Summary of Proposal
- How can we achieve true decentralization in Public Goods? As the cost of building software goes to zero, how can community ownership realize Ethereum’s promise of decentralized applications in India and globally? We’ll brainstorm, design and launch decentralized versions of the most widely used centralized applications: open source and community owned.
Motivation and Rationale
- How would this Community Hub enhance the attendee experience?
Attendees get to be part of an interactive, powerful vehicle of change. By decentralising the centralized world they use everyday, and by playing a critical role in the resurgence of truly decentralised applications on Ethereum.
- How would it complement Devcon 8 India? In what ways does it add a unique piece to the overall experience?
Fully aligned with Devcon’s CROPS principles, this hub gives attendees true belonging and community in an often overwhelming conference experience. They get to be part of collaborative teams working together on the four days, to solve some of the biggest problems they recognize with the centralized world they live in. At the same time, they get to learn immensely and practically about Ethereum’s most powerful promise of decentralized applications and shape the resurgence of community owned tokens and organizations.
- Why is this topic significant, and why is a Community Hub the best format to address it instead of a one-time talk or workshop?
The only successful application of decentralization, money, has clearly taken centre stage in crypto, leaving behind a whole world of decentralized applications. If it worked for money, why can’t it work for other ideas? Should Dapps fail solely due to founder greed? India is the best geography to prove that truly decentralized apps can work at scale (Namma Yatri is a prime example, ONDC, UPI is another government led push). It’s low hanging fruit to integrate Ethereum into these already existing decentralized rails.
This could be done as a one off workshop, but then we’d lose out on the close bonds and community formed by participating teams during the conference, the longevity and clarity that comes with giving teams more space.
We also lose out on the opportunity to open up this vision to broader attendees, and for them to share the sparks that could lead to something massive.
- Devcon is the global Ethereum gathering for builders of a free, open, private, and verifiable future. How would this Devcon Community Hub support builders and their journey?
This community hub is the perfect home for builders, who although empowered with AI tools that help them build applications never imagined before, struggle with network cold start problems for what they build.
This hub will give them the opportunity to collectively build and own their most powerful ideas together with Ethereum’s best and brightest.
It also helps them figure out sustainable incentives for their open source work, and as mentioned above gives them a lovely team to maximize their Devcon experience.
- Have you organized a Community Hub at a past Devcon edition? What have you learned? What would you carry forward or change?
Not at Devcon, but I’ve actively participated at the public goods hub at Devconnect, MCd for Funding the Commons conferences and organised multiple Techstars Startup Weekends across Asia.
I’ve learned that the most fruitful discussions are those that encourage all participants to share, and the moderators play a light but firm guiding role.
One thing I noticed was many valuable discussions and conclusions were lost after the conference, so I think with proper consent we will document all conversations and work and ensure that the impact carries on post Devcon.
Implementation
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In addition to what Devcon can provide, do you have any special production requirements for your space? What other equipment do you plan to source for your Community Hub?
The provided equipment from the Devcon team should suffice most of our needs, in addition we would like to set up a Decentralized World Board/Dapp Ideas Board where people can pin their ideas for decentralized applications on the board, we can potentially make use of the cork board for this.
We’ll presource dApp ideas from our partner communities and have teams formed before Devcon, so the board doesn’t start empty, but we’ll keep options for walk-in team formation and ideation too.
Programming
- Please provide a list of possible speakers and topics.
Sessions and programs will be spread across four complimentary verticals, potential speakers:
AI Tooling Masterclasses: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, SarvamAI
Ishaan Makker - OpenAI Ankur Gautam - OpenAI Irina Ghose - Anthropic Rishikesh - Anthropic Ashuthosh - Google Sumedha - Google Hitesh - Google Dhruv - Sarvam Ashok - Sarvam
Local Decentralization Infra and Rails: ONDC, Namma Yatri, NPCI (UPI), mAadhar
Sujith Nairk - Beckn Magizhan - Namma Yatri Himanshu Jain - ONDC Omiee Rastogi - ONDC Balamurugan Veeraswamy - NPCI Sarang Bhoyar - NPCI
Web3 and Token Design Brainstorms and Sessions:
Ashish Homkar - Blockphrase Shounak Shetty - Outlier Joel John - Decentralised Angela Kreitenweis - NEAR Jeff Emmett - Blockscience
Public Goods Funding Mechanisms: Funding the Commons, Artizen, Gitcoin, Octant
David Casey - FtC René Pinnell - Artizen Kevin Owocki - Gitcoin Artem - Octant
- Please provide a sample program for the Community Hub’s operating hours. For this exercise, consider from 9 am to 6 pm.
