Reflections: When Innovation Goes Open Source
Putting South Africa on the Map with ETHCapeTown and BlockchainWeekZA
It’s true. An event isn’t always over when the attendees leave. There are tons of additional aspects that need to be thought through. From the venue break-down to the formal thank yous, to the post-event content, every small contribution forms part of a bigger event execution roadmap.
With ETHCapeTown coming to an end, there’s finally some time to reflect on this past month in the best way that I know how — by highlighting only the most important aspects that you need to know about.
In this post, I’ve put together an event wrap-up as a useful source for you to follow up on a few of the core ideas and takeaways from our recent events.
Mission-driven initiatives
Why we do what we do.
To put it simply:
“At Linum Labs, we focus on blockchain for people. We believe that our communities are the users, builders, contributors, and developers of blockchain solutions that form a fundamental part of the decentralised future we are building together.”
Everything that we do, whether it’s through our events or the content that we produce, we aim to grow and contribute towards a decentralised ecosystem that has the principles of interoperability, accessibility, inclusivity and transparency at its heart.
BlockchainWeekZA: What is it?
BlockchainWeekZA (19–26 April 2019) is a community and volunteer-based initiative which was formed around EthCapeTown.
The purpose
A week-long event series focused on education and inclusion where anyone could meet, connect, learn and discover blockchain-related projects in Cape Town.
Here are just a few of the events that we hosted during BlockchainWeekZA:
DeFi Cape Town: Decentralised Financial Inclusion — 18 April
As part of BlockchainWeekZA, MakerDAO, Centrifuge, Linum Labs and The UCT Financial Innovation Lab joined forces to bring the #DeFi Movement to Cape Town.
The purpose
We brought some of the most exciting DeFi projects under one roof to discuss financial inclusion in the region. The participating projects shared their insight from developing solutions in the open decentralised finance ecosystem, such as ensuring a stable monetary infrastructure, expanding financing opportunities to MSMEs, or enabling faster and cheaper remittances (just to name a few).
Who attended?
Keynote: Devon Krantz, Chief Ecosystem Officer, Linum Labs: Introduction to BlockchainWeekZA and Decentralised Finance
Keynote: Sean Brennan, Integrations Engineer, MakerDAO: The Dai Credit System: The Backbone of an Open Financial Ecosystem
Keynote: Charleen Fei, Software Engineer, Centrifuge: The Operating System for the Financial Supply Chain
Panel Discussion: Financial Inclusion — Frontier Tech in Africa
- Anastasia Adrianova, CEO & Founder, Akropolis (Moderator)
- Gustav Arentoft, Business Development, MakerDAO
- Philip Stehlik, CTO, Centrifuge
- Liesl Eichholz, Growth Strategy Lead, Molecule
- Ben Onuoha, Founder, African Blockchain Alliance
- Florian Bühringer, Co-Founder, Protea
Linum Labs Office Launch — 22 April
We now have a new Cape Town office space!
The purpose
Our Founders, Paul Kohlhaas and Devon Krantz, briefly updated attendees on what the company has been up to over the past year, by giving participants an introduction to our latest projects, Molecule and Protea.
Curation Markets Meetup hosted by Molecule — 23 April
Why should we care about curation markets? What do they hope to accomplish? Wait, what are curation markets?
These were some of the questions that sparked a deeper conversation during the fishbowl-style panel discussion, driven forward by leading minds within the Curation Markets space:
- Paul Kohlhaas — Linum Labs/ Molecule
- Florian Bühringer — Protea
- Griff Green — Giveth.io
- Devon Krantz — Linum Labs
- Jeff Emmett — Full Circle Media
- Griffin Hotchkiss — Colony
With Curation Markets being at a relatively early stage of growth, it’s important to give individuals a platform to learn more about this emerging concept so that they’re able to develop this understanding further.
“Once we have the right tools that can simulate things, we can iterate, figure out, and perfect the science behind what we are trying to build with blockchain technology.” — Griff Green
ETHCapeTown: A first for the continent
ETHCapeTown (19–21 April), hosted by ETHGlobal and Linum Labs was specifically designed as a hands-on event that encouraged developers to turn their concepts into actionable solutions with Ethereum.
