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Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, highlights the impact of emerging technologies to consolidate democracy, at IE University’s Tech4Democracy

Tech4Democracy Bogota | IE University
Tech4Democracy is an IE University initiative in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and Microsoft that promotes the development of technologies that affirm and strengthen democratic values.

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, the second most important cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, highlighted the impact of blockchain and Web3 to consolidate democratic systems. Buterin participated this week in Tech4Democracy Bogota, an event organized by IE University in collaboration with the Universidad de los Andes, which hosted the event. Tech4Democracy is an IE University initiative in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and Microsoft that promotes the development of technologies that reinforce democratic values. 

Tech4Democracy Bogota awarded prizes to the best startups developing technologies that consolidate democratic governance. In this edition, Evoting (Chile), a company specialized in electronic voting systems, received the award for the best startup in Latin America. The winner in the global Web3 category was Matters Lab (USA, Taiwan and Hong Kong), a company that develops a Web3 social networking ecosystem that substitutes algorithms for human intervention. Tech4Democracy Bogota was held at the Universidad de los Andes campus and was supported by IDB Lab, Ethereum Foundation, RadicalxChange, GitHub and Gitcoin.

Along with Vitalik Buterin, the event counted with the participation of Arati Prabhakar, Senior Advisor to the U.S. President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Ramon Negron, Economic Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Colombia; Juan José Güemes, Vice President for Economic Affairs at IE University; Glen Weyl, head of Web3 research at Microsoft, writer and founder of RadicalxChange; Silvia Retrepo, Vice Dean of Research and Creation at Uniandes; and Paca Zuleta, Director of the Alberto Lleras Camargo School of Government at Uniandes.

Carlos Luca de Tena, executive director of the Center for the Governance of Change at IE University, the center that coordinates the Tech4Democracy initiative, said: “We are very pleased to have brought together an excellent group of entrepreneurs, experts and investors from Latin America and other parts of the world. We thank them for their collaboration and applaud the work they are all doing to make new technologies contribute to promoting democratic values.”

Tech4Democracy Bogota participants included Datasketch (Colombia), Evoting (Chile) and Govlink (Peru) in the category of Latin American startups. These were evaluated by Mauricio Rosillo, Corporate Vice President of Grupo Bancolombia and María Isabel Mejía, Senior Executive of Digital Transformation at CAF, among other members of the jury. In the Web3 category, Idena (global), Impacta (Brazil) and Matters Lab (USA, Taiwan and Hong Kong) participated, analyzed by a jury made up of Kevin Olsen, Vice President of Engineering at Gitcoin and Livia Deschermayer, Cultural Build Lead at The Commons Stack, among other evaluators.

IE University will hold new editions of Tech4Democracy in North America, Asia and Africa to select the startups with the greatest potential in the development of technologies that consolidate democracy in each continent. The next competition will be held in Silicon Valley on November 29, in collaboration with Stanford University’s Global Digital Policy Incubator.


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