Why are you participating for Based LatAm?

My motivation is to share this technology with as many people in my environment as possible, implementing blockchain as a means of verification or payment in my playground 🌿💳.

As a Guatemalan 🇬🇹, I have noticed how technological advances emerge and stay in first-world countries 🌍, taking decades to reach us. In this context, blockchain 🔗 breaks that stereotype, offering adoption in both third and first-world countries without limitation.

This opens countless opportunities 🌐, such as digital identity 🆔, banking 💰, monetization 💵, tokenization, and many more.

What challenges are you focusing on?

Blockchain adoption for vulnerable and low-educated communities 🌱🔗

We are a project in Salamá, a small town in Baja Verapaz, Guatemala 🇬🇹, located 91 kilometers from the capital city, with an estimated population of 71,000 inhabitants. The majority of people rely on daily income, working in agriculture 🌽🍅, planting and harvesting corn, beans, tomatoes, and green beans. These jobs are often unstable and low-income, limiting access to better economic conditions.

Furthermore, low schooling 📚 and limited access to traditional banking 🏦 prevent many members of the community from obtaining financing, saving, or managing their resources efficiently. The main objective is to overcome these barriers by adopting blockchain technology 🔗, which can facilitate financial access without the need for intermediaries.

With the help of Base 🛠, we are addressing the lack of access to financial services and the economic exclusion of people in Salamá. Although most of the population has little or no familiarity with advanced technologies such as blockchain, Base allows us to offer a simplified solution 📱 through its integration with mobile applications such as Coinbase Wallet. This facilitates the use of accounts without users needing to worry about technical aspects like seed phrases or transaction fees. This significantly reduces the barrier to entry for people with low education or technological knowledge, allowing them to access financial services that were previously out of reach. 🌍💡

How does your submission address this challenge?

At La Madriguera, as blockchain enthusiasts 🌿, our main goal is to share this knowledge with as many people as possible. We firmly believe that through this technology, our community can find solutions to overcome many of the challenges we face.

As a family-friendly place of contact with nature 🌳, we welcome around 100-200 visitors every weekend, 35% of whom are adults and young people 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦. Here, we see a great opportunity to incorporate blockchain, so we've devised a plan that involves three phases of adoption:

First Phase: Installation of Coinbase Wallet 📱 (06/11/2024 to 31/12/2024)
During this period, we are offering free access to children 👧👦, with the requirement that one of the parents installs the Coinbase Wallet and receives an NFT called Nouns Entry Pass 🎟️, which must be shown at the entrance to gain the benefit. To date, we have 27 wallet installations and NFT distributions.

Second Phase: First Onchain Transaction 💸 (06/11/2024 to 31/12/2024)
A USDC Airdrop 🪂 will be sent to the wallets created during the first phase. During the visitors' next visit, they will be taught how to send and receive USDC.

Third Phase: Payment with USDC 💳 (06/01/2025 to 06/02/2025)
Once our visitors are familiar with sending USDC, we will enable the option to preload USDC into wallets. We will offer a 25% discount 💵 to clients who pay using USDC.

This process is designed to address the challenges mentioned above, guiding our visitors step by step through the adoption process. Our goal is to achieve 200 wallet installations during the first phase, as a testing model for broader community adoption.

Environmental Commitment 🌱🌍
Our goal is to create a forest 🌳 within our facilities, where we have already planted 1,500 trees that have been growing for 7 years. During this time, 90% of ticket revenue has been allocated to maintaining this natural area. Additionally, we promote conservation by gifting trees to our visitors. 🌱
A commitment we have forever♻️

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges we faced was the low technological literacy 📚 in the community, as most people in Salamá had little experience with digital tools 💻, especially blockchain 🔗. We simplified the user experience through Base’s integration with mobile apps 📱 like Coinbase Wallet, eliminating the need to manage complex aspects. Additionally, some people didn’t have access to the internet 🌐, so we provided them with Wi-Fi 📶. We also used QR codes 🔲 to simplify links and facilitate access to the applications..

Additional Features

Our project has been running for 7 years 🌱→🌳, and the implementation we are doing during the Buildathon 🛠️ is the creation, editing, minting, and sending of the Nouns Entry Pass 🎟️ as a means of verification for our visitors.