UTU at ETHSafari

Hello UTU Trust Guardians!

Have you been wondering what we’ve been up to? Wonder no more, as we are going to regale you with all the details. We have been very busy building the Africa web3 space through ETHSafari and associated efforts that will yield many strategic partnerships and opportunities for UTU.

Let’s dive in.

ETHSafari in Nairobi

So what is ETHSafari? In case you have been living under a rock, ETHSafari is the latest, greatest ETH event that went down last week in Kenya. We were proud partners and contributors to the entire event. The goal was to bring together the builders and enthusiasts in the ethereum ecosystem to learn, hack, discuss, and celebrate the ecosystem, our decentralized future, the use cases that are transforming Africa, and the people that are building them in the continent.

ETHSafari kicked off virtually at the beginning of September with a hackathon powered by Encode Club that saw more than 200 hackers participate. 

The IRL event kicked off officially on 18th in Nairobi, Kenya with a bus tour of the 6 community spaces transformed by 23 murals and clean up efforts as part of artSTORM.nft, a sister project of ETHSafari that is transforming brown spaces around Kenya into green, art spaces, and raising money for them via NFT Sales on Foundation. 

The theme for this year was: African Streets of the Future.

Next was a two-day bootcamp that trained nearly 100 web3 devs! 

One of the projects that gained momentum during ETHSafari is the Africa DeFi Alliance (ADA). With a well-attended first annual meeting held on Tuesday 20th, the founding members who include UTU, Symplifi, BitLipa, and Ape Unit went over ADA achievements and roadmap to new members who were excited about the prospects of unlocking capital for MSMEs in Africa with DeFi.

On the night of Wednesday 21st, we sponsored the Crypto Baraza, a community social industry event for the founders, business leaders, key opinion leaders and all round creators in blockchain. This month’s theme focused on creators and our CTO, Bastian Blankenburg, was on the ground to present UTU infrastructure and how it can benefit web3 creators and the crypto community in their quest for digital trust. We’re always thrilled to participate in the web3 and art conversation as we believe this is the future in the continent. 

The Journey and Conference 

Safari means journey in Swahili. That is why a big part of the experience was the journey across the Kenyan savannah on the blocktrain. On Thursday, ETHSafari attendees travelled from Nairobi to the coastal town of Kilifi to the final venue: Beneath the Baobabs. 

And finally the main conference and festival in Kilifi, Kenya, which gathered 350+ people!

ETHSafari turned out to be one of the most epic events in web3 in the continent. We were able to bring together a diverse group of experts and enthusiasts from all over the world to share their experiences and what they are building in the web3 space. 

We call it CEO in Headlights. Though he did take a break to speak on one panel.  

He was at the forefront of making things happen and dropping the digital trust gospel every chance he got throughout the event. One of the highlights for UTU was when Jason sat on an illuminating panel stationed at the beautiful valley stage to talk about tokenisation and how it is driving community ownership.

You can see how such a topic easily turned into a trust dialogue where 100% of the audience’s questions and comments were all about how we can build digital trust even in Africa, where models of trust are quite different from the West.

The connections and partnerships that we’re already building from this will see us with a loaded coming months of opportunities and collaborations.

Our CTO Bastian also gave a workshop on dApp Architecture and joined other experts in “The Evolution of the Blockchain Stack – zkEVMs, Modular Blockchains, Oracles, Storage” panel. 

Stay tuned for updates!

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