🎤 Supporting the Infinite Garden - Aya Miyaguchi

[Applause] [Music] all right on to our amazing keynote talk without further ado i'd like to welcome i am ian gucci who's the executive director of the ethereum foundation to talk about why latin america matters to us and we're also going to be bringing on juan david reyes to translate this live in spanish so please give them a big round of applause [Applause] hello everyone um great to be here um at this first east global hackathon in mexico am i right and at this very beautiful venue it's very very exciting and i also tweeted about this this morning that i discovered merge is happening on mexico's independence day [Music] probably mostly well yeah um so today i'd like to talk about what kind of organization the theme foundation needs and before that i'm going to talk about a little bit about myself uh just a heads up anyone who who listened to my talk last week the heart first half of my talk is is almost the same but i'm going to talk a little bit more about mexico too so my background when i first started my career in japan i was a teacher and i always believed in the power obviously i still believe in the power of education i think education is everything and the knowledge and access to information can lead to reshaping the future of the society and the world and i also taught my students the importance of learning about diverse different cultures and also views then i moved to san francisco and discovered crypto that was around the time i was focusing on financial inclusion or microfinance during my mba so i got fascinated with the possibilities that this technology could build better financial inclusion and development of economies with more open access to everyone establishing mba in san francisco crypto para cambia working at clark and this was a while ago i met a young vitalik um who is who is coming very soon here um he was working on a new idea that can improve what crypto and blockchain can do later we learned more about this idea and i was excited because this idea could increase the potential in things like financial inclusion 100 times more and later when i left my previous work vitalik and others asked me to join ef to help and i did back then the ef was just a hub for devs and researchers focusing on building the platform of ethereum was already pretty big the ecosystem was pretty big and i needed to redesign the roles of the ethereum foundation organization first there were already many contributors to ethereum outside of the ethereum foundation and and it's because it's an open source project and there is no good support mechanism to support those contributors in the community so one clear thing that i needed to do is to add grant giving function to the internal foundation and today we do more comprehensive work than just giving grants i will explain part of it today but we do what's best for ethereums healthy ecosystem long term grants by healthy i mean both physically and culturally every good idea has trade-offs just like ethereum's thailand mars we sometimes have to sacrifice short-term advantage to achieve long-term goals but we believe that that is one of the virtual that ethereum ecosystem has and that is tied to the soul of ethereum foreign and within the af my most important role is to keep the soul of the asean foundation so that ef can help the community keep the soul of ethereum the most important i envision the future when our society will have systems that are more inclusive and open so every single person has opportunities and access to be part of solutions i believe ethereum can help build this future and that is the source of my favorite motivation and also all of us at the ethereum foundation has missed the most important maintenance so what is the ethereum foundation ef exists to support things around the ethereum technology and also the ecosystem ef is very unique organization we are not just a normal non-profit or a company why do we have to be unique organizations we believe ethereum is a protocol for human coordination that is supported supported by many great minds it is not just money it is not just technology it is a protocol for human coordination so that it can enable human to coordinate better with more inclusiveness transparency and security ethereum is so while ethereum brings new views in human coordination we learned that requires new type of definitions and approaches and just like ethereum ia had to e ethereum foundation had to create a new type of collaboration system so that we can flexibly support this unique ecosystem so instead of being a normal organization we are like a community of teams a community of teams that help coordinate many things projects people teams businesses and schools that are building developing researches and spreading the knowledge of ethereum technology estudiantes we knew not just allocate resources we coordinate activities discussions knowledge and education in the ecosystem so because of this teams in the ef community are very aligned in the mission but loosely coupled continue coming and these structures this structure allows us to adapt to ever-changing conditions around ethereum as you know more easily also lets us distribute power to support more organic growth we have ongoing development teams working on learn long-term projects like these consensus id guests already etc and they usually have a lot of independence we also have the ecosystem development cluster to support other things in the ecosystem teams on this side are not developing specific things but finding ways to better support the ecosystem with a big picture ecosystem coordinated so their roles include building a relationship allocating funds facilitating education and spotting risk as you can see esp that's ecosystem support program that you can apply for plants ethereum they're all expedient protocol support yes ecosystem support program ethereum.org applications and i said we are not a normal top-down organization in order for ef teams to support this unique and decentralized ecosystem effectively they often need to act independently so that i don't i don't go around to tell people what to do every day but they also need to act toward the same mission i said our people are very mission oriented how do we keep that mission there are guiding principles that are key to the way we think and act an organization first one is long-term thinking you may not see the impact of what we are doing today or even in a year we believe our impact should be measured in decades and centuries we need to think about the time when we are not here or not alive for the next generations to come we take care of the ethereum for the infinite term beyond our times personas programs and next is subtraction we resist