MetaCartel, as always, has been about pushing power to the edges, furthering decentralization and doubling down on experiments.
Late in 2022, we decided to push even more.
Spawned from the loins of MetaCartel, ETHos Chili Pod was created in November 2022 as a low-friction incubator for IRL events. Our mission is to identify global events that unite groups of diverse humans, exploring the intersections of Web3 technologies and human reality.
In 2022, we granted $15,750 to 5 events across four continents. We saw the success of Notfellows in November 2022, and look forward to three events by the end of March and another in midsummer 2023:
- ETH India "notfellows" Hacker House (https://forum.metacartel.org/t/ethos-application-thread/2668/2?u=yalor)
- MetaFest - Croatia Web3 Festival (https://forum.metacartel.org/t/ethos-application-thread/2668/3?u=yalor)
- RaidGuild <> Nonce, Denver Meetup (https://forum.metacartel.org/t/ethos-application-thread/2668/6)
- Web3Bridge, **Web3 Lagos Event**, Lagos Nigeria (https://forum.metacartel.org/t/web3-lagos-conference/2718)
- Blockchain and Business, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state, Nigeria (https://forum.metacartel.org/t/blockchain-business-conference/2751)
Notfellows - our first completed event
We gave Notfellows, “a builders' home for the young and scrappy,” a $3k grant to gather together during ETHIndia on December 2-4, 2022.
Twenty people stayed together in a hacker house, where they had the opportunity to hack all night, talk about ideas, share meals, build friendship bonds, learn about Indian culture and even crash a wedding.
We really believe in the power of being in the same physical space and facilitating, like interpersonal interactions or relationships. For crypto, I think that's been very difficult because people are located all over the world. Rebecca Dai
Continuing to Improve
With only three months since ETHos began, we have much more learning ahead. However, initial reflections point us towards focusing in the next quarter on our mission and values and the need to encourage more collaboration amongst the group.
Mission and Values
1. A better-defined mission should stimulate more excitement to be involved in the program and help prospective grantees understand whether or not they fit in.
2. We need to develop a set of values and operating principles to make it easier to identify grantees that align with our mission and values. With a small team of stewards dispersed worldwide, with a better-shared understanding of our values, we will be more aligned and able to work faster together.
Web3 values are at the heart of MetaCartel itself. Leveraging these values, helping others to adopt them and spreading them further is ultimately a public good that we all benefit from.
More Feedback and Collaboration
The next iteration of the ETHos pod will include faster feedback cycles on how to run awesome, value-aligned, IRL events that have genuine impact. We also want to foster a spirit of collaboration amongst stewards and event organizers.
We have three planned initiatives to increase collective ownership and responsibility for the group’s success:
Connect: We will make connecting with others within the ETHos community easier, so we can all help each other and continually improve each other’s events.
Collaborate: We will make it easier for stewards - and the wider MC community - to collaborate further by mentoring and supporting events they are interested in.
Document and share: After a funded event has occurred, interviews with event organizers are scheduled to collect information about how ETHos could have helped more, what organizers wish they knew prior to the event and suggested specific improvements. This should build up a valuable open source repository on how best to run IRL events of all different kinds across the world.
Scaling ETHos
ETHos Chili Pod began by looking for events in locations that aren’t normally serviced/supported by the Ethereum community. We wanted to reach the individuals who haven’t had the opportunity to collaborate and interact IRL, with Ethereum and DAOs.
While this has seen success in reaching these under served areas and people, the ETHos Pod team will be reviewing each grant to understand what aspects of the events were most valuable and which didn’t seem to make a beneficial impact. After collecting and reviewing this information, the ETHos team will be better able to discern which grants deserve funding. For now, we need to keep learning and iterating.
The way the ETHos pod intends to scale is with discernment. We will continually improve our responsibility in supporting the most impactful grant teams around the ETHos mission and values.
Looking ahead, we are excited to witness new candidates spring forth with new ideas that bring Ethererum to new venues around the world.
The stewards of our current cohort come from all across the globe. Reach out to any of these folks to submit an application to ETHos for your event.
Or drop a post directly into this thread: https://forum.metacartel.org/t/ethos-application-thread/2668?u=yalor