Project Description

Hey there! We're diving into the vibrant tech scene of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, a city brimming with potential. Despite the heat (and not just the weather!), the local regulations on cryptocurrency have been a bit of a roadblock. But we're changing that! We're out to educate, innovate, and break barriers.

This Grant

Picture this: August 2024, 400 meters above sea level in Santa Cruz. We're gearing up for the next buildathon. It's set to be a tech extravaganza, drawing enthusiasts from around Bolivia and Latin America.

General

Our focus? Threefold:

• Spanish education programs for underserved communities.
• Backing Web3 projects that solve local challenges.
• Advocating and educating authorities on the potential of blockchain tech.

But wait, there's more! We're not just talking the talk; we're walking the walk with our own on-chain community. Thanks to Troops project, a project developed by a member of our community, we've got this groovy system where you can earn special tokens for sharing your brainpower and skills. These tokens? They're like VIP passes to the governance party—where your voice matters, and you get to help decide how we use our community funds.

At the moment, members of the community are completing a second bounty and we have distributed 200 tokens as reward for the contributions made by active members of our thriving community.

And we have 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/2022 and throughout this year we have held monthly IRL meet-ups where we have local speakers who talk about relevant web3 topics so the community can get inspired and learn together. Our monthly meetings host between 10 and 25 people. In 2022 we held on-line and IRL meet-ups, and in 2023 we held only IRL meet-ups as we saw a much more interest of the community to connect in person with its members.

Between July and August of this year, we organized the first version of a free Solidity course in Bolivia, an initiative that brought together students and professionals interested in developing smart contracts on the Ethereum network. The course was held in two key cities, La Paz and Santa Cruz, with the collaboration of local universities that provided computer rooms for classes. The result was a resounding success. In La Paz, 30 students participated, whereas in Santa Cruz, 18 people joined the course. These numbers reflect a growing interest in blockchain and Ethereum in Bolivia and the importance of providing educational opportunities in the region. ETH Kipu, a platform dedicated to the promotion and education of Ethereum in Latin America, partnered with us to provide instructors with educational resources and mentorship. This allowed teachers to be well prepared to guide students through Solidity concepts and challenges. One of the highlights of the course was the presence of Solange, a member of the ETH Samba and DevRel team from Chainlink, who shared her experience and knowledge with the participants. Her input was invaluable in understanding how Solidity and Chainlink can work together to create decentralized and secure solutions on Ethereum.

These events were just the warming up activities for our biggest event. September was epic! Bolivia`s first blockchain hackathon drew over 200 attendees to the technical & non-technical talks giving over 45 hours of talks. We partnered with:

3 sponsors,

• Ecosystem Support Program
• 1Inch
• MC4

5 different communities:

• Engineer Faculty of Universidad Católica Boliviana
• Students For Liberty Bolivia
• Mujeres TIC
• Cripto Curiosas
• Taikai
• Talent Protocol

There were 64 hackers registered, 42 of them actively participated, 9 finalists projects and 5 winner projects, having $1000+ in prizes, plus awesome merch for our participants. Now that's a win!

An strategic alliance was formed with the Technical Commercial Institute La Paz, a fiscal institution of technical higher education, to receive interns from their programs who will support the community in the field of marketing, and we already received 7 interns who helped throughout the Hackathon in the marketing field, and we onboarded them on blockchain technology and mentored them. At the moment, they became part of our community.

All this detailed information is reflected on our website. (https://bit.ly/Ethereum-Bolivia)

As part of our partnership with the Cripto Curiosas Community, 3 active women members of our community are giving web3 introductory workshops at a Technical Institute, having 30 participants.

Our regular activities

We're keeping the momentum going with:

• Monthly in-person meet-ups in La Paz & Santa Cruz.
• Monthly online meet-ups.
• Yearly Ethereum Bolivia event with an eye-catching hackathon.
• Regular workshops on various topics.

Funding

Our primary focus for funding is the organization of the Ethereum Bolivia event & hackathon. We also plan to allocate funds for meet-ups, workshops, international representation and a podcast production about all topics related to disruptive tech.

Team

##Rotating Lead Team 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.

Cecilia Contreras: Architect, passionate beekeeper and entrepreneur. Community Manager at Wild Friends, a bolivian web3 project developing a video game as a public good for wildlife sanctuaries to raise funds. Cripto Curiosas Ambassador en Bolivia. Web3 public speaker and educator.

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.

Freddy Chambi: Systems Engineer / Web3 Developer, member of Ethereum Bolivia & Eth Kipu, Talent Protocol Scholar .

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

Huascar Miranda: 10 years experience as a developer, and started Blockchain Education in Bolivia back in 2015.