the natural tendency of organizations to accurately accumulate prestige and power normally in an organization thinks about competition and how it can grow bigger instead we push opportunities outwards we are excited to see others succeed we try to matter less so that the ecosystem can thrive with or without the ethereum foundation in the long run this was especially not easy at my earlier time people wanted to give ef power and wanted us to control more but if you think about the world we are building i believe each potenti each potential big power has to subtract so things get decentralized and distributed el camino this is a very important philosophy but it's very hard to understand often but we spend a lot of time and energy for new ef people to understand this fail philosophy and last one is stewardship of various like i said ethereum has a soul the values of our community are what made ethereum what it is today values like open source decentralization open access privacy and many more we care about nurturing the values that are most important for the community for example projects open source and decentralized so there are many other various that we have but these are the things that we stick to and then try to really keep in our community and also hopefully share these two to other people in the community but uh we also work with other other community members especially that one that we think that are closely aligned with our principles ethereum global sorry east global team for example is an a great example of the team that are aligned with our principles so thank you eth global for kicking us all the time [Applause] lost so this leads to our vision of infinite garden so we were talking this this this this venue looks like a garden almost but i'd like to explain this the garden of this ecosystem where everyone lives in a healthy sustainable environment in order to continue and continue playing the game together instead of someone winning the game i came up with the idea of infinite garden reading the book finer and infinite games by james cars i highly recommend to everyone i've been recommending to everyone and then you it will be very easy for you to understand um infinite and finite games the james cars as only okay recommend much so with our principle we try to focus on what only ef can do this ecosystem is growing but we we're more than happy if things go smoothly without our support so we constantly have to ask ourselves what are the things that only ef can do so words like crypto boxing with three or nfts are widely known today helping others be mindful of the potential of blockchain and ethereum beyond cryptocurrencies or d5 is one of the ideas that naturally occurred to me by asking that question what are the things that only ef can do what are the things that are not happening yet the team the experience was created so we can think deeply about the people and regions that will represent next billion users and builders of ethereum those who can benefit most from this protocol of human coordination and one of the air force the team is doing is this human foundation fellowship program when i suggested this idea it was not really just about helping a few fellows it was about getting their help to show the examples to others so that others can learn from learn from or even copy the first cohort focused on the change makers in emerging economies fellowship program [Music] the bottom left she is working on on this project to connect schools with internet and and then ethereum and blockchain can help that the coordination between government schools and the internet provider better and even like they are actually blinking staking to for the financial financial independence of the community too internet con system at staking and benson on the top right is working on working with acre africa to provide decentralized insurance to small farmers in kenya working with our community team etherisk in kenya and also credeep on the bottom right he is working with black the biggest ngo and the microfinance institution in black to work on the blocks in humanitarian projects in bangladesh and chewie on the top left is from mexico and yay so i'm going to talk about him and his project after later so let's first share the voice from these four people we have a video here we try to fix or at least improve even at a very small level how the public sector works you can end up improving the lives of many uh you have said that with the the concept of the next billion uh so almost 600 thousand 600 million people uh in in latin america kind of fulfill that description of the next billion this really is key for ethereum foundation's mission to reach the next billion because in order to you know be part of this network you first need to be part of the digital economy and have access to the internet so it's really solving this first foundational challenge that we face where still over 600 million students and young people don't have access to the internet around the world and in particular in sub-saharan africa we're in the very early stages of understanding what you know how do we understand it and what benefit does black does bragg get from using blockchain because you bragg uh inherently started as a core a decentralized organization units working in the field solving problems where they are and kind of like solving problems in a decentralized manner um so it kind of made sense on a theoretical and a conceptual basis that we could use blockchain in organ in our organization to good use the problem that i'm working on currently in each africa has been the claims process has been traditional insurance has had a lot of problems when it comes to claims payout they would be delayed number one and they would also not be guaranteed because information trickle down was limited so that has been the problem that we've been solving using blockchain technology smart contracts they're able to quickly generate payout schedules now ensuring that we would know who needs to be paid how much went quite fast since 2014 more or less i've been um deep diving in into what we call blockchain meets update which means how blockchain can serve as a government technology working on how governments how the public sector can meaningfully adopt blockchains i got to meet the other fellows doing awesome and wonderful things we connect different levels discuss different things especially on how to move our projects once so at the end of the day the next billion are going to be at new users that will make the network bigger i think open source is the way to go blockchain is an open source solution ethereum is open source and i think the solutions that we look at in terms of for the development sector should also be open and thank you for