The second stop of the European tour of WABA.network was Germany, one of the fastest growing startup hubs in the world.
The most salient moment of our stay in Germany was our participation at the Unchain Conference, which took place on May 31st and June 1st in Hamburg. There, we had the opportunity to present WABA.network to a very experienced audience. The project was very well received and we also got interesting feedback for the next steps in our roadmap. In addition to that, we had the chance to participate in two panels: one on “Women in Blockchain”, where Marina Solanas was able to share some views on the challenges that we all face in the process of enriching the ecosystem with the contributions that women can make, with Emily from ShapeShift, Denitza from Propy, Maria Jones from Cointelegraph and Ai Kordek. In the other panel “Crypto Latin America”, moderated by Aaron Koenig, organizer of the Unchain Conference, Sebastian Valdecantos shared the reasons why the region is leading so many social economy oriented Blockchain initiatives, together with with Stefan Krautwald from Fluzcoin, Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar from SystemaD and RSK Labs, and Rodolfo Andragnes from the NGO Bitcoin Argentina. We want to thank Aaron Koenig, Angelina Pfeifer, Oskar Giese and all the organization staff of the Unchain Conference for the priceless opportunity they gave to us.
A couple of days before going to Hamburg we attended another conference: Blockshow Europe, which took place in Berlin on May 28th and 29th. There, we had the chance to attend a wide range of panels and presentations on the state of the art of the technology and related issues, such as regulation, marketing and the growing adoption of the Blockchain by large corporations. We also had the opportunity to meet with Ameer Rosic, a serial entrepreneur, marketing expert, investor and co-founder of Blockgeeks, who shared with us really interesting thoughts on token economics and fundraising strategies. After the Blockshow conference, Eddy Travia from Coinsilium, a pioneer investor in the Blockchain industry, invited us to join the meet-up organized by Indorse, an Ethereum based decentralized professional network.
Another highlight of the German stop was the meet-up that we organized on May 30th at Impact Hub Berlin. We are happy we had the chance to present the project to such a diverse audience, which included the Edge team, a company that provides a security platform that allows developers to build zero-knowledge private and secure apps. Blockchain for Humanity was also represented by Alex Casas.
We are delighted to have met, both in Berlin and Hamburg, Alex Casas from Shelpin and Blockchain for Humanity. Our and Alex’s purpose are very aligned and we are happy to walk the same path. Many good things will come out from our mutual collaboration. For the time being, we are happy to have awarded a grant from the NON Central Conf organization to fly and stay in Madrid on the 21st, where we will present our project at a meetup among the social and crypto world, and to go to Leon on June 22nd-24th to present WABA.network in the mentioned conference.
Going back to some highlights at the Blockshow, one of the most important outcomes was the chance to speak at length with Assaf Ben Or from Greeneum, a very promising project that aims to promote the use of renewable energy. We also enjoyed a very interesting talk with Marc Smargon, from Colu. Colu is promoting the shop local initiative in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Liverpool and East London. It was really nourishing to learn from the experience that Colu went through. Their model shares many of the goals that we seek with our loyalty program monetary system (being Discoin our use case), with a different monetary design.
During our stay in Germany we had the privilege to talk with different people (entrepreneurs, journalists, scholars, etc.) that gave us very interesting feedback.
The first one was Ludwig Schuster, member of Monetta and the Sustainable Money Research Group. Ludwig shared different experiences of complementary currencies that are quite similar to the use cases that we have been developing in the last year. Also, he mentioned some details on his new project, Impact credit, and we learned about other very important initiatives that aim at promoting alternative approaches to economics and money, such as the Pluralist Economics Movement and Positive Money Europe.
Secondly, we attended a presentation given by Nathan Schneider, one of the promoters of the Platform Co-op. This platform intends to offer a wide variety of tools that help co-operatives and workers to benefit from the advantages that the social and the sharing economy provide. Nathan will soon be publishing a book that gathers many of the recent experiences that shed light on how a more cooperative way of doing business could be attained.
Regarding the contact with the media, we were interviewed and recorded by Tom McKerrow from “Beyond Bitcoin”, a documentary that describes the crypto-blockchain landscape and the impact that distributed ledger technologies could have on shaping future societies.
Also, Marco Bernegg interviewed us for Der Aktionär, a German newspaper with a strong coverage on the crypto world.
After these 10 days in Germany, WABA.network has become stronger. Not only because of the excellent feedback we received and the visibility our project got but, most importantly, because of the priceless connections and new friends that we added to our supportive community.
Our next stops will be in The Netherlands. Stay tuned for our news about a stronger WABA.network community!