Tentative schedule, subject to change.
| Time | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 - 9.30 AM | Meet pre-formed teams, icebreaking, rolling team formation with light music and networking | Teams get checked in, welcome new members and help them join existing teams and brief about the agenda | Join exisiting teams + rolling team formation, Decentralization Briefs to attendees | Team Checkins |
| 9.30 - 10 AM | Welcome to the dHub: agenda and expectations | Day 1 recap and Day 2 agenda + expectations | Welcome + team check ins | Welcome + final day agenda |
| 10 - 10.30 AM | Opening talk: The State of Decentralized Applications today | Decentralize This: Live Teardown of a Centralized App | Failure Stories from the ICO Era (Founder Story) | Mentor hours and mock pitches |
| 10.30 - 11 AM | Lightning 1 minute Decentralized World idea pitches from all attendees | Funding your Decentralized Idea: Artizen/Octant/Gitcoin/FTC | Idea Board Review: what’s built, what’s stuck | Mentor hours and mock pitches |
| 11 - 12 PM | Mentor Introductions, Open Building and idea board hours, decentralization explainers for newcomers | Open Builder hours and mentorship 1:1 slots | Token Design Workshop: Designing and Launching Truly Decentralized, Community Owned Tokens | Final build and polish hours (cont.) |
| 12 - 1 PM | AI Tooling Masterclass: community owned apps that build themselves, speaker from top AI lab | AI Tooling Masterclass: agents that run marketing and GTM for your community | Decentralized AI: What does it look like and who’s building it? | Project and Presentation Submission Deadlines |
| 1 - 2 PM | Lunch and casual networking | Lunch and casual networking | Lunch and casual networking | Lunch and casual networking |
| 2 - 3 PM | Open Building and idea board hours, decentralization explainers for newcomers continue | Open Building and idea board hours, decentralization explainers for newcomers continue | Open Building and idea board hours, decentralization explainers for newcomers continue | Decentralize Everything Showcase: team demos |
| 3 - 4 PM | Local Rails: ONDC on Open Networks in India and Web3 collaboration | Local Rails: Namma Yatri on building a zero commission cab aggregator | Local Rails: NPCI on building tech that reaches billions | Showcase (cont.) |
| 4 - 5 PM | Token Design Roundtable: solving for founder greed | Women in Web3 Roundtable by SuperwomenDAO | Funding your Community Owned Idea: Roundtable led by FTC/Artizen | Closing Rountable: what we learned, who carries what forward |
| 5 - 5.30 PM | Web3India Highlight: HyderabadDAO building a web3 community in hyderabad, decentralization and opportunities from Telangana | Web3India Highlight: Bitinnings talks about lessons from Bitcoin adoption for dApps | Web3India Highlight: Web3Kerala and LMNIT Jaipur building Web3 in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities | Rountable Insights Presentation and Closing Panel: what should India decentralize next? |
| 5.30 - 6 PM | Open Build Hours + Day 1 standup. Team Progress updates, Plan for tomorrow | Organizing Web3 events in India: Panel with ETHIndia, ETHMumbai, IBW and Web3Conf | The Web3 Developer Landscape in 2026 by Web3Samaj | Closing Music Concert and Entertainment over Refreshments |
- How does your proposed topic support Devcon’s focus on Ethereum’s core properties, open-source ethos and community bridge-building?
It’s clear that Ethereum’s original promise of a decentralized computer for decentralized applications has been getting concentrated onto the single use case of money. Tokens, which are a powerful community tool, have been moving to other ecosystems like Solana, taking with them innovative decentralized app ideas.
By making a dedicated push for innovative, decentralized applications we can revitalize communities on Ethereum, and also truly support the open source developers and builders maintaining Ethereum with new and novel mechanisms.
Audience
- Who is your hub for, and what kinds of attendees do you hope to reach?
This hub is for the builders and Ethereum community members that believe in a truly decentralized world, just like me, people who fell in love with blockchain of the power of decentralization and are now left slightly disillusioned seeing the aggressive consolidation of this vision into just the money use case.
We also want to form a bridge between Ethereum and Web2 developers, student communities and government organizations in India, who all share a common vision for decentralization and would be thrilled to work with the Web3 industries to design solutions that impact billions.
- Are there specific groups, regions, or kinds of attendees you particularly want to engage?
Primarily we need strong founders/builders who are willing to build open source and community owned Dapps and alternatives to the centralized apps that exist today.
We will start the builder identification early, working closely with India’s oldest and best Web3 communities to plan programming at our Community Hub, and also to identify the best builders and ideas that will take part. We will also work with relevant government organizations to identify decentralization challenges that can be provided to participants.
We want to bring together India’s top Web3 communities and co-create this hub. Some of them have been inactive lately, but Devcon is a powerful force to reactivate and unite them all for greater decentralization goals.
