- Published on
Announcing our ETHBerlin04 experiment + Department of Decentralization's Financial Status Report
- Authors
- Name
- Franzi
- @_franzihei
- Name
- Helena Flack
- @helsfoftroy
- Name
- María Paula Fernandez
As we understand that the crypto space has expanded and some people might not be familiar with our history, let's start from the beginning.
Then the pandemic hit the world, just when we were about to start fundraising for DREI, 2020's ETHBerlin, and like everybody else, we had to take a backseat. However, we were full of ideas and ready to adapt, so at the end of 2020 we.... hosted a talk show. An online conference with a humorous undertone, designed to continue our mission of giving a platform to crypto technologists and creatives, and to lift everyones spirits up.
And before we could even realize... it's 2024 and the DoD is now on its sixth year of operations, it has a strong brand, and the receipts to prove that even if our reputation might precede us, there's constant action and the desire to continue experimenting and improving.
The best thing about this, is that people know it. And we're humbled and grateful every day for it. Thanks to the recognition of the crypto community, we have received several rounds of Optimism's Retroactive PGF (Public Goods Funding) grants. Currently, our treasury sits at EUR 408,324.93. Part of that money is obviously, as for all other grantees, vesting over three months. This money will be allocated towards educational initiatives, grants, and mission-aligned experiments. A full report will be issued at the end of the calendar year.
Now we are in February 2024, three months before ETHBerlin04, and we have all the funding we need for it. So... what do we do with all the companies that ARE already part of our movement and want to support us? We certainly can't take their money this year. Taking more money than we can spend (and we can only spend it our mission - educating about decentralized technologies) could cause us to lose our non-profit ("gemeinnützig") status. At the same time, we do not want to lose our supporters, all those projects that helped us bootstrap so many hackathons and events, that kept us going throughout all these years.
This year's ETHBerlin... well, it's on us, and it's sponsorless. But that does not mean that we don't want our supporters to join us. It means that we will relieve them from spending in brand placement and sponsorship fees, but they get to invest in creating experiences that will enrich the hackathon. In the spirit of ETHBerlin, and our values of openness and collaboration, we would love our community to support us to make the hackathon more quirky, colorful, exciting and educational.
We would like to invite our community to co-create and contribute unique experiences to our program. In the past we've had a cinebar, escape room, treasure hunt, ice cream trucks, art and sound installations, wellness room and more! We would love to hear your proposals, please go as crazy as you like. In order to guide you (we have some rules that have been decided by our community to preserve our identity) - you can read our Experiences primer here.
Experiences can be hosted by any community, initiative, interest group, collective, or project and should be inclusive to all our attendees. Anyone that wants to host an experience should reach out to the team via experiences@ethberlin.org and we are happy to share more info on what being an experience host could entail.
Now let's have some fun :)
Afri, Franzi, Helena, Raul, Rose, Lea, MP, Kaan, Martin, Ligi, Konrad, Kirill, Jacob