Next Billion

As we look at our world, it seems that individual humans are increasingly on the edges and in the margins of the big stories that play out on our scrolling screens. The narratives that captivate and resonate with ordinary folks seem to exist at a scale beyond the reach of any one of us -- Those big stories about economies, countries, and companies weave a narrative that can seem dire at times, or too big for an individual human to change in a meaningful way. But this is not the true narrative of the world, nor is it the right way to understand our own potential as humans. Many who read this blog are inclined to believe that the Ethereum protocol will play a

Hello everyone! My name is Mihajlo, and over the past six months as part of my Next Billion Fellowship, I’ve been working to bring the benefits of Web3 to the World Scouting Movement. Growing up in Serbia in the '90s, I experienced firsthand the devastating effects that wars and sanctions can have on young people. There weren’t a lot of opportunities to find good role models or supportive peers. In that sort of environment, it’s easy for youth to become caught up in gangs or criminal activity. I would say it’s because of technology and the scouting movement that I was able to avoid turning down the wrong path. In 1996, I searched for "Izviđači" (Serbian for ‘scout’) on Yahoo, and stumbled upon one of the first

Ethereum is a living entity, distributed across time and space, accessible through our screens and communication devices. What gives it life are the myriad human relationships that have become intertwined with the roots, branches, and leaves of the Ethereum state tree. This single tree encodes immense value, digital property, and dapp utility -- not an insignificant slice of human activity. But the humans who currently give Ethereum life do not represent all humans -- many gaps across cultures, nationalities, and class must be bridged. The use cases and novel solutions that have so far been developed and advertised and touted by web3 builders do not yet represent the true potential of Ethereum to enable human flourishing -- **we have not yet scratched the surface of possibility

The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Marcus AM. Hola 👋, my name is Marcus and I'm a researcher and builder from Guatemala, and an EF Fellow. An optimist at heart, I’m driven by leveraging social, cultural and technological innovation to build better societies - a conviction I’ve held from a young age.

Things are looking up for Ethereum. Now that The Merge is complete, a huge weight (measured in tonnes of CO2) has been lifted from the Ethereum community's collective conscience. And the world-at-large is watching to see what this community does next. Right now the ecosystem has a unique opportunity to show the skeptics what Ethereum can do -- how a foundational layer of trust on the open internet can be used to tackle the big coordination problems that we have yet to solve. The road to Serenity is long, and Ethereum's impact is still small on the scale of human institutions, societies, or economies. In recent years we have collectively grown quite fond of the term public good, but we must remember that "public" means _all 8-billion

Ethereum is a living thing. Yes, at its core there is a virtual machine (the EVM) that runs and faithfully calculates a new state from block to block, but the magic of Ethereum is that one little state machine can be shared by millions of people who might not have anything in common besides an internet connection and their own secret key. The developers, designers, artists, farmers, bankers, students, politicians, entertainers and even lawyers who use and depend on Ethereum create a living ecosystem coordinating around a core protocol, evolving and re-wiring relationships of trust, hopefully in the interest of public good. Currently, the Ethereum expanded universe™ comprises millions of people, but there are billions of us here on earth, and it’s our ambitious vision for

The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Chuy Cepeda. Our identities hold immense power. In a time when people take great pride in using multiple pseudonyms or personas, we often think about how to identify ourselves. I identify as a native of Monterrey, Mexico, a Latin-American, a son, brother, father, husband, engineer, Ph.D., entrepreneur, dog lover, hitchhiker, and a believer that democracies are suffering. Looking back at a time when I started meeting people from different countries and gaining a better understanding of their access to public services, I recall becoming aware of how far away this reality was for Mexicans. I realized that as my home city grew, many decisions made by the government were unplanned or colluded. I learned that my home country

In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 3% of 48 million smallholder farmers are insured. Owning 1 acre of land and earning approximately $1.40 per person per day characterize a smallholder farmer. Smallholder farmers often own a mixture of cash crops and subsistence or non-commercial farming; and, they lack the financial and technological resources of large-scale industrial farms. As extreme weather events become ever more frequent due to climate change, one flood or drought can push such farmers into the spiraling cycle of poverty without protection by means of crop insurance. The following is an update from Ethereum Foundation Fellow Benson Njuguna. Benson is on a mission to elevate humanity from an economic standpoint through innovative ideas driven by technology. He is a Business Transformation Specialist at ACRE Africa, a