Description

La Paz, Bolivia is a hostile environment for a community of Ethernauts. And it is not because of the lack of oxygen due to the altitude, but because the commerce of cryptocurrency is prohibited.

Despite the circumstances, the Ethereum Bolivia community has managed to organize events with more than 100 attendees. The secret: focus on development. Not only that, but representatives of the community have recently been approached by policy makers to get technical advice the political climate around blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and start seeing it as an opportunity for the country, rather than a threat.

This Grant

We are currently organising a hackathon that is going to take place by the end of September, and will be part of the “Innovation, Technology and Engineering Congress” (iTEC) organised by one of the largest universities in La Paz, Bolivia - at 3600 meters above sea level. We have partnered with Mujeres TICS (one of the largest groups to empower women in tech in Bolivia) with previous experience organising hackathons. This event is one of the most important events for the tech scene in the country, bringing speakers and enthusiasts from all over the world. Every year, a hackathon accompanies this event, and it’s our turn to organise it, after a very successful hackathon organised by the NASA last year.

General

In general, the community has been focused on three things: Create education programs IN SPANISH and support for ecosystem developers, with a focus on underserved communities Support for Web3 projects that solve local problems. Inform and educate authorities and government

The plan is to form an onchain community, with tokens without monetary value, but can be used for the governance and resource allocation of the community based on contributions and merit - using Community-bound tokens (https://ethglobal.com/showcase/community-bound-y73ys) which was developed by one of the members of our community. The way to earn these tokens is by contributing to the community and advancing educational content. Once we receive sponsors and have a treasury, the idea is for the community to decide how to use those funds: funding projects, sending groups of members to hackathons, organizing community events, etc...

First project ideas include: creating a DAO to make validator nodes more accessible and encourage decentralization by creating "The World's Highest Validator Node", an information group to get government institutions to remove the cryptocurrency ban, a diploma course to learn about blockchain, etc…

What we’ve achieved

Since July we’ve had a monthly meet-up in La Paz, and this year we started doing monthly online meet-ups as well. Our monthly meetings host between 10 and 25 people.

In August 2022 we hosted our Ethereum Bolivia - Road to Devcon event at the Univalle university, and hosted around 150 people.

Our regular activities

Monthly in-person meet-up in the two biggest cities: La Paz & Santa Cruz Monthly on-line meet-up Yearly Ethereum Bolivia event to educate the broader public + hackathon Regular workshops around different topics (e.g. solidity development, intro to web3, etc..)

Funding

Most of the funding will go to the organisation of our Ethereum Bolivia event & hackathon. We will also use the funds to continue organizing our monthly meet-ups and workshops.

We want to have a treasury to economically incentivize the activities we have planned (see description) and use it to have representation of Bolivia in international activities, such as hackathons, conferences, etc…

Team

We recently expanded our core team with the most active members of the community: Abidan, Huascar,

Founding members:

Gabriela Melendrez - QA Software Engineer, member of the AGETIC team at the Bolivian government, founder of Mind Blockchain, Asoblockchain Bolivia. Promoter of technology in her country and for the movement Women in Tech for the Technovation Bolivia team.

Ayrton Paredes - Web developer, core member of Ethereum Bolivia and currently building Even3.app

Samuel Gallardo - Enthusiast of the Ethereum ecosystem since 2020, promoter of new technologies. Currently learning about development tools for web3, DAOs and dApps. Interested in transmitting knowledge to the younger members to motivate them.

Nico Gallardo - Founding member of 2 web3 communities: W3b Lab in Amsterdam and Ethereum Bolivia. Founder of Troop Labs, a venture studio that aims to bring web3 to the masses leveraging web3 social. Web3 and Bitcoin public speaker and educator. Devcon Scholar.

Fabi Acarapi - Lead QA Software Engineer at one of the biggest Bolivian Start-ups. Influential person in the technology sector in Bolivia. Promoter of women in technology around the world. H.E.R. DAO Scholar.

Is your payout wallet a Gnosis Safe or multi-sig? No

Payout Wallet AddressPublic 0x73949c45af294b97d0Cc93C0c0565aEE6554DC4B

Email Address ethbolivia@gmail.com