Building a Web3 culture in Ukraine: Rostyslav Bortman's mission

smart contract. In 2016, a university professor came to me and offered me a topic for my thesis, such as “Smart Contracts on Ethereum.” I agreed. Since then, I have been unable to stay away from Solidity and Ethereum. I was completely fascinated by the concept of decentralization and the absence of intermediaries.

First, there are many ways to contribute. Either to build a deep product with a great foundation that goes mainstream and has a direct impact on Web3 development, or to be a developer on the team building the future of Web3. To contribute to the open source community.

Of course, some of the cool teams at Web3 are often Ukrainian developers who build cool stuff with their teams, and that's pretty cool. But we don't see large numbers of Ukrainians developing products that go mainstream. This still needs to be worked on.

I think the Web3 community in Ukraine is just starting to develop. As the organizer of Ukraine's largest hackathon, I can say that we still have a lot of work to do when it comes to startup culture. People are focused on making money, don't want to take risks, and don't express a desire to build something themselves because outsourcing provides stability.

My team and I are going to change that. The goal is to build a hackathon culture in the country. Because we believe this is one of the most effective ways to show developers how great it is to build their own products. It will take time for people's mindset to change and for Ukrainians to start influencing global blockchain development with their products.

Of course you can. The Web3 market is global and it doesn't matter what country it was built in. First, the UX, which is the use case for the product, is important. Anyone who makes cool products that people need can compete in this market.

“Build what people need. Build radically simple experiences” – Jesse Pollack.

Global ledger. I also like Trustee Plus. It's simple, convenient, and solves consumer payment problems. Hackenproof.

It is also important to note that the concept of success is different for many people. Therefore, I will only talk about my personal favorites here.

We have been planning meetups since 2021, and have already held about 25 types of events. We have cooperated with BNB Chain, Scroll, Diia education and many other companies. All events can be found here – kyivethereum.com.

Recently, we held ETHKyiv. This was joined by Vitalik (Buterin) and three others from the Ethereum Foundation (and many other guests from various great Web3 protocols). We were able to secure major sponsors such as EtherFi, Scroll, Intmax, Zero1, Circles, and The Graph Builders Dao. Additionally, 123 hackers visited the location offline and participated in the hackathon.

We raised $8000 for an FPV drone for the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). And all this despite the war.

I believe in the right strategy to develop communities around the world. Because only local leaders, not global foundations, can have the greatest impact on the people of a particular country.

The role and influence rests with the community, not me. There is little I can do alone, but we are doing our best to create favorable conditions for the development of the Ukrainian Ethereum community, we are gathering outstanding founders, visionaries and leaders .

Let's start with the sad part. I am the sole organizer of ETHKyiv 2024 (along with my Kiev Ethereum team, of course). Sergiy Sevidov was formally a co-organizer, but in practice he did not fulfill his responsibilities and did not take any part in the organization of the event. Therefore, calling him one of the organizers is unfair to the teams involved in that organization.

Unfortunately, it turns out he controls the ethkyiv.org domain and social media. Our team created all publications related to the ETHKyiv hackathon. He refuses to part with his social media and domain (although he has nothing to do with Ethereum in Ukraine and does nothing in the development of Ethereum, his only goal is to name ETHKyiv) ). Because he wants to hold some events of his own. There you can claim ETHKyiv 2024 as your own and sell it to your sponsors and partners. My team and I have already turned this page and created new social media.

Well, to answer your question:

I believe that hackathons will have a direct impact on the development of Ethereum in Ukraine, since I consider developers to be the main assets of the ecosystem. Therefore, our main mission is to onboard Ukrainian developers to Ethereum. I can't answer about the conference as it's primarily focused on builders.

It was incredibly difficult, but this is the story of an hour. There were many issues such as coordinating with contractors, coordinating all the details on the Taikai network and elsewhere, communication, management, involvement of sponsors, hackers, judges and speakers, and media publication. This story deserves a separate publication.

Base has had a very positive impact on Web3. Because Base is developing a culture of builders around it and spreading the message that architecture is cool. They are focused on developing consumer apps, which is the right thing to do in my opinion. I think Base is where you'll see a lot of the great innovation in Web3.

I'm ETH Maxi so it's hard to think about it. There are so many new and interesting things happening on Ethereum every day that we don't have enough time to follow other ecosystems.

However, while I think other blockchains will likely gain some market share, Ethereum will remain the undisputed leader. For me, the principles of Ethereum are closer to home. That's why I'm here, and most of the people in the community are here too. I think that's what makes Ethereum the best.

Consumer payments are currently one of the biggest challenges that has become a priority in the industry, including for example at Base (which we wrote about here). I don't think DeFi will replace centralized banking in the next few years, but it will gradually become more convenient and popular, and the number of users will increase, making it possible for some services to become strategic in the future. I think it will be available. A hybrid system that allows traditional centralized banking to be completely abandoned if necessary.

I don't think there will be a Solana ETF in the near future. There are objective reasons for this.

First, the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission – author's note) considers Solana to be a security. Second, the fund owns 12% of SOL (or more, I don't know the exact number, but this is a significant disadvantage). Thirdly, when it comes to the classic path to ETFs (as is the case with BTC and ETH), Solana still needs 2-3 years to go all the way.

Regarding other assets, I think the cryptocurrency market needs to become more mature first. Because all these meme coins and meaningless assets and billions of dollars capitalized look very strange.

NFTs aren't going anywhere, but they're not the kind of NFTs everyone has heard of in 2021. NFTs are the token standard that will continue to be actively used in RWA (Real World Assets) and are already actively used. They tokenize everything they can with NFTs. From real estate to items for virtual worlds and games. We don't know what will happen to NFT monkeys.

Account abstraction, SocialFi, decentralized messengers, consumer apps (including payment apps), cross-chain interoperability, GameFi.

I think that's very important. As far as I know, the situation in Ukraine is not very good.

I hope that you will speed up your efforts and work with more enthusiasm. If anyone wants to run a Solidity course, don't forget that we are always here to help. Let's talk.

I like the example of Argentina. Argentina has integrated Ethereum and Solidity into the school curriculum in Buenos Aires. I think we should move in this direction. I've already emailed some friends about this topic.

Build what people need. Build a completely simple experience. Just create an application that people will use, and that's it. They (the masses – author's note) will come to you. If you look at what is happening in the world now, one day freedom of speech will become a very important aspect. Therefore, I think the demand for decentralization, security, and resistance to censorship will increase.

This is a very difficult question. In the future, many applications will become mainstream and users will not even notice that they are Web3-based. I think during this time the major UX issues will be solved and we will be able to find killer use cases in the industry. I think we'll see similar mass adoption within the next 10 years.

I'm passionate about principles like decentralization, censorship resistance, and self-custody, and I like removing trust from places where it shouldn't remain. I prefer to eliminate the middleman and automate the terms of smart contracts. This is the future and I believe we are moving in the right direction across the board. I love and appreciate being involved in this.

People are also motivated. This concentration of incredibly smart and open-minded people is so inspiring.