Founders

We are scientists that entered the blockchain space in 2021, started to develop a privacy-preserving dApp called Abakhus (https://linktr.ee/abakhus) and realized that (i) building a community to bridge Portuguese and Spanish speaking people and (ii) onboarding scientists and minorities was a gap to be filled, then IberoAm (https://linktr.ee/iberoam) initiative was born. One of the founders is a native spanish-speaking of indigenous origin, the other is a native portuguese-speaking of mixed origin.

Mission

IberoAm is a non-profit and three-fold initiative aiming to identify, promote and then support Iberoamerican blockchain/web3 projects with a clear impact for the region and prioritizing minorities. Our most recent initiative, launched in Q1-2024, is called Blockchain Innovation Hub and its mission is to promote impact through Innovation.

Goal

The goal of the Blockchain Innovation Hub is to promote the development of new and innovative blockchain focused projects to solve most pressing needs in the real world.

Previous Gitcoin participation

We participated in GR15 and Grants Protocol Simulated Round, as well as Gitcoin Beta Round (2023). More recently (2024) we participated in the HyperDeSci QF round operated by Lunco (https://twitter.com/LunCoSim/status/1763135418432967139) and GG20 (DeSci community track). The funds obtained were used mainly to pay for logistics, including photography, video-recording, snacks, beverages and transportation of all the events we organized so far, as well as to reward best projects/dApps in the 1st edition of our Hacker House.

Previous Giveth participation

We registered our IberoAm initiative in 2022 (June 21st), and have been really active, organizing Twitter/X Spaces, IRL meetings as DeSci Rio and Polygon meetups, as well as promoting awareness of Iberoamerican projects and interconnecting teams.

Achievements

2022

Our first and successful achieved goal in 2022 was the organization of an online conference (containing 15 talks and 3 short-courses) that was streamed to our YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/ysand33a and also aimed to identify at least 3 iberoamerican impact projects. An independent committee was assembled for that task and 6 iberoamerican impact projects were identified and rewarded using tokens from (i) a CrowdFunding initiative in partnership with NFTfy (https://www.nftfy.org/), BlockchainRio (https://www.blockchainrio.com.br/), Ribon (https://ribon.io/), BanklessBr (https://artigos.banklessbr.com/) and PlustusFi (https://plutusfi.io/) and also from (ii) Shade Protocol (https://shadeprotocol.io/).

The six selected Impact Projects were:

Favelaverso

https://twitter.com/Favelaverso

Gran Chaco

https://twitter.com/granchaconft

Brashill

https://twitter.com/BrashillNFT

Crypto Samba

https://twitter.com/cryptosamba7

Brasil com S

https://twitter.com/brasilwithsnft

Coletivo Oyxabaten

https://twitter.com/lucianoducirilo

https://twitter.com/oyxabaten

IberoAm Online Conference Program (August 26-27th):

https://iberoam.xyz/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/iberoam-conference-program.pdf

2023

(i) We successfully organized a disrupting IRL event to onboard scientists, data privacy advocates and social impact leaders on the blockchain ecosystem called "From Genomes and Privacy to Social Impact using Blockchain" funded by Eth-Colombia and Clr.fund. The whole event was recorded and is publicly available (to serve as an educational resource) at the Technological Park of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/live/FxnJ-pJgRsU?feature=share

(ii) Participated as speakers in the first ever Decentralized Science (DeSci) panel organized by Ethrereum Brazil in the Ethereum Rio 2023 conference (https://www.ethereumbrasil.com/ethereumrio).

(iii) We also successfully organized the first ever Decentralized Science (DeSci) event in Brazil called DeSci Rio (https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1641937774302339073) having DeSci World (https://desci.world/), DeSci Latam (https://linktr.ee/descilatam), Ibmec (https://www.ibmec.br/) and Favelaverso (https://linktr.ee/favelaverso) as partners.

