Eth-Argentina is holding its event in Buenos Aires from the Aug. 16th-19th. Its hackathon is from the 16th-17th, and the main conference is from Aug. 18-19th. Argentina has been considered home to much of the Web3 Adoption in LatAm.
Now, Eth-Argentina expects 500 developers in attendance for its hackathon and 4,000 people for its conference. Given the importance of the event and the significant upgrade and releases of the API3 products, the API LatAm team encourages the API3 DAO to sponsor the āGoldā tier hackathon package to help build product awareness.
As an Argentine friend explained why the country has a strong use of Web3, āBecause Argentina historically suffers from crazy high currency inflation, since childhood, many of our parents taught us to store our value in something other than our national currency. That is why our generation was keen on using Bitcoin, Ethereum, and crypto early on.ā
API LatAm expects LatAmbased dApp unicorns will come from Argentina, and this is the ideal space to demonstrate support for the region. The cost breakdown is as follows:
Hackathon:
Event
Type of Sponsor
Tier
Dates
Cost
Eth-Argentina
Hackathon + Bounty
Gold
Aug 16-19
$19,000 USDC
Travel Expenses:
Number of team members
Transportation (Flight)
Hotel
Per Diem
Total
5
$6,000
$8,000
$1,280
$15,280 USDC
Merch:
Merch
$2,000
Total
Buffer 10%
Grand Total
$36,280
$3,628
$39,908
These fundsā accounting will be publicly available, and any fund leftover will be reimbursed to the API3 DAO.
Hello Rob, this could be a nicely timed activity for the LATAM team to deliver. As mentioned in 1:1 discussions, the ecosystem team can support any hackathon activity with workshops & bounty creation with a limitation of delivery in Spanish. We will also have a more sequential/refined āgetting startedā series for developers by this date.
My only thought is if the travel & hotel costs could reflect the expected invoice amount, given itās 4-5 weeks away. Although I know these things also need flexibility.
Thanks for the reply and continued backend support, Ben. The costs are āballparkā numbers. Right, itās difficult to calculate specific expenses amount given the close proximity to the event, which prices are subject to change with weeks and days. Weād be closer to August if this proposal were to pass (following the forum review period and DAO voting period).
With this close time constraint, I added a 10% budget overhead. In any event, weād post a link to the budgetās Google Excel sheet tracking all the expenses with receipts, and any leftovers will be returned to the DAO. We plan to follow the standard expenses set out by the DAO. The only thing that will differ is that the hotel expenses are calculated to be as near the event as possible for continued networking opportunities as opposed to staying at a much more affordable but distant accommodation with zero opportunities to network.
Assuming 4 nights of accommodation and 5 attendants, $8000 for hotels in Buenos Aires is completely excessive ($400/person/night).
The proposal also does not mention who is supposed to be going and what their roles will be in the context of the hackathon / conference.
I would also like to see more information about the expected deliverables / ROI for the event, in return for the very high $ ask for an individual event.
Hey Heikki, Thanks for the feedback. Weāve been working on a plan/outline to take to such events involving our previous cycle efforts. Will be happy to share it here once itās ready. Note taken re-hotels and details over attendees.
Hey, just wanted to throw my 2 cents at this.
So far the bounties for these hackathons were kept at a reasonable amount that justified getting some developers familiar with API3. The submissions so far weāre okay, nothing to spectacular, but hey people used us.
My personal opinion on this matter is to continue keeping this low-budget. The submissions arenāt going to be insane marketing material and our upcoming product releases also have no impact on the developer experience for testnet submissions. Testnets are going to remain single-source & self-funded, so the upcoming Phase 2 launch has no direct impact on the hackathon.
It more so has an impact on BD if anything else. Hence my suggestion would be to have people there to sell managed dAPIs, one person to support for the hackathon, and keep the amount reasonable. Again i can just speak of experience, that the submissions so far have been nothing special and there is absolutely no reason to hammer out 20k on a hackathon.
Those are great insights, thank you. Weāve been mulling over similar thought patterns: hackathons generally donāt produce many submissions. So thinking about it, itās really hard to justify this specific undertaking since thereās nothing to indicate that Eth-Argentina could provide different results.
My main motivation for wanting to sponsor the āgoldā tier hackathon for Eth-Argentina was to help build relationships with the tight-knit group of dApps and developers there. So, of course, the ROI is speculative in such a scenario. The eth-Argentina team has expressed willingness to support us in their community after the event, which results could be measured via engagements later.
I wouldnāt recommend the lower-tier hackathon sponsorship package for Argentina because it doesnāt offer much visibility to market API3 (No booth, no social channels, mainly an announcement that weāre offering a hackathon + bounty).
I think what can make sense to achieve DAO consensus, is sending 2-3 people to Eth-Argentina for BD purposes and keeping costs low. But I personally do believe as API3, we could be missing out on relationship building with the tight-knit developer community there.