Education & Public Goods in the Ethereum Ecosystem - Ornella Vallana

value to you if you're an OG in web fre amazing congrats but if you're new maybe this might speak uh more to you so I'm here to spread uh awareness and yeah information about uh education and public goods in the ethereum ecosystem so yeah happy to be here a little bit about myself before we dive in my name is Ornella valana I'm a Chilean I'm living in Italy for the past 3 years now uh I'm happily integrated in the community thanks to the amazing work of the panelists that you saw before so I started uh diving into the web fre community and Milan and also spaghetti and yeah and I'm happy to share some valuable information with you um my my my background is in marketing Communications and branding before web3 was applied to science and the music industry and that's how I went through the rabbit hole trying to like do online music festivals when the pandemic hit so like all the work was cancelled I wanted to learn how to start investing and that's when I learned about Bitcoin ethereum and then learned about decentralized work which actually took me to contribute to different um digital communities the first one that I found was called Bank list Dow in 20121 and there I did contributions at talian coordinator marketing and also in the grants committee and now I contribute to an application which focuses on education called Banos Academy the last project that I'm building right now is called down boarding which is a digital Community decentralized it's a dowo and it focuses on making the onboarding process uh easier for people that are new to web3 so here's an overview of the talk so we're going to Define some key Concepts what's education what is public goods and what is ethereum how do they intersect between each other the current landscape of Education in web 3 my journey a a little bit of Storytelling and yeah some action step for you so you can get involved so education is the process of acquiring knowledge skills values and attitudes through learning when people pursue education they acquire these skills to to contribute to the collective prosperity and well-being of society educated individuals are more likely to innovate solve complex problems and drive economic growth which benefits everyone this way we can advance more technologically culturally and economically the result a more stable and prosperous environment for all this is this sounds amazing right but there is there is a problem here that education is actually um it should be a public good but in the world it's not considered a public good in every country so this already generates a big gap between the people that have access to education and those who don't the thing is that ethereum is looking to kind of support education and give access to everyone to become part of the new internet so to understand a little bit more about that we're going to analyze what exactly does it mean to be a public good public goods are resources that everyone can have access to without limiting their availability to others so if I can use this public good that doesn't mean that there is a less public good for another person to use it so that's one thing some examples you can find like locally could be clear drink water um also like public transportation and globally scientific research again what is the problem here that education is not a public good in every place in the world creating a gap now how do we Define ethereum and how does it fit into this whole story so ethereum is a decentralized open-source blockchain that enables the creation and execution of smart contracts and decentralized applications it provides a global trustless Network where you we can interact and transact directly without any intermediaries like Banks or governments or companies that are taking cuts of every single transfer of value that we do so above all this that it's peer-to-peer it also provides uh security transparency and also immutability which means it cannot be changed in the past and all this is thanks to blockchain technology ethereum is a public good it is meant for every everyone to be part of it to build on top of it to use it without restrictions ethereum doesn't want to know your name your background what age what city you were lived in or where you are from it is a public good open to everyone to use the ethereum ecosystem is on mission to fund public goods and impactful projects all right this is awesome but why does ethereum do that because public goods when there is no like specific interest from a company or from like a CEO or someone in particular um there's this openness and it public goods are critical to actually uh have an open decentralized and Global ecosystem that everyone can participate and benefit so why is this important because it's a way to create a fairer world like this is the vision we don't know if it's possible yet but our best shot is to try so if we think about these three things ethereum public goods and education we can say that we are here yeah me you we are all there we have the possibility of participate in the ecosystem and take these three things and actually provide something valuable to the whole Community or also uh yeah just learn to use it and teach others how to participate in it as well so why does ethereum support um public goods it's because it's part of the like the core part of their values of its values and because of its history and philosophy but what does this support actually look like well there these are some examples it could be by building technical infrastructure by building developer tools or by doing education through digital resources and Community what you just heard about the panel before that is also building building is not just on the technical aspect but it's like creating something so building community and creating educational resources are equally as important the way to make this new future possible and resilient is that we have a strong culture of building on each other's work to make it stronger every time every brick that we lay every Foundation since it's open source it's done in public everyone can take a look can improve it can modify it and make an even bit better version of of the process so main message here for now is ethereum views if support of public goods as an investment in the long-term success of the entire decentralized ecosystem meaning that there's not one country one government or one company or one entity that is like owner of ethereum it is available to everyone and for that to actually be successful it needs the support of public goods and open source open source software the goal here is also to ensure that everyone has access to the tools and knowledge to participate now how does this support happen like in actionable steps well I'm not really I unsure if here in the Italian ecosystem a lot of people know about public goods and that you can actually like build something of your own that can contribute to the ethereum community and there exists like like many many platforms that will help you like find uh funding or support uh to make that Vision that you have possible so these are some of the platforms that you might want to check out if you have something that speaks to you that you want to build whether it's technical or whether it's like Community U getcoin gith otin artisen they're all part of new systems of onchain capital allocation here on the right you will see a recommendation from Kevin oi uh he is like a really great person he wrote this book uh green pill that speaks about you know a better future using ethereum technology and how we can coordinate better as a society and as humans uh leveraging blockchain now let's say that this up to now kind of interests you you might want to say say okay how do I