Original title: Between Risk and Hope: ETH Cali and the Columbia Ethereum Community
Original source: ShanhaiWoo
Cali, the salsa capital of Colombia, is also where ETH Cali was born and grew. Home to Zonamerica, a comprehensive offshore industrial and services park, its innovative ecosystem, vibrant entrepreneurial community, and tax incentives for resident companies attracted ETH Cali to its location. In addition to its office space, Universidad del Valle and Universidad ICESI, located within a five-kilometer radius of Zonamerica, have become important hubs for ETH Cali to host events and connect with its student community.
The growth trajectory of the Colombian Ethereum community
William Martinez, who prefers to call himself a core member rather than a founder, described the current state of the Ethereum community in Colombia. The Ethereum Colombian community has adopted a geo-based and localized organizational structure, forming a local Ethereum community network consisting of multiple nodes including ETH Medellin, ETH Bogota, ETH Caribe, ETH Eje Cafetero, ETH Arauca, and ETH Cali.
Both ETH Arauca and ETH Cali were founded in October 2022 after Devcon VI was held in Bogotá. Tragically, Emerson David Silva, the community leader of ETH Arauca, was murdered last year while promoting Ethereum in a high-risk area. Currently, the main active Ethereum communities in Colombia are ETH Bogotá, ETH Medellín, and ETH Cali.
ETH Arauca Community Leader Emerson David Silva
Like other Ethereum communities in Colombia, ETH Cali aims to promote Ethereum adoption within the local community. William stated that Cali has a strong pool of technical talent, but they know very little about Web3. Therefore, ETH Cali focuses on education and outreach, developer gatherings, and the practical application of Web3 frameworks and tools in cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, attempting to open a window to new technological paradigms for local technical talent.
"The story of Emerson and ETH Arauca is heartbreaking," William said, "but it has only strengthened our resolve to continue building our developer community."
ETH Cali Wallet: An open-source wallet designed for practical applications
Technology has always been the driving force behind the development of the ETH Cali community, which is reflected not only in its numerous technical activities but also in the team members who work together to build it. Today, almost all of the community's nine core members and six contributors have strong developer backgrounds.
At Devconnect's ETH Latam Hub, we met with Cristobal Valencia, a core developer in the community. He's building a new ReFi project: ReFiUP. According to Cristobal, ReFiUP aims to create an on-chain protocol, the ReFi Universe Protocol, to coordinate global efforts to clean up the planet. Users can earn tokens and verifiable certificates by collecting various types of waste, while businesses can reduce their carbon emissions by purchasing these certificates. The entire process utilizes AI agents to verify user work and leverages zero-knowledge proof technology to protect user privacy.
ReFiUP was inspired by an offline event supported by ETH Cali. In June of this year, ETH Cali partnered with local environmental organization Lapapaya to provide technical and logistical support for a mini-marathon in Cali. During the event, participants could earn tokens and NFT certificates based on the amount of trash they collected. The event collected over 150 kilograms of recyclable waste, and more than 60 participants successfully claimed on-chain rewards through the ETH Cali Wallet.
"Our goal is to attract community members and new users, and to let them explore the possibilities of cryptocurrency through this open-source wallet designed specifically for real-world applications," William explained. According to him, ETH Cali Wallet builds its account system on Privy, supports email registration, and incorporates zkPassport.id as an anti-Syllabic attack mechanism. It also implements gas-sponsored transactions through account abstraction. ETH Cali has open-sourced the wallet's codebase, allowing other developers to focus on building application logic without having to repeatedly develop user login or anti-Syllabic attack mechanisms.
From Events to Impact: ETH Cali's 2026 Plans
Looking back over the past three years, ETH Cali has hosted more than 40 offline events, attracting over 100 Web2 developers and growing its Web3 membership from 5 to over 250. Simultaneously, the community has supported more than 10 local Web3 projects, established partnerships with 5 universities, and gradually engaged in dialogue with high-level leaders, government departments, and key institutions, allowing them to understand the technology through practical experience.
"We focus on real builders, not hype." Speaking of the future, William outlined ETH Cali's specific goals for 2026:
• Establish an ETH Cali center or hacker home for the local tech community as a long-term space for developers to exchange ideas and collaborate.
• Collaborate with universities such as ICESI, USB Cali, and Universidad Santiago de Cali to promote research focusing on cryptography, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.
• Through structured projects such as Speed Run Ethereum and Cyfrin Updraft, we aim to cultivate over 100 Web2 developers to enter the Web3 field.
• In collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation Secretariat, we transformed a university DeFi course into a free and open Web3 learning project for local developers and the community.
• Build and run your own RPC infrastructure to provide stable and reliable technical support for the local ecosystem.
• Explore new technologies, including robotics, to create a more practical learning and experimentation environment.
• Strengthen collaboration with Ethereum communities in Cluj, Prague, Naples, Rome, India, and China to make Cali an active node in the global Ethereum network.
These goals are not simply about numerical or scale expansion, but rather a gradual unfolding around the question of "how to make technology truly effective." For ETH Cali, the end goal of community building is not the event itself, but whether the technology can respond to broader real-world needs.
Ethereum's next leap forward: real products and services
In William's view, Latin America faces some structural challenges, such as cross-border payments, global currency access, currency devaluation risks, and limited participation from the global technology community, while Ethereum technology can play a real role in these challenges.
He believes the next breakthrough will come from shifting focus from speculation to truly global products and services. With improved internet access, mature data infrastructure, and the widespread adoption of AI tools, Latin America is poised to accelerate its innovation pace and play a more significant role in open-source technologies and global collaboration.
"The end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027 might be a suitable window of opportunity," William said. "We might host a pop-up city to bring together local builders, institutions, governments, entrepreneurs, developers and researchers to collaboratively envision the next phase of Cali's development in an open and collaborative manner."
Conclusion
Technological development is never a straight upward line, but rather a spiral ascent. The Colombian Ethereum community, represented by ETH Cali, is no exception: despite setbacks and fluctuations, it has consistently accumulated strength, continuously spreading the core Web3 values of collaboration, permissionless innovation, and open-source culture to more and more people.
