Next Billion

The following is an update from Next Billion Fellow Mulenga Kapwepwe and her initiative "Summitshare". For more about the Next Billion Fellowship Program and to apply, please visit https://nxbn.ethereum.foundation/. Mulenga Kapwepwe, founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia posed a question in 2022 to a small group of younger tech enthusiasts in Zambia: Can something called “blockchain technology” offer any new usefulness for the preservation of history? She had started a new initiative aimed at digital humanities, and engaging with young people excited by technology who might want to apply their talents to the world of arts, culture, and history. The group of developers, designers, and artists she was working with shared their enthusiasm for “web3”, and together they discussed some of the properties

We’re excited to announce that applications for the Next Billion Fellowship Program are now open!

As a global public resource, technology must remain open, accessible, and dedicated to promoting the greater good. The Next Billion Fellowship Program is a testament to this vision, seeking to capture stories of communities whose lives are changing for the better. Today, we are proud to introduce seven individuals with remarkable stories to share. Their narratives offer a glimpse into their diverse contexts and possible futures — ones we cannot fully foresee but where humanity is uplifted. By drawing inspiration from the Next Billion Fellows’ stories, we hope to imagine a future where this open protocol of human coordination serves as a public good for billions of people.

Ethereum is growing, and diversity of human participation creates resilience throughout the ecosystem. The Devconnect Scholars Program is one small effort that aims to create resilience through community diversity. Better representation across human geography and demographics leads to diverse experiences and new perspectives that help the Ethereum protocol serve the coordination needs of all humans, not just a lucky few. Not only does better representation - leading to better geographical distribution of Ethereum nodes for example - help the security of the network, but we believe it is crucial in enriching our community and in making Ethereum stories tangible for more people. The Scholars Program brought to Devconnect Istanbul 22 builders from communities that are currently underrepresented in Ethereum. This post highlights just a few of

Decades from now, there will be many stories to tell about the early days of Ethereum. We will remenisce about how a peculiar and powerful technology began to change the landscape of trust on the internet. Some will remember being skeptical, while others may claim to have known all along that it would change the world. Those future stories are out of reach for us – obscured as all things are by the challenges and uncertainties of the present moment. But there are other stories out there, right now, that we need to listen to. Stories of people; of their learning, growth, hope, and experience. The Next Billion Fellowship at the Ethereum Foundation is a search for individuals with stories to tell us about today, and

Crisis is a cruel teacher. It can draw us together in our shared fragility, but paradoxically it can also distance us from our shared humanity. In times of great crisis, the institutions and structures of society that are supposed to protect and support us may become twisted, corrupted, or rendered impotent – and sometimes, the very things that make us humans can play a role in our collective dehumanization. In Syria, my political activism became the grounds for denying me the most basic forms of identification. I was detained and tortured as a means of political repression. My academic pursuits forcibly halted, and any semblance of proof of my existence was stripped away. And I, along with millions of others like me, had to

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