My experience with Blockchain On Tour Latin America 2018: Barranquilla Edition

In this article I share my experience with BoTLatAm Barranquilla 2018 and I gave a short interview with Mateo Daza, one of the organizers.

The Blockchain On Latin America Tour last week the team organized a series of conferences across the continentwith the intention of empowering people by teaching them how to use and exploit blockchain-based products. The tour ended this Sunday after a very busy week that saw the team travel over 11,000 km from Sao Paulo to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. I was lucky enough to take part in the penultimate event in Barranquilla, Colombia.

The main objective of BOTLatAm was not to educate people about the technical aspects of the blockchain but rather than to teach participants how to effectively use ready-made blockchain products just as people use internet services without understanding the underlying technology. The organizers dubbed him the "Genesis Tour" and they told me they hope to continue the tour in several countries, including Asia and the rest of Latin America starting next summer.

The bitrates made my participation in the Barranquilla headquarters possible, where I had the pleasure to hear the BoTLatAm team talk about their ideas and projects, and to imagine a future in which blockchain can be used as a tool to help the stragglers, the uninsured and the forgotten peoples of third world countries have access to benefits that are standard for people elsewhere.

Dether

Dether is a platform that gives users the ability to access a peer-to-peer ecosystem of cryptographic buyers, cryptographic vendors and physical stores. Dether aims to create a completely decentralized bridge between fiat and cryptocurrencies that can help people become familiar with Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies without knowing anything about them.

Abdel Hamid Benyahia, co-founder of the project, presented Dether to Barranquilla, where he presented the DApp to the attendants and hosted one of the first peer-to-fiat exchanges on the continent with Dether.

I believe that products like Dether can really help all those who can not access ATMs or traditional banking solutions to solve any potential problems of cash out or cash out, as mobile phone technology is reaching people in remote settings at a faster pace fast compared to banks that are expanding their networks.

APPICS

APPICS is a decentralized, award-based social network that allows content creators, curators and viewers to get a share of the profits simply by liking, sharing and uploading content to the platform.

The APPICS team was the largest attendance at BOTLatAm 2018 and they have actively developed a network of Latin American users through the tour.

Uma Hagenguth, co-founder and COO of APPICS, gave a powerful speech in which she explained to the public how traditional social networks monetize the content and activities that people provide to them by holding back all the profits generated by their activities. Ms. Hagenguth also explained how ordinary people can earn profits using and generating quality content using the platform. This product is still under development but interested users can sign up to get early access when the Appics team starts publishing the first versions of the app.

donates

Giveth, one of the most interesting projects on the tour was presented remotely by its founder Griff Green from Brazil, as he could not leave the country after the BOTLatAm event in São Paulo due to an alarm of yellow fever that prevented traveling out of the country.

The main objective of Giveth is to provide a free open source platform built on Ethereum for the management of crowdfunding and charity initiatives, which allows the funds more easily to get where they are needed most.

I personally believe that products like Giveth could become very popular in Latin America once people realize they can have more control over donations they make without the participation of centralized third parties who commonly take a significant cut just to act as intermediaries between donors and recipients.

swarm.city

Swarm.city is an application that allows anyone to create their own business very easily. People can organize markets to buy and sell goods in a peer-to-peer fashion, which means that only people who want to make a deal have the power to decide how to make it.

swarm.city could break consolidated P2P applications like Uber because it provides the same tools while cutting off the intermediary as well that driver and passenger can do business directly.

The project was presented by Bernd Lapp, who leads Business Hive at swarm.city and was one of the main organizers of the BOTLatAm tour. Mr. Lapp distributed the swarm.city (SWT) tokens to everyone present who used to explain how people could post a request for a service on the platform and pay to solve it.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Lapp of BOTLatAm, swarm.city and his other projects in an interview published prior to the start of the BOTLatAm tour.

Etherisc

Etherisc is one of the projects on the tour that could have the greatest impact on the unpaired and uninsured populations of Latin America as the insurance industry is dominated by large companies that make no significant effort to bring affordable insurance solutions. to the poorest communities.

Etherisc is a platform for decentralized insurance applications that aims to use Blockchain technology to facilitate the sale and purchase of insurance products while reducing operating costs and at the same time offering greater transparency.

This initiative was presented to BOTLatAm by Michiel Berende, who works as an inclusive insurance Lead at Etherisc. Berende has shown examples of how farmers can exploit IoT technologies to access insurance products if their agricultural activities face a disaster caused by drought or disease. Products like Etherisc could literally save the lives of thousands of people who are at risk of losing everything, especially in the face of increased uncertainty in the climate.

