I have many ideas for relevant explorations that others can execute with a little funding. Here I will leave the traces of my requests for funds.
Current form:
(this is a wiki. Feel free to edit this application before I send it)
Ethereum Community Hubs
Opens: 2025-11-02T06:00:00Z
Closes: 2026-07-02T06:00:00Z
Date of application: TODO
The form
Contact information
First name: Leonardo
Last name: Arias Fonseca
Email: ...@flashbots.net
Company: Flashbots
Profile Type: Research Center
Alternative Contact Info: ...@riseup.net
Website: Profile - guayabyte - The Flashbots Collective
Country: Costa Rica
Time Zone: GMT -6
Budget
Budget Request: 12000 USD
Project Overview
Project Name: Santa Teresa Ethereum Post Capitalist Beach Hub
Project Summary:
Participatory ethnographic research of other economies on an isolated paradise little town in Costa Rica.
We will organize gatherings and study groups to learn about modernity, capitalism, the traps of modern capitalistic economies, and other ways to relate. We will help people and businesses in town to send and receive payments in Ethereum layer 1 and layer 2. We will co-create a local currency, with a circle of trust, and credit without interest. We will experiment with liquidity in USDT and funding for land regeneration projects. We will propose treaties to relate and trade with other bioregions doing similar experiments. We will have a mesh network and a local data center to run Ethereum nodes and provide technological services.
The remote location of Santa Teresa and its socio-economic peculiarities makes it a perfect ground for economic experimentation with Ethereum.
PDF Proposal:
Ethereum Community Hub Grant Application
Santa Teresa
Application Questions
1. Overview & Motivation
Santa Teresa is a remote beach town in Costa Rica that is growing too fast and the locals are having to deal with all the tensions of economic inequality. It is a small place, with beautiful beaches and an intense biodiverse ecosystem. This combination provides the perfect context for economic experiments. The economy is almost de-facto dollarized, many of the workers are foreigners without local bank accounts, the town is overpopulated with tourists in high season, and almost empty and quiet in low season, and there is a constant influx of high class expats raising the prices of everything and displacing the locals and immigrants. All of this makes the dominant economy very maladjusted, very unsatisfactory. The constant immersion of humans as nature, surrounded by critters and animals, always listening to the waves of the ocean and eating delicious seasonal fruits brings an openness to relate in a different way, in a more caring way. So not all is lost here, there are many cracks to explore.
This hub will be the center for relevant economic experiments, teaching and using Ethereum as one of the necessary technologies on our quest to find a way that is attuned to the cycles of the land, to open space for conviviality, and maybe to escape from the imminent collapse. In here we will connect high income and low income workers, business owners, local elders, billionaire newcomers and tourists to figure out how we can coexist.
This is not a new co-working space, it will be a series of interrelated events and activations in the existing community venues.
The Ethereum community here is non-existent yet. However there are a few crypto-startups and crypto-millionaires in town. This initiative is part of the local community activations to create refuge in times of collapse, from a group of humans who have been gathering, learning and proposing new narratives during the last year.
2. Team & Management
Leonardo Arias Fonseca, native, researcher at Flashbots, free software developer
Matteo, Marat and Tomi, expats and immigrants, stewards of the co-working and art venues Mela, Guido, Stephi, Dani, Tara, Mica, Anto, Marián, local workers, yoga and surf instructors, plant medicine healers, architects, builders, cooks, shop owners
Edgar and Esperanza, elders
3. Venue & Location
Ágora, little book store and analogue camera studio, where latin americans gather for art workshops. It’s in the center of town, on top of a good japanese restaurant.
The Space, a co-working for expats located in a little shopping center, right at the entrance of town, in the crossing that connects the two big beaches.
The Ark, a farm and conscious community in a mountain 15 minutes uphill from town, where tourists and locals gather for dancing, concerts, farm to table dinners, and health workshops.
