CLF - CriptoLatinFest 2025 - ValuePlan Transparency Report

As a culmination of what was a pretty big year for travelling, especially for HIVE, we attended Cripto Latin Fest in Medellín. There is a post to write about "marketing HIVE", and what I have learned over 3 events in Latin America - Talent Land Guadalajara, HIVE Hub Hotel Guatemala and Cripto Latin Fest Medellín. The evolution of the methods, the development of metrics and KPIs, and the shift in focus to retention and stickiness.

But first, as I would expect and we all should expect of anyone receiving ValuePlan funding, I need to do a report on "the money" related to Cripto Latin Fest, and unfortunately, its not a totally ideal scenario.

While all the information is clearly available on chain, I will put the pieces together to the best of my ability here in this post.

https://x.com/EcoInstant/status/1958558367900709041

Logistics

In the Guadalajara event there was value plan funding, managed by @starkerz and @eddiespino, with a tremendous report, and afterwards I did apply for and receive some additional cost recovery from guiltyparties. After that event we returned home for a bit before embarking off to Guatemala, which did not and has not had any Value Plan or DHF funding.

While there, the discussion of Cripto Latin Fest came up, and I learned from @jthomasewsky and @starkerz that, at that time at least, "we weren't going to go" as a blockchain. Since I had been learning a lot in Guatemala about B2B HIVE onboarding, I thought this could be a good opportunity and reached out to @guiltyparties myself and mentioned that since this event was in my neck of the woods, I would be going anyway, bringing my ECOBANK team (some of whom live in Medellín) and he should get me some entrance tickets or wristbands or what turned out to be the case - "entrance NFTs".

I imagined it a bit more like when I went to LATAM in 2023, and we had no booth as HIVE but we walked around and talked to everyone in a more "B2B" type style.

But in this case, eventually Guiltyparties told me that he had reached out to @arlettemsalase and that we WOULD be having a booth as HIVE, and that I should work with Arlette. This is more similar to when I went to Cripto Latin Fest originally in 2022 in Bogotá, where we originally met and onboarded @jthomasewsky.

What about the money

So as I was arriving back home from Guatemala, I was working with Arlette about this event at the same time as I was reaching out to my team of people locally, several of which have HIVE accounts already and some for a very long time, and letting them know about the event. We didn't have a ton of time to prepare, my wife and I were physically "moving" after 6 weeks in Guatemala, and we were all behind the curve for event registration.

A few days before the event, the funds were sent out:

This format was unexpected to me, as I still had in my head that "I" was bringing my team, managing logistics as I had already begun to do since reaching out to team members and scheduling with them, getting their registration "NFTs" which were not without issue.

But further than this, I was quickly aghast to realize - @arangoaqet account was hacked.

And worse, the hack was older than 30 days. I immediately recognized this hack as one I have seen before, especially targeting people who created accounts with steemit and never changed the keys since the HIVE fork. We even made a better tool for Changing HIVE Keys because of these issues earlier this year.

After the event, we noticed that the hacker converted the HBD sent and sent the HIVE to the account @mariajruizb:

But we didn't really know anything at the time, and there was no time to think about it, the event was literally starting - we were tasked with rep'ing HIVE with a B2C focus at this event in Medellin 😑. We pooled the money of @ecoinstant and @juan.manuel and took @juan.plata with us, I put @ecoinstante's budget in savings in the meantime, as she had at this time informed me that it was just impossible for her to go represent HIVE, after having been gone for over 6 weeks, our home life, farm and family needed urgent attention.

And to be honest, even with this "hack" overhanging us, we nailed the event. We assisted Arlette, moved around the merch, grew as a team and @juan.plata even became a top onboarder - he is still eager and actively onboarding his friends here locally, he grew in his understanding and confidence about HIVE by attending the event. We supported the stand, met new people and made new connections, managed the "turn in" of the airBnB, and began the trip back home after several follow up meetings in Medellín.

Once home, we followed up with @guiltyparties, unstaked the HBD, and sent 551.25 HBD back to value plan representing @ecoinstante's budget.

As for @arangoaqet's 551.25 - its obvious something went wrong in logistics for this to have happened. I could start pointing fingers, but honestly all I do know is that logistics are hard, and in the end I did my best to with what I had, namely 3 team members were at the event, the event went well, and 1 team member's budget was returned of 4 sent.

I am happy to pay very close attention to the comments on this post, as I mentioned at the opening, if transparency is what we expect then transparency is what we must embody, and I am all for that - possibly I am slow and life has been heavy on the "transition" theme lately.

Follow up

I want to take the time this month to put my observations into a post on what I have learned about "onboarding" and "marketing" of HIVE over the course of this year. I need to shout out especially @sagarkothari88 who has done incredible and inspiring work, especially with CheckInWith.xyz - it is becoming a powerhouse onboarding tool and its progress over this year has been fantastic, and battle-tested the whole way.

There are lessons to learn - tools are being built and updated. For me at least, its time to stay home in the office for a while. And maybe write more posts.

Freedom and Friendship