

Description

In this workshop, Kevin Jones, a developer relations engineer with seven years in the Ethereum ecosystem, demonstrates building a decentralized auction application using two approaches: hands-on development with Scaffold ETH and AI-assisted coding with OpenClaw. He walks through the full Scaffold ETH workflow — scaffolding a project, deploying a smart contract to a local chain and then to Base, verifying the contract on-chain, and publishing the front end to IPFS and Vercel. The session highlights the practical tradeoffs between manual and AI-driven development, showcasing ETH Skills as a set of guardrails for AI agents building on Ethereum. Kevin also covers Speedrun Ethereum's educational challenges, prompt engineering best practices for tools like Cursor and Claude, and introduces OneClaw, a secrets management tool for AI agents. The live demo candidly reveals both the power and pitfalls of AI coding tools, with OpenClaw crashing mid-demo while the manual Scaffold ETH approach succeeds. 00:00 Introduction 01:35 Workshop Overview: Human vs AI Building 02:23 What Is Scaffold ETH 03:13 Introduction to ETH Skills 04:21 Setting Up OpenClaw with ETH Skills 04:57 Prompting Strategy: Claude to OpenClaw 05:42 Scaffolding a Project with Create ETH 07:05 Project Structure Walkthrough 08:56 Next.js Front End and Scaffold Hooks 11:09 ABI and TypeScript Type Generation 13:01 Checking on OpenClaw Progress 14:06 Running the Local Chain and Deploying 15:24 Scaffold ETH UI and Burner Wallet 17:30 AI Builds the Auction Contract 18:54 AI Mistakes: Foundry vs Hardhat 22:20 Deploying the Auction Contract to Base 25:21 Generating and Funding a Deployer Key 27:25 Verifying the Contract on Base 29:04 Fixing the AI-Generated Front End 30:20 Publishing to IPFS and Vercel 34:53 Speedrun Ethereum Overview 38:45 Synthesis Hackathon and Bonfires 40:27 OpenClaw Status Check 43:33 Q&A: Reverting vs Fixing AI Mistakes 46:08 Live Demo: Creating an Auction on Base 52:04 Q&A: Cursor vs VS Code Workflow 56:30 Q&A: When Not to Use Scaffold ETH 57:33 OneClaw: Secrets Management for AI Agents 1:00:08 Closing Remarks _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal Cannes 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal Cannes 2026, a 3-day hackathon held April 3-5 at the Palace of Festivals and Congresses of Cannes, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal Cannes 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh5YrcvSj6KSTztLMy58d7d4 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _