The date was December 16, 2017, and I was having a coffee at Cherrywood Coffeehouse with a fellow Austin, TX blockchain entrepreneur. Little did we know that we were about to launch an initiative that drove significant educational, business, and economic development impact.
Building a Blockchain Community with Impact
The previous couple of years had seen me become increasingly interested in crypto and blockchain. I discussed use cases of the technology with my Wall Street consulting clients and incorporated it into the FinTech conferences that I produced. In early 2016, I ran my first blockchain-for-business conference in San Francisco.
In Austin, working with a few local tech pioneers, I started a blockchain for business meetup group that became popular, and I began to advise a couple of local startups. A LinkedIn group I started on blockchain, and smart contracts quickly grew to a few thousand members.
My coffee companion was Dustin Byington, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who began investing in crypto and had built up a successful recruitment business for blockchain talent. He had recently started a new gig as President of Wanchain, a Chinese interoperability blockchain that was establishing its US base in Austin, and he was on a mission to sign up some partners and pilot customers and hire a team.
Our holiday catch up quickly evolved into a discussion of other blockchain and crypto startups that had recently formed or moved to the city. We realized that the number was beginning to grow from the handful that had been around for a couple of years. So, we decided right there that it was time to form a local community group for networking, education and to explore potential business collaborations. We dubbed it the Austin Blockchain Collective. I registered the URL a couple of hours later and built a simple website that night listing around a dozen local companies as members (who I felt sure would join when asked – and they all did).
By the time it formally launched – at South by Southwest in March 2018 – the Collective had grown to more than 20 members, including the likes of Factom (one of the first L2 blockchains, since acquired by Ivenium), Series X (now the parent of tokenization innovator Vertalo) and Multicoin Capital, a fledgling VC firm destined to become a respected investor and thought leader in Web3.
During 2018, the Collective grew quickly to around 120 members and held monthly educational and networking meetups and other events. In October, when it was involved in 10 meetings in the city, the Collective held its first town hall and startup showcase, leveraging its relationship with Capital Factory, an innovation incubator and co-working space. Indeed, it was in Capital Factory’s downtown office that the Collective set up a permanent presence to be ‘on call’ to give advice to the local startup scene. It also helped to organize and judge a Capital Factory blockchain hackathon that saw a new team – set to become verifiable credentials in supply chain leader Transmute – take top honors.
Capping off a great first year, the Collective was honored to be recognized by the publication Smart Cities Dive, receiving its award for “Civic Engagement Initiative of the Year.”
Indeed, the following year, the Collective built strong relationships with the City of Austin and with UT Austin. As well as presenting to the City Council on how blockchain might be used to deliver residential and business services, the Collective also engaged with the City’s Smart Mobility unit, which had an interest in using blockchain to verify that AI models in driverless cars were inferencing on the same data that was used for training.
Another City project was focused on creating digital identities to secure electronic data lockers used to store and readily retrieve personal data and service records belonging to the homeless population. The Mayor of Austin’s office leant its support to this endeavor by promoting a hackathon event organized by the Collective and others, and the City acknowledged the overall support of the Collective in its successful $400,000 funding proposal to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to develop a prototype.
Because of its growing stature, the Collective was invited by South by Southwest to contribute to its programming for blockchain and Web3 and provided experts to SXSW’s mentor initiative. Relatedly, Collective members enjoyed significant discounts to attend the A-list event each spring.
The Collective also worked closely with UT Austin, including its McCombs School of Business and Dell Medical School to provide specialist education and evangelism. For McCombs, the Collective was involved in lectures to a Fintech class and to the Supply Chain Center of Excellence. Across UT, the Collective established relationships with key members of faculty and with student societies that themselves were looking to work with local blockchain companies, not least for intern opportunities.
Along with Dell Medical School, the Collective created a Healthcare Working Group of blockchain companies focused on healthcare or with applicable technology and advised Dell Med on its own blockchain projects. This engagement resulted in the creation of the Blockchain and Digital Transformation in Health symposium, which took place in February 2020. Featuring a program drawn from the healthtech industry (including IBM, ConsenSys Health, and Rymedi), and academia, the event program was heavily slanted towards Web3 issues, such a personal health data ownership and monetization.
The Collective also discussed the opportunities of forming communities with other blockchain innovators outside of Austin. One group in the Dallas area showing a particular interest in establishing links with State legislature and influencing regulations. That group – now known as the Texas Blockchain Council – has since established itself as a key influencer, including at Federal level.
Along the way, the Collective often met with companies from outside of Texas that were interested in what Austin had to offer as a potential location for a facility, research venture, or event. In fact, one conversation – in early 2020 with Coindesk’s Chief Content Officer Mike Casey – was a lengthy one about future city hosts its large Consensus festival. No surprise then that Consensus debuted in Austin in August of 2022 and has since returned twice. In 2024, it attracted around 15,000 attendees and delivered a substantial economic impact to the city and its businesses.
During the pandemic and more recently, as the Austin technology scene became more closely involved with those in other Texas Triangle cities, the Austin Blockchain Collective spun out the global, virtual-first DecentraTech Collective, to promote a broad range of decentralization technologies. In particular, this new group is focusing on data integrity and privacy technologies essential for the implementation of accurate and responsible artificial intelligence.
Another City project was focused on creating digital identities to secure electronic data lockers used to store and readily retrieve personal data and service records belonging to the homeless population. The Mayor of Austin’s office leant its support to this endeavor by promoting a hackathon event organized by the Collective and others, and the City acknowledged the overall support of the Collective in its successful $400,000 funding proposal to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to develop a prototype. Because of its growing stature, the Collective was invited by South by Southwest to contribute to its programming for blockchain and Web3 and provided experts to SXSW’s mentor initiative. Relatedly, Collective members enjoyed significant discounts to attend the A-list event each spring. The Collective also worked closely with UT Austin, including its McCombs School of Business and Dell Medical School to provide specialist education and evangelism. For McCombs, the Collective was involved in lectures to a Fintech class and to the Supply Chain Center of Excellence. Across UT, the Collective established relationships with key members of faculty and with student societies that themselves were looking to work with local blockchain companies, not least for intern opportunities. Along with Dell Medical School, the Collective created a Healthcare Working Group of blockchain companies focused on healthcare or with applicable technology and advised Dell Med on its own blockchain projects. This engagement resulted in the creation of the Blockchain and Digital Transformation in Health symposium, which took place in February 2020. Featuring a program drawn from the healthtech industry (including IBM, ConsenSys Health, and Rymedi), and academia, the event program was heavily slanted towards Web3 issues, such a personal health data ownership and monetization. The Collective also discussed the opportunities of forming communities with other blockchain innovators outside of Austin. One group in the Dallas area showing a particular interest in establishing links with State legislature and influencing regulations. That group – now known as the Texas Blockchain Council – has since established itself as a key influencer, including at Federal level. Along the way, the Collective often met with companies from outside of Texas that were interested in what Austin had to offer as a potential location for a facility, research venture, or event. In fact, one conversation – in early 2020 with Coindesk’s Chief Content Officer Mike Casey – was a lengthy one about future city hosts its large Consensus festival. No surprise then that Consensus debuted in Austin in August of 2022 and has since returned twice. In 2024, it attracted around 15,000 attendees and delivered a substantial economic impact to the city and its businesses. During the pandemic and more recently, as the Austin technology scene became more closely involved with those in other Texas Triangle cities, the Austin Blockchain Collective spun out the global, virtual-first DecentraTech Collective, to promote a broad range of decentralization technologies. In particular, this new group is focusing on data integrity and privacy technologies essential for the implementation of accurate and responsible artificial intelligence.