Founders

We are scientists that entered the blockchain space in 2021, started to develop a privacy-preserving dApp called Abakhus (https://linktr.ee/abakhus) and realized that (i) building a community to bridge portuguese and spanish speaking people and (ii) onboarding scientists and minorities was a gap to be filled, then IberoAm initiative was born. One of the founders is a native spanish-speaking of indigenous origin, the other is a native portuguese-speaking of mixed origin (as most Brazilians are).

Mission

IberoAm is a non-profit and three-fold initiative aiming to identify, promote and then support Iberoamerican blockchain/web3 projects with a clear social and/or impact for the region and prioritizing minorities. Our most recent initiative Blockchain Innovation Hub mission is to promote impact through Innovation.

Goal

The goal of the Blockchain Innovation Hub is to promote the development of new and innovative blockchain focused projects to solve most pressing needs in the real world.

Previous Gitcoin participation

We participated in GR15 and Grants Protocol Simulated Round, as well as Gitcoin Beta Round (2023). Early 2024, we participated in the HyperDeSci Gitcoin round operated by Lunco. The funds obtained were used mainly to pay for logistics, including photography, video-recording, snacks, beverages and transportation of the all the events we organized.

Achievements

Our first and successful achieved goal in 2022 was the organization of an online conference (containing 15 talks and 3 short-courses) that was streamed to our YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/ysand33a and also aimed to identify at least 3 iberoamerican impact projects. An independent committee was assembled for that task and 6 iberoamerican impact projects were identified and rewarded using tokens from (i) a CrowdFunding initiative in partnership with NFTfy (https://www.nftfy.org/), BlockchainRio (https://www.blockchainrio.com.br/), Ribon (https://ribon.io/), BanklessBr (https://artigos.banklessbr.com/) and PlustusFi (https://plutusfi.io/) and also from (ii) Shade Protocol (https://shadeprotocol.io/).

The six selected Impact Projects were:

Favelaverso https://twitter.com/Favelaverso

Gran Chaco https://twitter.com/granchaconft

Brashill https://twitter.com/BrashillNFT

Crypto Samba https://twitter.com/cryptosamba7

Brasil com S https://twitter.com/brasilwithsnft

Coletivo Oyxabaten https://twitter.com/lucianoducirilo https://twitter.com/oyxabaten

IberoAm Online Conference Program (August 26-27th): https://iberoam.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/iberoam-conference-program.pdf

Our 4 main achievements in first-half 2023 were:

(i) We successfully organized a disrupting IRL event to onboard scientists, data privacy advocates and social impact leaders on the blockchain ecosystem called "From Genomes and Privacy to Social Impact using Blockchain" funded by Eth-Colombia and Clr.fund. The whole event was recorded and is publicly available (to serve as an educational resource) at the Technological Park of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/live/FxnJ-pJgRsU?feature=share

(ii) Participated as speakers in the first ever Decentralized Science (DeSci) panel organized by Ethrereum Brazil in the Ethereum Rio 2023 conference (https://www.ethereumbrasil.com/ethereumrio).

(iii) We also successfully organized the first ever Decentralized Science (DeSci) event in Brazil called DeSci Rio (https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1633199710952464387) having DeSci World (https://desci.world/), DeSci Latam (https://linktr.ee/descilatam), Ibmec (https://www.ibmec.br/) and Favelaverso (https://linktr.ee/favelaverso) as partners.

(iv) A meetup with students of the Computing Institute (https://www.dcc.ufrj.br/) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (https://ufrj.br/en/) was organized in March 30th, having as speaker Steph Orpilla from Polygon Labs and to talk about "Intro to the Polygon Ecosystem and Polygon zkEVM"

** Second half 2023 was also really busy**

(i) Mid-September: Talk about privacy-preserving dApp at the Blockchain Rio Festival:

https://twitter.com/SecretNetwork/status/1702412567673442759

(ii) Mid-September: DeSci Rio event organization as a side-event of the Blockchain Rio Festival (2023):

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1697001965572477249

(iii) Mid-September: Polygon DevX Rio de Janeiro organization:

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1702650594450608166

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1703000288695664789

(iv) Early October 2023: Talk about the privacy-preserving Abakhus dApp (our ecosystem partners) at the Rio Innovation Week:

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1704981536070635629

(v) Late October: Talk about “Blockchain ad Privacy” for the students of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro:

https://twitter.com/amrdavila/status/1718047590388777159/

2024

(i) Early March: We announced our new initiative called Blockchain Innovation Hub, in a really nice partnership with the Innovation Agencies of 3 of the most prestigious public universities in Brazil: Inova-UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro Federal University) [https://www.linkedin.com/company/inovaufrj/], AGIR (Fluminense Federal University) [https://agir.uff.br/] and Agência de Inovação of Rio de Janeiro Rural Federal University (UFRRJ) [https://institucional.ufrrj.br/nit/], an Impact Incubator as Inyaga (https://www.linkedin.com/company/inyaga/) and organizations supporting entrepreneurship and Innovation as Assespro-RJ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/assesprorj/], Invest.Rio [https://www.invest.rio/en] and Blockchain Festival [https://blockchainfestival.io/], and finally with the Abakhus platform [https://abakhus.io]

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1763547619454837040

(ii) We successfully organized the 3rd edition of DeSci Rio, having as venue the Rio de Janeiro Federal University (one of the largest and most prestigious public Universities in Brazil):

https://lu.ma/descirio2024

(iii) The official launch of the Blockchain Innovation Hub did happen on March 19th, during the DeSci Rio 2024 edition:

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1763547619454837040

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7176551950182670336

The creation of the Blockchain Innovation Hub was driven by the need to promote networking and partnerships among academia, private sector and government, aiming to develop new projects and dApps in the blockchain space. Our Hub offers a Hacker House, Courses on Blockchain in the Federal Universities of Rio de Janeiro and Blockchain-related events/conferences.

Our Hacker House is accepting applications for the 1st cohort until April 24th, then we are joining this DeSci round in GG20 to raise funds to be used as bounties, so the best DeSci project/dApp prototyped in the Hacker House 1st cohort will be rewarded.

Hacker House infos: https://github.com/iberoam/hacker-house

Hacker House application form: https://tally.so/r/wQ5WeG

Hacker House 1st cohort ends July 5th, then we intend to select and announce the best prototyped DeSci project until there.

The pics composing the banner in this project page summarize our main activities until 2023

Next steps and long term goals

Most of our activities in 2024 will be centered on the Blockchain Innovation Hub and Hacker House as we really want to promote more innovative blockchain projects in the region.

Funds to be raised distribution: 85% of the funds raised in this DeSci round at GG20 will be used as bounties for the best DeSci project/dApp of the Hacker House, 15% will be used for the Hacker House logistics (internet, website maintenance, transportation, snacks, meeting room leasing, etc).