State

Status is a mobile app that allows the device to function as a light node on the Ethereum network. The status allows users to chat, access DApp and store and transfer the value using the in-app wallet.

The project was presented by Eduardo Garza, who works as Community Manager for the Latin American division of Status.im. Garza explained to the participants how to access and use the app on Android devices.

Although it is still under development, Status aims to create a community of people who will work together to build the new Web 3.0 through a project incubator, a development framework to allow users to create their own Dapp, an educational platform for development of DApp and a light client implementation for Ethereum 2.0 designed to operate on systems with limited resources.

We will take a closer look at Status and Etherisc in the upcoming interviews with Eduardo Garza and Michiel Berende, which will be published in the coming days.

Mateo Daza: bring BoTLatAm to Barranquilla

The BOTLatAm tour started out as an initiative by Mr. Lapp and the participating companies spread across Europe, but it was a group of Latin American residents who responded to Mr. Lapp's call on Twitter and prepared everything that was needed to local level to achieve the event.

In the case of Barranquilla, the responsibility was taken by Mateo Daza and Jose Bell, both computer and systems engineers of the Universidad del Norte of Barranquilla, who are passionate about blockchain and entrepreneurs partner of their own startup called Quilla Labs.

I had a word with Mateo Daza after the closing speech of the event, and he kindly agreed to answer some questions I had about his involvement in bringing BOTLatAm to Barranquilla.

Ricardo Carrasco: what motivated you to help bring BoTLatAm to Barranquilla?

Mateo Daza: My partner José Bell and I had always been interested in making Barranquilla an attractive place for blockchain initiatives, we have always been passionate about it since we discovered the blockchain and considered the philosophy of our life. We believe that society will move towards a future where blockchain will be essential and we want to be involved.

RC: How did you get to know BoTLatAm and how did you connect to the BoTLatAm team?

MD: The funny thing is that José just replied to a tweet from Bernd Lapp in which he announced that he would bring these products to Latin America. Bernd has answered us again and here we are.

RC: Can you tell us about your Quilla Labs project?

MD: Quilla Labs wants to be the blockchain embassy of Barranquilla. We use the word "embassy" because we associate it with being a pioneer in bringing blockchain here, and we want to be the first to offer advice and help our society discover the technology that it needs so much, but people do not know it they still need. We want to achieve this through education and entrepreneurship linked to the blockchain.

RC: C & # 39; is anything else you would like to comment on BoTLatAm or what do you do?

MD: Well, we would have really appreciated that it would have been easier for us to take the tour to Venezuela, I discussed it with Bernd, but the difficult situation did not allow us to do it. I also loved the fact that the BoTLatAm team took the time to take their tour here, despite the difficulties of traveling to the Crypto Valley.

The potential blockchain in Latin America

The development and use of blockchain technology is currently geographically focused within the economic powers of the world in Asia, Europe and North America. Initiatives like BOTLatAm are very necessary in underdeveloped countries where people are strongly affected by the lack of access to tools that allow them to exercise greater control over their personal and financial lives.

This pioneering initiative has planted a seed that could kick off the blockchain movement on the continent in the coming years, products like those presented during BOTLatAm have the potential to allow Latin American people to use tools that allow them to move better in the new web-based economy . Using these tools, participants now know how to earn and spend cryptocurrencies, as well as create and obtain financing and insurance for their activities. The BOTLatAm team expressed their intention to return to the rest of the Latin American countries they could not visit during this genesis tour, and Mr. Lapp announced that the tour could soon be in Asia.

I happened to be the only Venezuelan resident present at the conference, where I was surprised by a warm welcome from everyone. Speaking with company representatives I discovered very quickly that they are passionate and relaxed people who really want to help create a better world through their work. I would personally like to thank Bernd Lapp of swarm.city, Abdelhamid Benyahia of Dether, Eduardo Garza of Status.im, Michiel Berende of Etherisc, Uma Hagenguth of Appics, Griff Green of Giveth, Mateo Daza and José Bell of Quilla Labs, Madame Renée Edle von Lapp and all those who made this tour possible for having invested their time and energy in this noble initiative that was offered free to anyone who wanted to participate. In addition, she screams to Marek Osiecimski, a Polish filmmaker who travels with the BoTLatAm team while producing DECENT, a documentary on blockchain technology and its potential to change the world.