Building Web3 in Ukraine: Rostyslav Bortman's Journey in Blockchain Development

Smart contracts. In 2016, my professor at the university approached me with a thesis topic – 'Smart contracts on Ethereum' or something similar. I agreed. Since then, I couldn't pull myself away from ConsenSys and Ethereum – I was completely captivated by the concepts of transparency and the elimination of intermediaries.

First, there are different paths to take: to build a solid product with a strong foundation that will go mainstream and have a direct impact on Web3 development, to be a developer in a team that builds the future of Web3, or to contribute to open-source communities.

Of course, among the top teams in Web3, you can often find Ukrainian developers who build amazing things in a team, and that's really cool. However, we don't see a large number of Ukrainians developing products that go mainstream. We still need to work on this.

I believe that the Ukrainian Web3 community is just beginning to develop. As the organizer of the largest hackathon in Ukraine, I can say that we still have a lot of work to do on building a startup culture. People are focused on earning money and don't want to take risks, have no desire to build something of their own, because outsourcing provides stability. 

My team and I aim to change this – to build a culture of hackathons in the country, because I'm certain that this is one of the most effective ways to show developers that building your own product is awesome. It will take time for people's mindsets to change, and for Ukrainians to start influencing global blockchain development with their products.

Of course they can. The Web3 market is global, and it doesn't matter in which country it is built. First of all, the product use case, UX, is essential. Anyone who makes a great product that people need can compete in this market. 

'Build something people need. Build a dead simple experience,' – Jesse Pollak.

Global Adoption. I also like Trustee Plus – it's simple, convenient, and solves the problem of consumer payments. HackenProof.

It's also important to note that the concept of success is different for different people, so I'm only talking about the ones I personally like.

We have been organizing meetups since 2021. We have already held about 25 various events. We have collaborated with BNB Chain, Polygon, Diia state, and many others. You can see all our events here – kyivethereum.com.

Recently, we organized ETHKyiv, which was attended by Vitalik (Buterin) and three other members of the Ethereum Foundation (and many other guests from various top Web3 protocols). We managed to attract such giants as EtherFi, Polygon, Intmax, Layer1, Circles, The Graph Builders Dao, and others as sponsors. Also, 123 hackers visited the venue offline and took part in the hackathon.

We raised $8000 for FPV-drones for humanitarian aid. And all this despite the challenging circumstances.

I believe that the strategy of developing local communities around the world is the right one, because only local communities, not the global Foundation, can have a significant impact on people from specific countries.

The role and influence depends not on me, but on the community. I alone can do little, but we are doing everything in our power to create favorable conditions for the development of the Ethereum community in Ukraine – connecting founders, visionaries, and developers.

Let's start with the unpleasant part. I am the sole organizer of ETHKyiv 2024 (with my Kyiv Ethereum team, of course). Sergiy Sevidov was formally a co-organizer, but, in fact, he did not fulfill his duties and did not take any part in the organization of this event. Therefore, calling him one of the organizers would be unfair to the team that was involved in the organization.

Unfortunately, it turned out that he controls the ethkyiv.org domain and social media, in which our team made almost all publications related to the ETHKyiv hackathon. He refuses to give up the social media and the domain (though he has nothing to do with Ethereum in Ukraine and did nothing to develop it, his only goal is to use the ETHKyiv name), because he wants to hold some of his own events there and take ETHKyiv 2024 as his own to sell it to sponsors and partners. My team and I have already turned this page and created new social media.

Today, to answer your question:

I believe that hackathons have a direct impact on the development of Ethereum in Ukraine, because I believe that developers are the main asset of the ecosystem. That is why our main mission is to onboard Ukrainian developers to Ethereum. As for conferences, I can't answer because my main focus is on builders.

There was an incredible amount of difficulties, but this would be a story for an hour. There were a lot of problems with contractors and the amount of coordination, communication, management of all the content, such as on Taikai platform and elsewhere, relations with sponsors, hackers, volunteers and speakers, and media publications. This story deserves a separate article.

Base has a very significant impact on Web3 because they are developing a culture of builders around them and promoting the message that building is cool. They're focused on developing consumer apps, which is the right thing to do, in my opinion, and I think that's where we're going to see a lot of cool innovations in Web3.

I'm an ETH Maxi, so it's difficult for me to think about that. There are so many new and exciting things happening in Ethereum every day that I simply don't have enough time to study other ecosystems. 

However, I believe that other blockchains are likely to take some market share, but Ethereum will remain the undisputed leader. For me, Ethereum's principles are closer to my heart. That's why I'm here, and most of the people in the community are here as well. And I think that's what makes Ethereum the best.

Currently, consumer payments are one of the major issues that are a priority in the industry, including, for example, Base (I wrote about it here). I don't think that DeFi will replace centralized banking in the coming years, but I believe that step by step, it will become more convenient and popular, the number of users will grow, and strategically, in the future, we will have some hybrid systems with the ability to completely abandon traditional centralized banking if necessary.

I don't think we will see a Solana ETF in the near future. There are objective reasons for this. 

First, the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission – author's note) considers Solana a security. Secondly, the asset has 12% of SOL (or more, I don't know the exact figure, but it is a significant stake). Thirdly, if we talk about the creator path to ETFs (as was the case with BTC and ETH), Solana still needs 2-3 years to go all the way. 

As for other assets, I think that the cryptocurrency market has to become much more mature first, because today all these memecoins and assets with no utility and billions of dollars in market cap look very strange.

NFTs are not going anywhere, but not the NFTs that everyone has heard about in 2021. NFT is a basic standard that will be and is already being actively used in RWA (Real World Assets). They will tokenize everything they can with NFT. From real estate to items in virtual worlds and games. I have no idea what will happen to NFT monkeys.

Account abstraction, SocialFi, decentralized messengers, consumer apps (including payment apps), cross-chain interoperability, GameFi.

I think it is very important. As far as I know, the situation in Ukraine is not very good. 

I would really like to see us move faster and have more activity. If anyone wants to organize ConsenSys courses, know that we will always support you. Come, let's talk. 

I like the example of Argentina – they have integrated Ethereum and ConsenSys into the school curriculum in Buenos Aires. I think we should move in this direction – I have already written to several of my friends on this matter.

Build something that people need. Build dead simple experiences. Create applications that people use, that's all. They (the public – author's note) will come to you. Someday, freedom of speech will become a very important aspect, looking at what is happening in the world today. So I think that the demand for transparency, security, and privacy will grow.

This is a very difficult question. I think there will be many applications that will go mainstream and users will not even know that they are Web3-powered. I think that during this time, the main UX problems will be solved and we will be able to find killer use cases in the industry. I think we will see mass adoption in the next 10 years.

I am passionate about the principles of transparency, privacy, self-custody, etc. I like to remove trust from where it shouldn't exist. I like to eliminate intermediaries and automate the conditions in smart contracts. I believe that this is the future, and we are moving in the right direction in general. I like being involved in this, and I am grateful for it. 

People are also inspiring. Such a concentration of incredibly smart, open-minded people is very motivating.