IberoAm conference and Secret hackathon

Secret Governance
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A Secret Network initiative to promote expansion and a more decentralized blockchain adoption in Iberoamerica

Introduction

Could we interpret blockchain decentralization in a wider sense well beyond consensus computing or voting proposals? Would it be possible to decentralize even more of the blockchain space by promoting/supporting more teams and projects in the Southern Hemisphere or Iberoamerica? Could Secret Network lead this process then expand itself to new niches by promoting additional use cases for their innovative privacy-preserving features? We imagine most if not all blockchain networks would be interested in promoting a wider and faster adoption, meaning more DAOs and dApps being built and demanding even more network usage? According to WorldBank Latin America and Caribbean have a $ 4.72T GDP and nearly a third of it ($ 1.44T GDP) belongs to Brazil alone, with the rise of the service economy accounting for most of that. It looks like DeSci DAOs and DeComm (Decentralized Communication) DAOs may have a very special place in Iberoamerica as promoting them also means an even more decentralized space. We are especially happy Ethereum.Rio 2022 happened in South America as it provided a unique opportunity for interested and curious people to establish a network for starting or expanding projects, however much more than that is actually needed. The prototype of a DeComm DAO originating in Iberoamerica could organize a first online meeting with focus on Spanish and Portuguese speaking teams/projects (e.g. IberoAm !), no matter which chain they use. Such a DeComm DAO could directly promote and support seed projects in Iberoamerica, not only by communicating but mainly promoting blockchain education. A DeComm DAO like this could finally promote a greater decentralization by supporting initial stage projects considering regional demands and priorities and targeting portuguese and spanish speaking markets. This could also be the DAO to help science publication business decentralization, since few corporations already dominate the market and control the expensive APC (Article Processing Charge) or publication fees. Finally, a DAO like this could potentially help the already available non-comercial SciComm community to maintain and grow their high-quality science communication content and be rewarded for that.

Our IberoAm initiative is three-fold: (i) organizing an online meeting on 26-27th August 2022 having as target audience Iberoamerican people (portuguese and spanish speaking teams/projects), (ii) offer several short ELI5 courses to onboard iberoamerican people in the blockchain space, and (iii) a Secret Network Hackathon (August 19th-21st) in partnership with H.E.R. DAO and social impact communities in Brazil and Iberoamerica, promoting Equity Diversity Inclusion (EDI). The IberoAm initiative has been already aired in the Secret Code Podcast: IberoAM - YouTube

To have an idea of the recently created iberoam.xyz website impact, the statistics shows that in the first month there were >6000 unique visitors and >167.000 total requests from Latam, Europe, US and Asia.

Detailed description and roadmap

We anticipate this to take 4 months to complete, starting mid April 2022:

April

(i) Domain name iberoam.xyz obtained
(ii) First version of the iberoam.xyz website alive
(iii) IberoAm meeting program finished involving at least 2 plenary speakers from the Secret Network
(iv) Two 2-hours ELI5 courses on blockchain and web3 being listed as part of the IberoAm program, with one of the teachers mentioning about the privacy-preserving features of the Secret Network.

May

(v) IberoAm logo production
(vi) Design assets production (visual)
(vii) iberoam.xyz webdesign updated
(viii) IberoAm meeting awareness on social media (campaign 1)

June

(ix) Updated version of the iberoam.xyz website alive
(x) IberoAm meeting awareness on social media (campaign 2)
(xi) Submission of Iberoamerican projects videos (90 seconds each) received and made available to the IberoAm Selection Committee (Selection committee – IberoAm)
(xii) Updated version of the iberoam.xyz website alive

July

(xiii) Submitted Iberoamerican projects selected by the Selection Committee listed on the IberoAm website, each one will have 5-10 minute live-presentation as part of the IberoAm program
(xiv) IberoAm streaming first testing simultaneously both on YouTube and Twitch channels
(xv) Updated version of the iberoam.xyz website alive

