Prospects are improving for Ethereum. With The Merge now finalized, a significant burden (quantified in tonnes of CO2) has been alleviated from the Ethereum community’s shared consciousness. The broader world is observing to see how this community will proceed.
Currently, the ecosystem has a distinctive chance to demonstrate to the doubters what Ethereum is capable of — how a foundational trust layer on the open internet can address the major coordination challenges we have yet to resolve.
The path to Serenity is lengthy, and Ethereum’s influence remains minimal in the context of human institutions, societies, or economies. In recent years, we’ve all developed a fondness for the term public good, but we mustn’t forget that “public” encompasses all 8 billion of us, give or take.
This is the reason why the EF Fellowship Program was established: to create a platform for individuals striving toward the long-term vision of Ethereum as a public benefit for all humanity.
If Ethereum is to shape the future of human collaboration, we must ensure that this future is fairly distributed. In light of that, we are excited to announce seven remarkable individuals who are contemplating and working with this long-term perspective in mind.
Presenting the Second Cohort
If you missed the inaugural cohort, you can learn about their projects here!
Each EF Fellow has been chosen because they are on a personal journey that signifies a potential for Ethereum-enabled prosperity.
What this precisely entails is somewhat adaptable. Some are broadening Ethereum’s applicability to new audiences, or understanding directly from a community why Ethereum may not be beneficial for them (yet). Perhaps the fellow is investigating wider challenges impacting the current Ethereum community, now or in the future.
Whatever the initiative, whomever the fellow, over the next six months, they will be advancing their education, executing their project, and generally assisting in extending Ethereum into this chaotic, intricate world of individuals.
Introducing the Fellows
Abhishek Bhattacharya
Abhishek is a co-founder at Brú Finance. Brú Finance collaborates with a partner organization named Whrrl, providing harvest-time loans to over 18,000 farmers throughout India. Whrrl utilizes a permissioned private blockchain, but for his Fellowship initiative, Abhishek will be overseeing and learning from the launch of a new system on a public chain that leverages decentralized liquidity for the farmers, while also exploring how this system could operate on a global scale.
Gabriela Guerra
Gabriela established Bloinx, a startup that creates blockchain-based tandas (also referred to as cundinas, susu, hui, arisan, quiniela, stokvel, and other local variants) – informal savings circles. Gabriela believes that blockchain can significantly aid the unbanked populations globally, and that savings circles provide one effective starting point. During her Fellowship, Gabriela will run pilot programs in Mexico and Venezuela and utilize her research to enhance Bloinx for larger-scale application.
Geoffrey See
Geoffrey is a co-founder of the startup Poko. He has extensive expertise in the legal and regulatory aspects of blockchain, as well as in entrepreneurial educational initiatives and the emerging domain of DAOs. For his fellowship endeavor, Geoffrey will examine the interaction between DAOs and governments, specifically how governments aiming to establish new frameworks and legislation can understand the distinct needs and potentials of decentralized organizations.
Karam Alhamad
Karam is an entrepreneur, fintech innovator, international development expert, and advocate for human rights policy. Karam founded ZeFi, an educational platform and community dedicated to fostering blockchain education and research tailored for the Syrian context. For the Fellowship, Karam will undertake research that enhances practical and culturally-sensitive insights into how blockchains can address issues in conflict zones.
Marcus Alburez Myers
Marcus is a Guatemalan entrepreneur tackling today’s urgent issues. He is currently a Founder-in-Residence at Europe’s premier accelerator, Entrepreneur First, where he is leveraging the power of web3 to uplift marginalized communities. Through his involvement with Lamina POP, a project focused on low-cost housing design in Guatemala, Marcus will investigate the real-world challenges of financing physical assets for DeFi and aim to apply his findings to develop a potential solution for housing financing.
Mary Davies
As a legal researcher and technologist residing in the Cayman Islands, Mary has been delving into a critical question: If life-extension technology fails to materialize over the next few decades, what will happen to your cryptocurrency when you pass away? At present, no trustless or decentralized method exists to address this question, which poses a dilemma. Mary’s fellowship will investigate what new cryptographic approaches may enable us to transfer assets trustlessly after death, in a manner that complies with legal standards.
Mihajlo Atanackovic
Mihajlo is steering the digital transformation journey of one of the largest non-formal educational youth movements – the World Organization of the Scout Movement with over 57 million members worldwide. To prepare the Scout Movement for web3, he is embarking on an ambitious project that involves digitalizing badges, examining DAOs at various levels of the Movement, and investigating how the scouts can implement innovative coordination mechanisms for grassroots organization.
Team Next Billion at Devcon VI
If you’re curious about the projects the fellows are engaged in, we encourage you to attend the Fellow’s presentations in person or via live stream. Should saving the world (or attempting to) resonate with you, please reach out to us or tag us on Twitter @EFNextBillion
P.S. No, it’s not the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship — that is a separate fellowship initiative on the same frontier. Perhaps in the future, we will conduct a crossover episode.