This is an update from the Next Billion Fellowship Program. Applications are rolling and open for cohort 6 beginning in October 2025.
Individuals interacting with an application have a user experience. Collectives interacting with a protocol have a world experience. There are many worlds that the Ethereum protocol touches; places where organizations, communities, or institutions experience trust through coordination. The Next Billion Fellowship is a program to support individuals working on new use cases and improving trust experience within the world computer.
The stories of a global protocol are as diverse and varied as the humans that use it. In this update five Next Billion Alumni share stories about their Fellowship experience, and four new Next Billion Fellows are introduced.
📰 Devansh Mehta: Impact Certificates and Citizen Journalism
Through Devansh’s marketplace, real-world outcomes from journalism become tradeable impact certificates, creating direct funding paths between positive social change and the reporters who uncover the truth.
🖥️ Guo Liu: Billboard Protocol for Decentralized Publishing
The billboard protocol created by Guo transforms digital advertising spaces into community-controlled assets, reclaiming the internet as a place for thoughtful engagement rather than attention extraction.
🌊 Lefteris Arapakis: Fishing for the Commons with Enaleia
Transforming Mediterranean fishing communities into environmental stewards through Enaleia’s blockchain-tracked supply chain for ocean plastic, creating a protocol to regenerate our shared sea commons.
🌍 Rebecca Mqamelo: Commitment Pooling as Social Technology
Exploring how blockchain-based commitment pooling can revitalize indigenous economic practices in Ocean View, South Africa, transforming social contracts into tools for community resource coordination.
🇺🇦 Valeriia Panina: Volya: Web3 Through the People’s Lens
Documenting the transformative intersection of war, technology, and social resilience in Ukraine, where crypto has evolved from an emergency lifeline to a paradigm shift in how people relate to institutions and trust.
Cohort 5
Mashbean (X: @mashbean) is researching robust digital identity in Taiwan, exploring how civic services and critical public infrastructure could benefit from the same resilient and trustless properties that protocols like Ethereum offer the world.
Sharfy Adamantine (X: @sharfyae) enables environmental stewardship by connecting climate finance directly to local conservation efforts and data at Gainforest. By improving compatibility and functionality of the Hypercerts standard, ecosystem protection can become more economically viable for organizations and conservation communities of all shapes, sizes, and contexts.
Teodor Petricevic (X: @XtXeXo) leads blockchain initiatives at the UN Development Programme. He will map Ethereum-based projects within the UN ecosystem and develop an impact management framework that enables global development organisations – such as UN agencies – to effectively design impact models, measure and analyse outcomes and impacts, and harness the unique properties of blockchain technology to advance global development initiatives.
Robert Cowlishaw (LinkedIn: robert-cowlishaw) is an aerospace engineer pioneering research at the intersection of zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution, and satellite imagery. He is developing a prototype app that automatically and verifiably triggers emergency response systems after natural disasters. His work includes collaboration with the European Space Agency to activate satellites for monitoring affected areas across political and systemic boundaries.
As we look ahead to the next cohort of Fellows, we’re reminded of the profound importance of narrative in shaping Ethereum’s future. The stories shared by our alumni illustrate how blockchain technology can transcend its technical foundations to become a tool for social change, economic empowerment, and ecological regeneration.
These Fellows exemplify what makes the Next Billion Fellowship unique: the focus is not on technology for technology’s sake, but on the human experience of technology. Each project showcases how Ethereum can address real-world challenges—from polluted oceans to communities seeking economic autonomy, from farmers to international development professionals.
If you are working on a project that showcases stories of tangible and human use-cases for the Ethereum protocol (and the application layer built on it), consider applying for the Next Billion Fellowship. Fellows receive support over 6 months for a small project that represents a unique perspective on Ethereum’s next billion users and their experience.