How Ethereum Built the Web3 Ecosystem of Athens

We held a number of amazing events due to a 1.000 DAI grant by the Ethereum Foundation.

Here is how it happened:

Initial Grant: 1.000 DAI Grant

Community Investment: 350.000 USD

Connections Made: PRICELESS!

On Sept. 22nd - 7 days after the merge of Ethereum to a Proof-of-Stake consensus - the Ethereum Foundation provided me and Athens Labs with a 1.000 USD grant to host a public Merge Party. This party was simply that - an opportunity for the community to meet each other, drink for free and talk with one another.

Athens Labs, as organizer, did not provide material on the technical updates following the Merge. I did not make an intricate speech about the robustness of the system and the massive environmental benefits to PoS. Perhaps I should, but that didn’t happen. All I did was invite the community as a whole to join us at Barrett in downtown Athens, asked them to bring along their smile and best attitude, and gave them alcohol that Vitalik Buterin for.

This recipe seemed to work. A ton of community stalwarts joined the event. Journalists that lead the country in crypto-native content, builders and stakers on Ethereum, developers working on various projects, academics and researchers, incognito ship owners looking to understand the space and invest, corporate executives and consultants from the biggest companies in the world, MBAs from across Europe’s top schools, artists and NFT creators, legal and regulatory experts, and even tokenomics nerds like myself.

Not everyone was there, but roughly 60 highly curated and engaged people joined us at Barrett, and the connections made yielded value that has already gone well beyond my initial expectations. The Merge was a key topic of discussion within each cluster, but conversation also flowed into the work and passions of each attendee. It was a fantastic event, and to that end, I must thank the Ethereum Foundation for their support, especially Monet du Plessis and June Manuel for working with Athens Labs through the whole process. Also a huge shout out to Lily Kan that motivated me to reach out the the Foundation.

But the story does not end just yet.

At the event, Jason Theophanidis of Blender Gallery, alongside Ben and John of Jablabs, asked me to collaborate for the creation of a more official metaverse-focused conference that would be hosted at their location. Soon after our initial conversation, I connected Jason to Jon Vlachogiannis. Jon’s V as in Metaverse event series, which was the first conference in Athens on this topic, was returning to Greece in December and was looking for partners.

Together, and through other connections that were made, Blender Gallery hosted a series of events in December. The month started with their own NFT and Digital Art focus exhibition, which featured works from Above Olympus, Jonathan St. Void, Artifact and Niklas. Later the same week, the Athens Bitcoin Meetup hosted their gathering at the same space.

This week and a half of activity were culminated with the second “V as in Metaverse”, organized by Jon V., Athina Dova and Anni Panagiotopoulou, helped by the Blender Team of Leonie and Maria, and Lazaros Penteridis of ComeTogether - an NFT ticketing firm that supported the conference. V as in Metaverse featured world renowned speakers from around the globe, including:

• Academy Award Winner Rick Carter and his son Jim Carter – Talking about bringing NFTs to Hollywood.
• Nikos Ververidis of Eλ Culture – Talking about Ancient Greek Culture through NFTs
• And Nico Shi of CityDAO – Talking about tokenizing the first city through CityDAO.

The V as in Metaverse Conference was fantastic! As was the Bitcoin Meetup and Blender’s Metaverse and NFT Art Show!

Combining the performance of each of these events and meetups, I am happy to say that over 1000 attendees join us in these events, including over 30 businesses and startups working on Web3, tens of large corporation that aim to engage with the industry, and hundreds of creatives and web3 investors that are using this new tool-stack to unlock value for society. In financial terms, the events generated over 350k EUR in expenditure, provided more than 15 contractual jobs, and has likely already started generating connections that will prove to be priceless in the years to come. This is how you build an ecosystem.

We are not the only people working on helping the web3 ecosystems grow in Athens and Greece. Monis and the Greek Cryptocurrency Community have supported the ecosystem for years. Dimitris P. of CORE and the Kryptoschool have helped educate the new market investors for equally as long, and Dimitris T. and the Bitcoin Meetup has been at the heart of the movement since 2013. Younger initiatives, like Vladimiros and Andronikos’ NFT Artists communities are equally important in engaging the new generation of our ecosystem. I am sure that I am forgetting a lot of people.

The Merge Party was unexpectedly aptly named. It did more than celebrate ETH – it also merged the Athenian community together. Undoubtedly, Crypto in Greece is here.

The community is starved for recurring, highly curated events. When I was active in New York City’s Tech ecosystem, beer and pizza at amazingly interesting events happened every day. We need this in Athens, and we need it now.

If you want to support the ecosystem, please like and re-share this article, tagging people that deserve to see it. Further, if you want to participate in a more permanent community growth activity, please send me on my Twitter; @xenofonofathens.