August

(xvi) Secret Network Hackathon to happen 19-21 August in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). Prizes for the 5 best projects: 1st place: $ 2.000, 2nd place: $1.500, 3rd place $1.000, 4th and 5th places: $ 500
(xvii) IberoAm streaming second testing simultaneously both on YouTube and Twitch channels
(xviii) IberoAm conference live: the top 3 best iberoamerican projects chosen by the Selection Committee will receive a prize: 1st place: $ 2.000, 2nd place: $1.500, 3rd place $1.000
(xix) Top 3 best project Iberoam conference teams to talk privately to the IberoAm supporters/sponsors.
(xx) After-meeting updated version of the iberoam.xyz website alive

Team

Alberto Dávila and Rodrigo Jardim are IberoAm (Twitter: @iberoam_xyz) founders and contributors to the Secret Network building a dApp with a Secret Network grant, Twitter: @abakhus. Tracey - H.E.R.DAO founder, Twitter: @_HerDAO

Local supporters

Douglas Miranda (https://coinmasters.com.br/)
Fred (Local Secret Agent)
Luca Fortes (Brazilian Secret Agent in charge of the Secret Network Portuguese Telegram Group)
Alexandre and Lucas (Brazilian Secret Network developers)

Expected outputs (deliverables)

(i) Hackathon: expanding the current number of Secret Network developers with iberoamerican people

(ii) Hackathon: onboarding women iberoamerican developers in the Secret Network then promoting an even more decentralized and Equity Diversity Inclusion policy

(iii) Overall wider awarness and faster Secret Network adoption in Iberoamerica

Funding request

The funding request is 50.000 USD ($SCRT ~9.000 considering $SCRT=US$5.5), payable in SCRT from the Community Pool to fund the whole IberoAm conference and Secret Network Hackathon, including:

(i) Round-trip tickets and per-diem for 2 Secret Newtork developers to help with the Secret Network Hackathon. Sub-total: $ 7.000,00

(ii) H.E.R.DAO Hacker House. Sub-total: $ 3.000

(iii) Side events. Sub-total: $ 2.000

(iv) Workshops. Sub-total: $ 1000

(v) Co-branded (Secret Network, H.E.R.DAO and IberoAm) merch. Subtotal: $ 1.000

(vi) H.E.R DAO project management: Sub-total: $ 5.000

(vii) Meals and beverages for the participants of the 3-day hackathon. Sub-total: $ 6.000,00

(viii) Prizes for the 5 best hackathon projects: 1st place: $ 2.000, 2nd place: $1.500, 3rd place $1.000, 4th and 5th places: $ 500. Sub-total: $ 5.500

(ix) Prizes for the top 3 best iberoamerican projects presented in the IberoAm conference: 1st place: $ 2.000, 2nd place: $1.500, 3rd place $1.000. Sub-total: $ 4.500

(x) IberoAm web design, web hosting, conference real time translation services and meeting organization logistics, management and support. IberoAm domain name has been already obtained, the first website version is live: https://iberoam.xyz, and two Secret Network plenary speakers (José Peponks and Guy Garcia) have already been listed in the official program. Hackathon place rent. Notion documentation tool fees. Sub-total: $ 15.000

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I love the plan, and have recently seen quite an up-tick in Spanish-speaking supporters of Secret Network. If you go forward with this we need to make sure we spread awareness to the rest of the Cosmos and try to get as much support from their IberoAmerican communities as well, but I think this would be an excellent step for Secret Network evangelism and 100% worth the investment!

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Sounds good to me.
Also get some translators to proof read the articles in spanish and portuguese.
I don’t know about portuguese but google translate for spanish is not good.

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Thanks for the kind support, Eric ! Unfortunately we failed to establish any contacts with Cosmos Ecosystem founders/Devs. A pity because iberomerican devs and teams could be inspired by them. Just saw Cosmoverse 2022 will happen in Medellin (Colombia) 1 month after the IberoAm conference, will try to attend to meet some Cosmos guys there !

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I support this! Alberto has been working hard to organize this over the past month.

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Fully support this! We have seen a huge increase in the amount of community content from the Spanish & Portuguese-speaking community lately, it will be good to cement a strong community there!