Here are the top 10 takeaways from ETHCapeTown:
1. The numbers
Everybody loves trivia, statistics and facts. Here’s what you need to know!
2. The opening and closing ceremonies
3. Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum) and Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal) discuss blockchain use cases in Africa, scalability, and the journey from Bitcoin to Ethereum
4. Current trending topics that are ‘underrated or overrated’ as stated by Vitalik Buterin
- DeFi = overrated
“Parts about this topic that is underrated is the stuff that tries to push this theory into practice. This would be an aspect to get more attention on.” - Stablecoins = overrated
“People talk about them enough at this point.” - Bitcoin forks = overrated
“BSV is overrated for as long as the market cap has multiple digits.” - Forks in general = underrated
- Blockchain governance = overrated
- Ecosystem funding = slightly underrated at this point
5. From ideation to execution and what goes into planning a hackathon
There are major behind-the-scenes organisational aspects that have to take place for an event to come together. Thankfully, we had a wonderful organisational team and the support of ETHGlobal, which leads me to my next point.
6. The people
When you’ve connected with people via the Twittersphere or Telegram, there’s a certain ‘aha this person does exist’ moment when you finally meet them face to face.
Having the opportunity to link up with such a large group of talented people who are pursuing their passions was a truly remarkable experience.
This event would not have been possible without the help of our incredible volunteers, speakers, mentors sponsors, judges, venue staff, and of course, hackers.
Who attended?
Speakers and Judges
- Vitalik Buterin — Ethereum
- Anastasia Andrianova — Akropolis.io
- Griff Green — Giveth.io
- Devon Krantz — Linum Labs
- Simon de la Rouviere — Ujo
- Sean Brennan — MakerDAO
- Andy Tudhope — Status
- Gustav Arentoft — MakerDAO
- Justin Myles Holmes — NuCypher
- Michael Kisselgof — IKU
- Paul Kohlhaas — Linum Labs/ Molecule
- George Spasov — LimeChain
- Yoav Weiss — TabooKey
- Richard Moore — Ethers.js
Sponsors
8. A drive toward blockchain-based solutions focused on solving challenges in Africa
Sometimes it’s not about creating something entirely from scratch, but rather creating value through innovative ideas to improve upon existing systems. Where current systems are failing, opportunities exist. This was a key motivator for a large portion of our audience (69% South African), with a core focus on creating solutions that address local problems.
Some of the project submissions included:
- Raising funds for some of the world’s most endangered species
- Creating jobs in Africa
- Optimising decentralised voting systems
- Revolutionising the way we use electricity
- A system for whistleblowers to easily distribute information in a censorship-resistant way, just to name a few!
You can take a look at all project submissions here.
9. Technical deep dives into more focused workshop sessions
10. The overall vibe of the event
ETHCapeTown was about having fun, embracing failures, challenging yourself, networking and collaborating with others. The atmosphere of the event, the food, the swag, the speakers, the hackers, the prizes, the venue and so much more went into making this one for the books.
There’s a certain magic that occurs when a group of people come together to solve a problem in a set amount of time. It changes the way decisions are made, how value is exchanged, the way in which the innovation funnel is fast-tracked, and the nature of how people work together.
Not only was this hackathon a great opportunity to put Cape Town, South Africa on the map as a thriving developer hub, but it also presented opportunities for participants to build a better future, to further understand complex systems, to develop new skill sets, to share knowledge, and to help grow the global Ethereum community.
Want to know more about how the ETHCapeTown winners were chosen? Here’s what went into the judging criteria:
Where to from here? Opening new streams of innovation
With our events, we aim to 1) make these blockchain resources more accessible; 2) promote the development of decentralised solutions and blockchain-based applications and; 3) to give community members direct access to change-makers and some of the leading minds within the blockchain space.
It’s safe to say that we’ve had our hands full these past few months with a line-up of incredible events. Now that we’ve proven to ourselves that we can pull this off, we’re expecting to create something even bigger and better for next year.
Innovation was born out of curiosity. Watch this space!
Again, I’d like to say a special thanks to everyone who helped organise and put together ETHCapeTown. Shoutout to Emily Hobbs, Devon Krantz, Wayne van Niekerk, Michal Shachman, Nicole Mountain and the wonderful team at ETHGlobal.
