We believe that it's possible to use Ethereum to improve the lives of billions of people. But we need more than just technology -- we need new ways of thinking about how humans interact with each other and with their environment. We need new stories to tell, new visions for a better future, and new ways of expressing our values in code.
The Next Billion Fellowship at the Ethereum Foundation is a search for stories. Stories that inspire us to focus on the important things, to find balance and fairness in the way we go about solving our problems, to push deeper into the mysteries of human cooperation.
During the course of 6 months, Fellows receive support to drive their own projects, and tell their own stories of Ethereum-enabled public goods destined to help billions coordinate and thrive.
Fellowship Program Cohort 3
Brian Limiardi builds for financial inclusion in Indonesia as co-founder of Copra. While access to personal loans is available through banks, there are many contexts in which the only way to get a loan for business is through informal lenders (read: loan sharks). For folks that choose to work and invoice in cryptocurrency, access to even simple legacy financial tools like personal or small business loans can be an obstacle. For his Fellowship, Brian will focus on researching the needs and realities of the growing demographic of workers and small businesses who use crypto as a primary means of invoicing and bookkeeping.
Devansh Mehta, co-founder of VoiceDeck, is interested in mapping out public good impact space. Impact methodologies and markets for environmental use cases are well-documented mechanisms, but sometimes ‘impact’ wanders into more subjective territory: Investigative journalism, for example, is undoubtedly a public good. How can the real work of journalists be documented and valued in a way that fits into the right funding mechanism? Devansh will work with citizen journalism newsrooms to explore methodologies of impact documentation using the hypercerts standard, with an aim to find a good mechanism of retroactive funding for positive social outcomes.
Masahiro (Masa) Fukuhara wants to spread the spirit of ONGAESHI, (恩返し, "To return a favor") in the world of education. ONGAESHI DAO is exploring mechanisms of retroactive solidarity payments in education and employment. For his Fellowship, Masa and other ONGAESHI DAO team members will learn from pilot programs in which contributors to the public good of education like funders and teachers are rewarded when businesses hire their students.
Mulenga Kapwepwe is co-founder of the Women’s History Museum of Zambia. There are many African artifacts in museums around the world, but rarely do those items have a tangible connection to the people and communities who created them. For her Fellowship, Mulenga is working with the Zambian web3 community to create a tokenized artifact registry, experimenting with museum revenue sharing for community documentation of art, customs, and crafting methodologies still practiced by the descendants of those items on display in museums around the world. Even if the items won’t return to their places of origin in the near future, it’s a small step toward bridging a gap of ownership that spans centuries.
Valeriia is a user experience specialist and an advisor to the Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation. The war in Ukraine has shown that ingenuity and tenacity in human coordination is essential. When understanding the potential of protocols like Ethereum to be useful in such a time, pragmatism is wise. During her Fellowship, Ria will research the real drivers and blockers of adoption of cryptocurrencies and other decentralized applications for ordinary users to map emergent use cases and behaviors in Ukraine.
Eligibility of Projects and Candidates
A Fellow is a leader committed to their own project that helps Ethereum become a tool of and for the next billion. Their project could be a decentralized app, a piece of research, an organizational initiative, or something else entirely. There are no strict requirements for Next Billion Fellowship projects, save one: earnesty.
Whatever the project, whomever the Fellow, the program seeks to enable the flourishing of populations, communities, or individuals under-represented in the Ethereum ecosystem today. The Fellowship is neither the beginning nor the end of a Fellow's journey, but it may provide the support needed to encourage more ambitious, long-term goals and mindset.
Fellows are changemakers, visionaries, pragmatists, and creatives working on ambitious projects that seek to improve the lives of billions.
Next Billion Fellows should be on a personal quest, and should be able to represent their project's context in public.
Subscribe to receive updatesOur Blog
The Human Stories of Ethereum - Meet the Next Billion Fellows Cohort 3
August 7, 2023
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...
Scouting for the Future: Technology and the Scouting Movement
May 1, 2023
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...
Next Billion Fellowship Cohort 3 - Call for applications
March 16, 2023
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...
The potential to empower disenfranchised communities in Latin America using Ethereum
February 6, 2023
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...
Announcing the EF Fellowship Program, Cohort #2
October 10, 2022
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...
Fellowship Program: Cohort #2 Applications Open & Cohort #1 Roundup
June 21, 2022
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...
Spotlight on LatAm: Identity solutions for Govtech
June 7, 2022
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...
Spotlight on Kenya: Microinsurance for Every Farmer
December 7, 2021
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...
Ethereum for the Next Billion: Announcing the EF Fellowship Program
May 7, 2021
The progress being made in the Ethereum ecosystem lately is really inspiring. Whether you’re excited by the adoption of proof of stake (and a faster, more secure, greener Ethereum), the coming Merge and other big upgrades, or by some of the many applications and solutions that have the power to...
We want to hear from you!
Stay tuned and get updates on the Next Billion Fellowship Program and related news!
Sign me up.