We will gather in the three venues depending on the language and type of activity, and we will facilitate workshops to cross-polinate different social classes and geographies of origin.
We also gather on the beach very often.
4. Facilities & Equipment
The bookstore has a small room where 30 people can gather, most sitting on the floor. With projector, speakers, art materials, and the possibility to share food from the restaurant downstairs.
The co-working space has desks for 15 people plus a living room where 20 more people can gather. With projector, speakers, whiteboards, and materials for collective design.
The farm has a big shala at the top of the mountain with a beautiful view, for somatic activations, performances, and celebrations. Also a collective kitchen for potlucks, and a school where we can share with the little ones.
In our gatherings so far we haven’t really needed anything, so we enjoy a lot the time of open, unstructured sharing at the beach for community building and to make lighter the complex topics.
5. Operations & Programming
There are daily workshops, classes and performances at the shala and the bookstore. The co-working is open all day for drop-ins.
We have been learning together about the basics of economics, free software, and blockchains. We will now organize a sequence of events to cover the basics again and gather ideas for what kind of experiments will be useful for our town.
We will organize events not focused on Ethereum where we can explore relevant topics for the community and use crypto technologies. For example, to cross-polinate between the spanish-speaking bookstore and the english-speaking co-working we can organize collective spanish lessons for expats, teach relevant topics for the bioregion like the history of how most of the primary forest was cut in the 70s and the slow regeneration process. We can mix here the sources of funding of regeneration projects in the Ethereum ecosystem and apply for funds.
We will organize yoga lessons, health workshops, and concerts that can be paid in USDT with a 50% discount.
We will facilitate workshops to learn about digital hygiene and safe communications.
We will open space and mentor developers and start ups wanting to use and develop with Ethereum.
6. Partnerships & Collaboration
The Costa Rican free software community, hackerspace, and public universities are all connected and in active collaboration. We are friends with the Costa Rican regenerative finance community. The regional activist organizations are all connected and interested in secure communications and other economies. We have friends in punk and hacker collectives all around. Through Flashbots we have many collaborators in every possible company and foundation relevant to Ethereum.
We will invite the business owners in town and help them understand and use USDT safely in their shops.
We will invite the land regeneration organizations and help them find funding opportunities with cryptocurrencies.
We will assist the farmers and local food producers to engage in this activation and provide healthy produce to the collective of locals, expats, immigrants and tourists that we will connect.
7. Community Engagement & Impact
We will collectively design a local currency that is context-aware for our bioregion. This will be the opportunity to align the interests of every member of the collective and attune to the cycles of this land. For example, during high season we can operate a savings and investments fund, and during low season we can operate a circle of credit without interests. We will use this currency for mediated bartering between the members of the collective, and to offer discounts in local shops and restaurants for newcomers. Managing these financial post capitalist experiments will provide monthly checkpoints for all the participants to gather, learn and take responsibility.
8. Budget & Financial Plan
We are operating and gathering in already established venues with their own sources of income. We will dedicate part of the funding to support them and appreciate them for all the times they have opened the space to us already. But we will not get involved in their finances. The abundance that these experiments will bring to all participants will flow through town on its own.
9. Support and Funding Request
We request 12000 USDT:
- $4000 USDT to support the operation of the three venues
- $4000 USDT to provide liquidity for the local coin. All our events and activations will be funded by the local coin, which will become appreciated as it circulates.
- $4000 USDT to pay for a latin american ethnographer and participatory activist sociologist to accompany this process, to study the economic challenges of similar towns in the region, and to write an academic report
Project Repo Link: Santa Teresa Ethereum Post Capitalist Beach Hub
Domain: Economics
Output: Research
Additional Details
Have you applied before to any grants at the Ethereum Foundation? Yes
Referral(s): No
Additional questions or comments? Filling forms is so boring, I have filled so many by now. It would be much better to have a call. I’m happy to talk to you and together go through this idea.