(iv) Organized the first DeSci São Paulo event:

https://twitter.com/blockchain_rio/status/1650603640208367623

(v) A meetup with students of the Computing Institute (https://www.dcc.ufrj.br/) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (https://ufrj.br/en/) was organized in March 30th, having as speaker Steph Orpilla from Polygon Labs and to talk about "Intro to the Polygon Ecosystem and Polygon zkEVM"

(vi) Mid-September: Talk about privacy-preserving dApp at the Blockchain Rio Festival:

https://twitter.com/SecretNetwork/status/1702412567673442759

(vii) Mid-September: DeSci Rio event organization as a side-event of the Blockchain Rio Festival (2023):

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1697001965572477249

(viii) Mid-September: Polygon DevX Rio de Janeiro organization:

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1702650594450608166

https://twitter.com/iberoam_xyz/status/1703000288695664789

(ix) Early October 2023: Talk about the privacy-preserving Abakhus dApp (our ecosystem partners) at the Rio Innovation Week:

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1704981536070635629

(x) Late October: Talk about “Blockchain ad Privacy” for the students of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro:

https://twitter.com/amrdavila/status/1718047590388777159/

2024

Q1

(i) We announced our new initiative called Blockchain Innovation Hub, in a really nice partnership with the Innovation Agencies of 3 of the most prestigious public universities in Brazil: Inova-UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro Federal University) [https://www.linkedin.com/company/inovaufrj/], AGIR (Fluminense Federal University) [https://agir.uff.br/] and Agência de Inovação of Rio de Janeiro Rural Federal University (UFRRJ) [https://institucional.ufrrj.br/nit/], an Impact Incubator as Inyaga (https://www.linkedin.com/company/inyaga/) and organizations supporting entrepreneurship and Innovation as Assespro-RJ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/assesprorj/], Invest.Rio [https://www.invest.rio/en] and Blockchain Festival [https://blockchainfestival.io/], and finally with the Abakhus platform [https://abakhus.io]

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1763547619454837040

The official launch of our Blockchain Innovation Hub happened on March 19th, during the DeSci Rio 2024 edition:

https://twitter.com/abakhus/status/1763547619454837040

DeSci Rio 2024 where our Blockchain Innovation Hub was officially launched

(ii) 1st Hacker House edition

During our 1st Hacker House edition, we selected 6 projects from 10 applications (the ones in need of privacy-preserving features) then 5 were mentored during 9 weekly sessions:

https://x.com/abakhus/status/1800994404154396841

1st Hacker House edition best 3 projects were selected:

https://x.com/abakhus/status/1808262795588186257

The pitches of those 3 projects/dApps are publicly available in our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjfM6xaNWoo&list=PL5dr-3NL6H0dcZ_jPaT-XuJHDT2PB8oYb

Yet, 1 of those 3 projects, LearnChain, was selected by Blockchain Innovation Hub team and DeSciWorld to receive a prize in the DeSci category:

https://x.com/abakhus/status/1811137525383123092

LearChain pitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjfM6xaNWoo

Q2

(i) Course intitled "Optimism at Rio de Janeiro Federal Universities: a collaboration with the Blockchain Innovation Hub" approved and funded as a Season 5 Mission Request project by Optimism

Lectures are being recorded then made publicly available in our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFSyVj5Jj8U&list=PL5dr-3NL6H0dzamjtZrQUUNUzCi62VQJN

Q3

(i) 2nd Hacker House edition: just after 1st Hacker House edition finished, we got an Arbitrum Community Grant to support the organization of our 2nd Hacker House (Q3-2024), having as the main goal to prototype at least 10 new dApps to be deployed at Arbitrum mainnet. Project name: "Adopting Arbitrum in the Blockchain Innovation Hub"

(ii) Our Blockchain Innovation Hub just partnered with Museu.xyz, Favelaverso, AgroForestDAO, CriptoBahia and Web3EduBrasil in order to promote concerted actions in collaboration with some museums in Brazil. We are proactively discussing partnerships with local museums to offer Blockchain/Web3 courses focused on blockchain technologies then promoting a wider Web3 adoption.

Specifically as a Blockchain Innovation Hub core activity, we remain committed to support and mentor the development of new blockchain dApps, using our Abakhus (https://github.com/Abakhus/) protocol (API and AbakhusJS library) as part of Hacker House editions and other education activities.

Next steps and medium-term goals

Most of our activities in 2024 will be centered on the consolidation of our Blockchain Innovation Hub as we really want to promote more innovative and impact blockchain projects in the region.

Funds to be raised will be used to pay mainly for logistics, including photography, website maintenance, video-recording, snacks, beverages, meeting/conference room leasing and transportation.