Some of the communities we are in talks with:
SuperwomenDAO · blockchainedind · BhaiCabal · bitinning · crowwdlabs · web3bharat · MyDesiCrypto · PhoenixGuildHQ · SuperteamIN · web3meetups · coi_nft · DaoDeepverse · CryptoArtIndia · webcruxx · Helloweb3Club · afterofficehq · Web3MeetIn · web3Suggest · BWA_Ind · HashedHODL · web3samaj · BlockchainSRM · plinthlnmiit ·
Events and Conferences
ETHIndiaco · web3conf_india · IBWofficial
Crypto Media
The_NewsCrypto · blockwee · web3sec_news
City Specific
Bangalore: BLRxZo
Hyderabad: HyderabadDAO
Pune: pune_dao · web3inpune
Kerala: Web3_kerala · tribeacademy_in
Punjab: Web3Panjab
Mumbai: ethmumbai
Chennai: Web3Chennai
Jaipur: PolygonJaipur
- If your team is primarily based outside of India, how do you plan to connect and foster collaborations with India’s growing Ethereum and open-source community?
The team will be primarily from India but with international collaborators. I’ve spent 9 years in the crypto ecosystem, organizing hackathons, parties and taking part in numerous conferences and talks myself, both within and outside crypto.
Team
- Who are the list of dedicated people that will organize and be fully responsible for the Community Hub?
Arun Philips Arun Philips - Making Dreams Come True with DreamStarter.xyz ✨ | LinkedIn
Partner from Web3Kerala
Partner from Zo World
Partner from ETHMumbai
Partner from Web3Meetups
- Why are they best-suited to lead this initiative? What expertise, knowledge or perspective do they offer in the proposed topic?
I’ve 9 years in the crypto ecosystem, Techstars Startup Weekend facilitator building startup ecosystems across Asia, ex CMO of Polygon. Fell in love with crypto because of decentralization and truly passionate about playing a role in helping Web3 shape public goods and the commons. MCd FTC conferences, and contributed to many public goods initiatives. Leads a Social Impact community of 2000+ members and actively working with NGOs and impact professionals to help them access Web3.
I come with in-depth knowledge about tokenomics, community building, event organization and public speaking, and building cutting edge AI Agents.
The community co-organizers bring what I can’t bring alone. Web3Kerala, HydDAO, Zo World and ETHMumbai have each spent years building real builder communities in their cities, through several market cycles, without much reward for it. They know who the serious builders are in their regions, they’ve run this kind of programming many times before, and they’ll be co-deciding the agenda rather than just lending their names to it. Between us we cover the sourcing, the programming and the follow through.
- How will you ensure that the Community Hub remains a neutral, welcoming space, free from marketing or promotion of specific tokens, projects, or commercial interests? How will you guarantee that any personal or team affiliations do not compromise this neutrality?
No token gets promoted, sold, listed or shilled in the hub, and that includes anything I’m involved in. I run a company and I’m involved in a Web3 public goods fund, and neither of them gets a logo, a pitch slot or airtime in this space.
Programming is decided by the co-organizing communities together, not by me. The build sessions are tool agnostic. We’ll have multiple AI tools available side by side and participants choose whatever they want, including tools nobody in the room is affiliated with. Everything built in the hub is open source and belongs to the team that built it. We take no ownership, no equity and no token allocation in anything that comes out of this hub.
- In what ways are the organizers meaningfully connected to the communities this Hub aims to support?
I’m from Kerala and I’ve been part of the Indian crypto community since well before it was easy to be. I’ve organised events with these communities, spoken at their conferences, and currently run a live build challenge with a student tech community in Hyderabad. Web3Kerala, HydDAO, Zo World, Web3Meetups and ETHMumbai are groups we already work alongside, and they’re bringing their own builders and their own programming to the hub.
- Does the organizing team and its contributors able to provide content in different languages? Devcon is a global gathering and India itself has an incredible number of local languages.
Sessions will be in English, but between our partner communities we can offer support and side conversations in Malayalam (Web3Kerala), Telugu (HydDAO and Web3Hyd), Marathi and Hindi (ETHMumbai, Pune DAO), Kannada (Bangalore communities), Tamil (Web3Chennai) and Punjabi (Web3Panjab). I speak English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam myself. We also hope to onboard international contributors who can share and discuss learnings in other global languages.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this proposal! Decentralization is something I truly feel passionate about and I want to devote a lot of my time to discovering and supporting incredible builders building the future of Dapps on Ethereum. Sharing some photos from previous events below, and see you all at Devcon!
Love the focus on actually building together rather than just talking about decentralization. Excited to see this come to life at Devcon! I support this initiative and would love to contribute.