get involved well the good news is that it's up to you you don't need to ask anyone for permission you just have to find the strength inside yourself and that will that courage to kind of step up and say all right this is what I feel I can contribute with to the ecosystem so through these platforms you can start and Spark that Builder idea of yours raise funds to start your own project that's one option if you don't want to do like that heavy lifting well maybe you can discover a prod project that you would like to contribute to you want to start like baby steps first helping others and then like doing your own thing and the other the other possibility is that let's say you're okay you're like you just want to support you know from uh the sidelines but you have funding that you are able to donate to these projects then it's also possible through these onchain uh allocation activities so now what's the current situation of education and web fre if a person wants to learn have in mind that a technical background is a plus but it's not a requirement example I come from a marketing background branding I do not know how to code you just listen to Andrea's story she said I did my first line of solidity coding uh in an event created by ethereum community so that's amazing so if you you don't have a technical background it's okay like you are mostly like very welcome to participate and also join the movement uh what you can do is uh use these free educational resources to get involved in communities start contributing or maybe if you want to get more technical you will also have access to do that what does the data say right now regarding education and web3 we're going to focus on the numbers regarding developers which is like um yeah the tech techical side the builders who are yeah contributing to ethereum and to public good projects here there's a it's a graph from a gitcoin which is one of the platforms that I mentioned earlier uh through all these years there have been many Grant rounds and here well it's not very the quality is not the best but uh we can say that um the open source Observer impact analysis found that for every $1 million paid out in Grants since 2019 there are still active uh around 7 full-time developers that contribute only to open-source projects so like you have one option of getting a job in a company but another option is also to build open- Source projects or you can do both so like the options are really endless but it's important to know that if you decide to go through the full open source way build something or your own or contribut to other open source projects there is funding available for you to spark that Builder Spirit within you now if that graph was for developers imagine what it would be if everyone absolutely every type of skill set would be in that graph like writers and legal people right um marketers artists just anyone building on the blockchain that graph would be like super exponential we need every type of skill set for ethereum to succeed so as action steps what I want to share with you is that you can get involved in many different ways first as a learner just by having this curiosity inside of you or just by being here or yeah just like integrating yourself in communities you can start and participate as a learner uh sometimes just like being there you don't need to say anything just observe observe observe read until you're ready to kind of get more involved active L you can also then become a contributor to a community which can be a technical community or maybe something more artistic maybe you want to write maybe you just want to help coordinate the fact to help coordinate people is also very needed in the in the industry you can become a technical Builder and for that you can have knowledge of web to development or you can start learning solidity from scratch those are also options if you're a protocol how can you support the trio of ethereum public goods and education maybe your protocol wants to set aside some type of budget to help developers learn or just you have a space for anyone that wants to get inv involved and yes just like save some budget for that and another option as I mentioned before is you can be a patron if there's some like local communities that you want to support maybe there's I don't know a certain tool that you're going to start using to create your own lines of code or your own application uh you can also support those so it's like pay it forward you know like you learn then you want to give back and it's like a beautiful a virtual cycle that's the thing here there's a few resources learn web.org it's like a more developer build Guild as well you can do speed run ethereum and learn and join the community everything here is free uh bankas Academy which is one of the projects that I contribute to that is focused on end users like anyone literally just like you don't need any technical experience and University of ethereum.org which is also amazing I want to share a little bit about the projects that I'm building hoping that can inspire you so one of the projects uh well these are all public goods they're open source and there's like actually no restrictions to participate one is called bankless Academy we have an onboarding Booth so if you're here you don't know anything about we3 you want to start please reach out I can help you learn about ethereum set up your own wallet minant your first proof of attendance protocol just some fun activities to get you started and the second one uh as I mentioned is a decentralized community focusing on the process because it's not just about learning things or like reading and doing onchain activities it's also about lifestyle like we really to create this new world this new with the new internet and with the blockchain technology that we have right now we need to change and like a little bit our mindset and that is you know takes time it's slow it's not fast so if you do that with people and with peers that are kind of in the same mental shift that really helps a lot and lastly um I want to talk about the power of doing things together so um here in November no in November uh there's a devcom there's a developer conference in Bangkok and for the first time with a group of friends that are also contributors to other public goods projects everyone is supporting public goods um we are doing an event that is called new web 3 start here so it's for people living in Bangkok living in um in the area and since we're going to travel to that place and it's going to be our home like for a week or even more it's like a way to give back to the community and it's like hey you might have heard of this conference that's going around right but you don't know anything about web3 you don't have money to pay the ticket maybe just you just want to like learn and check it out you're not ready to dive in but this it seems or it could be like a good option for you to start and yeah just like take your first steps so some of the projects that are contributing is regen unite cryptocom Collective e Dublin Academy and so on so what I want to leave you with with this feeling knowing that we are all Builders whether it's technical non-technical all the skill sets are needed and final thoughts and call to action is that it's time to explore ethereum and be part of this new way of human coordination now we have a technology that can help us really become a better Society not only in our local places but also globally so please take it into consideration and do not be shy and involved connect with your local community at events here like Naple eth and yeah just uh start building here's my social media if you want to get in touch I'll be around in the event this afternoon and yeah thank you so much for listening thank you very much