A large portion of the Solid World team met in Bogota, Colombia this month for Devcon, a developer-focused conference hosted by The Ethereum Foundation. We are a remote team that spans across at least four continents, and this was the first time that so many of us were in the same place at once. (Only about half of our team is pictured above)
The highlight of the week as far as events were concerned was the Sustainable Blockchain Summit, where Solid World Founder Stenver Jerkku gave a presentation about carbon markets, alongside representatives of other top teams in the space including Gitcoin, Toucan, Thallo, Klima, and Filecoin, just to name a few.
This was a great event for networking and meeting with other teams, and there was a ton of important content as well.
You can check out the video of Stenver’s talk below:
The following day, the Solid World Team was in the crowd supporting Stenver as he gave his pitch to a panel of VCs at Devcon Demo Day.
This event was not a competition, it was simply an opportunity for a variety of different projects in different stages to get in front of potential investors. We spoke with many of the investors, including representatives from multiple tier1 firms.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/61f1477dfd9f9087efc144b8/6464c2fc93278fd209d380b7_0*GtJyXLop5WYP9kus.jpeg)
In addition to meeting new friends and potential partners at various side events like Consensys Connect, we also had a chance to go out and enjoy ourselves at some of the parties, for some authentic “Web3 team-building.”
Finally, we were able to ride to the top of Monserrate Mountain which overlooks the city before leaving town.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/61f1477dfd9f9087efc144b8/6464c2fcbcfedb569a4ebaae_0*TZaCkc7eiubL0f0V.jpeg)
Bogota was a perfect choice of venue for our industry, despite some controversy about security concerns. Developing countries are adopting crypto much faster than the rest of the world, and they are also set to play an extremely important role in Regenerative Finance (ReFi) and Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCM).
This is something that we should be especially aware of in the ReFi space, because we are not just here to speculate on tokens, we are here to improve the health of the planet and drastically improve the quality of life for all of the people who live here.
A large number of the carbon projects that will be making this transition possible are located in developing countries. For example, the first liquidity pools that we have announced for blue carbon will be funding mangrove restoration projects based in Myanmar, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.
These projects are hoping to improve the quality of life for local people, both financially and environmentally.
Communities in developing countries represent a large portion of the population that we are building our protocols for, and it is important for us to be connected with them, so we have a full knowledge of where all of the market participants are coming from.