this beautiful conversation as well very thankful and happy to to be part of the of the fellowship that's really really exciting on [Music] [Applause] so speaking of next video users and builders let me talk about latin america in latin america many people are struggling to do better for its basic infracture and systems including financial inclusion but they also become a hub for talents and entrepreneurs for people in national america blockchain is not just about money not just about the technology but about being sure tomorrow about protecting their wealth fighting violations of human rights and redefining systems they work and live in the [Music] ethereum provides tools to build your own solution in latin america i can see people's motivation to build their own solution coming from their genuine passion to change their own life and i think that's very powerful ethereum opportunities parallels in region where more people have smartphones than bank accounts this technology represents an opportunity to improve regional financial inclusion in mexico for example uh this is a little bit old but as of 2018 over 50 of people are unbanked and over 30 percent have no access to any financial product and because of this just 31 have access to credit products and on the other hand 60 of the population owns the home and because of this gap there is tremendous amount of unmet demand and also opportunity to personalize this is exactly the reason why chui from the fellowship program you just saw from mexico decided to work on solutions for public sectors he said it was natural for them to pick up tech to work on in order to change their life his team is spread in mexico and argentina oh sorry i skipped your transition so his team is now working with states and cities in mexico and argentina with other boxing startups to kick start an ecosystem for governments it's called tango id which is a self-sovereign digital id decentralized and permissionless employees the goal is to support more account accountable institutions in sustainable economic laws city government in mexico is working with the team monterey will be releasing the platform to connect your warhead with all different digital services and procedures and in order for this plan to work there needs to be a state law to make the boxing digital idea as an official identifier so the effort is also moving forward so the stories like chewies we foundation see strong opportunities the opportunities for ethereum's next billion builders and users to be born from latin america we have been supporting teams and projects in the region and will continue to do so that so that you can join the infinite garden example and outside of public sector what seems to be important for this region is that ethereum also creates job opportunities for creators and artists the supply of nft market has made artists become financially independent when you think about nfd's we hear big money-making stories but here in latin america and especially in mexico you can see it is not just about becoming financially independent so to explain why this is that it's not just about becoming financially independent i have one personal story to share financial independence i spent some time in mexico in 2020 actually when it felt like the world was ending with the pandemic and people started to care more about things like privacy censorship and also true information so during that time mexico actually showed me freedom and how to live in the darkness this country also had day of the dead so it is a spirit to to how to cope with with the death and in the inspiration i received was mainly from artists i visited oahu oaxaca mexico and discovered this art by a street artist yes i don't have to explain what it is but as you can see it is very powerful and i felt immediate connection with what we are doing with web3 and his art as you can know explicit image and then i just discovered now he and his friends created this streetlab.io a decentralized organization that are governed by holders of the nfts and then the nfts are those faces of muertos and then i just found very beautiful story from here too there are many street artists that are also an advocate or an activist their art can be politically controversial and nft means something else for them i want to share their quotes from their website nfts is a path for these art to become eternal they can be destroyed in real life they will be forever here on blockchain unafraid stand for the freedom fighters coming back from the dead to guide the street arts toward the nft scene to echo their voices and fight censorship today jessica is supposed to be watching this live hola is and i was beyond excited to discover this to see how ethereum is enabling the artists that i'd admire to make his art more powerful okay another example from mexico these artists are troll zuniga cleans up streets and beaches and use garbage to create these art of scouts and again scouts represent important part of mexican culture in mexico he used a 3d photogrammetry to digitize sculpture and mint it on there tea and it's as an sd on him he does this to bring awareness to the environmental issue he says if we do not raise more awareness about the pollution in the world we will end up like these skulls dead technologies so naturally mexico has a strong growing nft industry according to tech insight 360s survey the nft industry in mexico is expected to grow by 46.3 percent this year many artists also play a role of an advocate or an activist like i said said and i'm fascinated with their creativity and frida kahlo is one of one from mexico that the world respects and admires imagine what she could have done even more if she had been empowered by them frida kahlo is lastly as you know we are bringing the afghan 6 to bogora colombia [Applause] he's from bogora colombia and it is happening soon in october when we made this decision i repeat this we did not just speak bogora or colombia we picked latin america with all the communities including mexico in october colombia repeated much about [Applause] so the ethereum committee in mexico might be still new but as you can see there is a big opportunity because of the challenges and the creativity i explained today is so if you're here today to hack you can be one to build a solution earlier than others whether by being part of museum's public good solutions such as protocol project or layer 2s or building an application for different sectors or being an artist to share your voice public we are here to support your journey if you have questions about us the disneyland foundation our people our people are going to be at the desk in another room tomorrow from 10 to 12 p.m also three to six pm and which is gracious [Applause] [Applause]