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Thanks ! We initially considered this to be submitted as a SNAC proposal, then realised KYC would be needed using that path. Since we truly value the nice privacy-preserving features of Secret Network we decided to submit it to the Community Pool.

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Domerium Labs will be voting no on this proposal.

  1. Events like these are part of the Secret Foundation funding, and as such should come from them.

  2. In regards to privacy. Yes, our network is all about privacy, but that doesn’t mean it is desirable that our representatives are anon. Secret Network isn’t about secrecy, it is about being able to keep a secret.

I don’t think that anonymous organizers represent that thought very well. I also think it makes logistics like sending merchandise more complex. How are you going to sign any sort of documents as organizers for collabs, or venues, or vendors while staying anon?

It seems your wish to stay anon is going to introduce a lot of hassle in organizing this event. So much so that it is likely to limit your reach, and could cost a lot more time for those involved, organizers or otherwise.

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I’ll agree with moonstash and Stefan on this. That’s something that SCRTLabs should fund you via a grant. Only if they don’t want to give you grant for this I would find it ok to try vote again.

But please don’t be discouraged by this!
I’m pretty sure that SCRTLabs will happily fund these kinds of conferences and hackathons. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for your constructive feedback ! Did not know SCRTLabs could fund a proposal like this, I was told SF and the Community Pool could. Anyway, the proposal is not just about a conference and a Hackathon, it is mainly about decentralization, meaning (i) to contribute with awareness and onboarding (Devs and Users) in Iberoamerica, (ii) to contribute with Dev documentation organization and translation to spanish and portuguese), then (iii) promoting a wider/faster adoption of the privacy-preserving features of Secret Network in Iberoamerica.

Finally, since privacy is a human right, I really would like to use as much as possible of that privacy right, meaning only accepting to be KYC when no other option is available.

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The grants moved to SCRTLabs afaik (see here: Issues · scrtlabs/Grants · GitHub).

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I’m not sure if there is consensus whether this should fall under SF (a SNAC) or SLabs (a grant). Hackathons and all the different aspects in organizing one are probably an important aspect of the SF scoping discussion going on right now. Definitely add your input to that discussion as well :slight_smile:

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Thanks ! I honestly don’t think why this could not be funded by the Community Pool as well, considering SN decentralization and expansion in Iberoamerica should be of interest of the community and Stakeholders (Iberoamerica =
600M people) Also, I am happy to see no one said our proposal is weak or no sound, or even of no interest for the community, I only see complains about who in SN should really fund it.

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I can appreciate the desire not to KYC. Is there somewhere we can see the progress on the Abakhus grant? This would influence my vote.

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Thanks Winston ! Abakhus is still on development, with a couple of milestones to achieve before we can announce first Alpha. In May I should present Abakhus progresses in a Secret Code Podcast episode and Beta in early September during the BlockchainRio conference (the largest blockchain conference in Latam according to the organizers) where I have been invited to be a plenary speaker.

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I dont think its the case that the community pool does NOT want to fund this.

It is more that the Community pool does not want to fund this right NOW.

This has to do with discussions both around the Developer documentation not being ready, the SF scope and their goals and the fact that Developers needed for hackathons like this should preferably come via Slabs. Besides there is the obvious argument that there is only an Anon counterparty to this proposal which makes voting on it harder for some.

Please dont be discouraged, there will be a way to fund this initiative :slight_smile:

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I would love to get involved in out reach to the spanish speaking community as well if you would like an extra helping hand

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Thanks for your interest ! We have updated the IberoAm program and we are now establishing partnerships with several Iberoamerican DAOs/projects. Always happy to receive an extra helping hand ! Please send me a DM in Twitter or Telegram, my handle is: @amrdavila

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Yes I agree , this is an opportunity for the Secret Foundation to strength their organization.

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The community pays the foundation tax to take ownership of event like these. Any event organizer will have to work closely with the foundation for merchandise, promotions, contract signing etc.

If the community pool pays this. We are basically double spending, we pay the foundation, and we pay you. From a community perspective, these expensive are already covered. As such, I suggest you pursue a SNAC.

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