Announcing Web3 Australia

Tl;dr Web3 Australia is a new Not-For-Profit Association, Our founding partners include the Web3.Foundation. Web3 Australia has these official aims:

• Advance the development and safe implementation of Web3 and decentralised technologies.
• Provide community education on technologies that preserve data rights and data security.
• Promote the prevention of consumer data misuse, including mass surveillance and invasion of privacy by global technology companies and governments.

The following post attempts to explain why we think that such an organisation is a good idea.

I will start — as all self-congratulatory blog posts start — with a history lesson. The “blockchain scene” in Australia has gone through a series of phases over the last few years. I can’t really talk for anywhere other than Melbourne, but through conversations with my counterparts in other cities, things seem to have followed roughly the same trajectory over the last three years.

First came the small meetups, attended by enthusiasts who were fascinated by this intersection of fringe technology and core economic theory. These were often infrequent and were nothing more than social gatherings between ideologically-aligned people. Good friendships were the primary outcome of these meetups as the tech wasn’t quite ready for most people to play with, though some small builder communities did develop.

Second, came what I will refer to as ‘The 2017ening’. Ethereum’s popularity began to skyrocket, and the rest of the industry was dragged along with it. The abbreviation ‘ICO’ entered mainstream-tech vocabulary and there was opportunity everywhere for your average Joan to make a couple-hundred grand by “contributing” to the right project. The meetup scene evolved: there were now more technology meetups made possible by the developer-friendly Ethereum, but the huge influx of capital gave rise to “investor” meetups, which usually came very loosely disguised as “learn about this interesting new technology solution” presentations and often turned out to be poorly delivered marketing tripe.

The latter type of meetups during The 2017ening were wildly popular. Sometimes drawing crowds of hundreds on weeknights. There was no shortage of “founders” and no shortage of “sophisticated crypto investors” to tell you how to spend your money. These events were widely frowned upon by those who were spending time experimenting with the tech and its limitations, but nobody wants to hear you grumble. It was difficult at face value to discern the good from the bad, especially if you had no technical knowledge with which to interrogate people’s claims (and make no mistake, the nuances of blockchain technologies are deeply technical).

I could go on about how these events widely misled ordinary people and were often taken advantage of by charlatans who had nothing to gain but dollars on their personal bottom line. However, I will continue into 2018, a year that brought breathing room and fresh detritus, upon which a stronger organism is feeding and growing.

Personally, as a “Smart Contract Engineer” I was (still) swamped with demand for my services at the beginning of 2018, there was not enough of me to go around to everyone who wanted help with their ‘blockchain idea’. Great! The more the merrier. The only problem was it was near impossible to find anyone to bear the load alongside myself, most developers had one sniff of the meetups during The 2017ening and never popped their heads out again. 2018 was the year of reaching out to likeminded developers, and giving them a space to experiment whilst protecting them from “blockchain startup founders” breathing down their necks.

In April 2018, I started the Web3 Melbourne Weekly Hack (thanks Flex, YBF, Typehuman, RMIT & many more) to do exactly this. There was no plan to turn it into tutorials or workshops or anything with any structure, merely a hangout for developers interested in Web3 tech like IPFS, Scuttlebutt, Ethereum, libp2p, Swarm, Mimblewimble, etc. This bizarre display of non-maximalism was something that needed to be investigated, so techies came in their droves to find out why someone was being so bloody reasonable. We fed people salads (down with unhealthy coder meetups, boo!) and watered them with modest amounts of beer and wine, paid for out of pocket for a while, before seeking sponsorship from ConsenSys, who understood the significance of our dev-heavy collective and supported us.

These weekly events have gone from strength to strength, we’ve had show-and-tells, special editions with drop-ins from OmiseGO(!) and Polkadot(!) and other community friends. Regular events mean that anyone visiting is fairly likely to have overlapping dates and can drop in without any changes to the schedule or necessity to inform anyone, which is a load off any organiser. I think I speak for many when I say that the Web3 Melbourne Weekly Hack is one of the highlights of my week.

Web3 Australia ❤ Community

Web3 Australia was born from a love of the community we’ve developed and nurtured. We’ve gained so much from those around us, and we can do nothing more than continue to give back to them. We very much aim to begin as and stay a primarily community-driven organisation, providing a platform in the global web3 ecosystem for Australia’s engaged individuals.

Web3 Melbourne is an experimental success, which has grown from a small pod of developers into a living, breathing organism which is contributed to by all those who attend its events. We want our successful initiative to be replicated Australia-wide, whilst continuing to use our local events as a testbed for what works and how to bring people together. Creating something larger than ourselves enables us to pool our collective resources and reap the shared benefits. We believe in community, and we believe in doing it well.

Short Term Goals

Developer focused meetups like this are already super popular in Sydney, but we’d love to share what we’ve learned with the rest of the country. This is one of the reasons that we’re starting Web3 Australia. Starting a meetup without money for an accessible space, or money to give people food, or resources to promote it is extremely taxing, which is why we often see meetup groups sell themselves to corporations and lose the faith of some of their attendees.

We see Web3 Australia as being a nationwide patron of these communities, helping them to attract and keep the right people whilst safeguarding them from those who would only seek to extract value.

Web3 Australia will highlight these grass-roots initiatives as well as their stewards, and ensure that they are well represented as providing incredible services to the community. Where necessary, Web3 Australia may deploy capital to help these events grow and (literally) nourish their audience.

Long Term Goals

Events like April’s EDCON in Sydney are fantastic opportunities for the best people in Australia’s Web3 ecosystem to further their knowledge and involvement, but attending them can be costly, especially if your involvement in the Web3 space is a passion and not a full time gig. Web3 Australia plans to help the correct people attend the events (including EDCON, get in touch!) that will benefit them most through travel and ticket subsidies.

Web3 Australia knows that unless we build what we want, we’ll never get it, which is why we also want to champion open source projects in the wider Web3 ecosystem. Through our intelligent and rigorous developer community, we aim to identify the projects which could benefit the most from extra funding on issue bounties or other similar schemes. Additionally, Web3 Australia may, in the future, be a vehicle for delivering grants to projects which we believe could use them most effectively.

Come Say Hi

Web3Australia will be hosting a launch party in Sydney during EDCON on Friday April 12th. More details will be available ASAP on our website.

You can also get in touch by flicking us an email: hello@web3australia.org