“It doesn’t really matter if it’s Web2, Web3, Web5 or whatever — equality and diversity in terms of genders, races, religions brings more to the table.”

Korzh is one of the 10 finalists of the 2023 Women in Web3 Changemakers List, an annual competition designed to champion women pushing boundaries in the space. Korzh, along with nine other outstanding candidates, are showing the industry the change women are bringing about during the advent of the Open Web. 

Korzh was selected not only for her work at GeekPay, but because of the pivotal role she has played in supporting Ukrainian startups, helping them maintain access to funding and talent during a period where so many have been displaced after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Korze is a Partner at SID Venture Partners, the first unique Ukrainian high-technology venture capital firm established by IT experts focusing on investments into early-stage technology startups.

In little over a year, it has successfully funded 16 startups across a range of sectors, and recently became the most active venture investor in Ukrainian startups in the last 18 months. 

A Web3 Journey 

“My story is quite simple,” says Korzh, who is currently based in Lisbon. “I’ve been in the Ukrainian software business for about 15 years in project management, programme management, and also in product house roles”. 

Korzh’s journey into Web3 came about after a chance encounter with Illia Polosukhin, one of the co-founders of NEAR Protocol. “I was always fascinated about technology, and blockchain has, for the last 10 years, been one of the most exciting technologies.” 

This led Korzh to begin investigating what this breakthrough technology was really all about. At first, says Korzh, blockchain was difficult to understand, but there was something intriguing that led Korzh to dive deeper. At the time, Kurzh had been working on a fitness app in Ukraine, but that chance encounter led her to radically rethink the direction of her career. 

“I moved to blockchain and here starts the most interesting part of my life,” she says. In less than two years, Korzh has helped 16 companies access funding and become the co-founder of her own Web3 company. But the road hasn’t been without its challenges. 

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the start-up sector in Ukraine’s bustling tech industry has been displaced. Dozens of companies had to relocate, further west in the country, or to welcoming hubs like Lisbon. This made evaluating companies on their merit more challenging. 

Since then, Ukraine’s crypto native community has bounced back. Ukraine has managed to raise more than $100 million in cryptocurrency donations through its government-curated Crypto Fund of Ukraine, thanks to natively built projects like UkraineDAO. For Korzh and her colleagues, the journey to find the best startups has, despite the disruption, continued. 

“The technology is still far away from what we would like to have in terms of the ecosystem.” This has meant assessing which projects should be funded, and which require more work, has been a challenge. But, says Korzh, that’s where women come in. 

More balance, better results

“I think balance is the secret sauce for progress for any business. The more balanced ecosystem you have, in terms of gender, the better your results.”

Korzh believes increasing the number of women in Web3 can only help produce better results. “In terms of gender equality, this space is very male,” says Korzh. “It is very hard to find women founders.”

This is where awards like the Women in Web3 Changemakers hopes to help showcase the work of women across the space and encourage others to take the plunge. 

“I think awards can help say: ‘I’m capable enough to start my own company,’ or ‘I’m capable enough to understand how blockchain works.’ It’s an indicator for myself as a female founder to think, okay, maybe I should also try myself, maybe I can build something, maybe I can create an idea that then changes the world.” 

The post Women in Web3 Changemakers: Veronica Korzh  appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

“I think many people find it intimidating coming into this space, but I think women can add value.” 

Kang is one of the 10 finalists of the 2023 Women in Web3 Changemakers List, an annual competition designed to champion women pushing boundaries in the space. Kang, along with nine other outstanding candidates, are showing the industry the change women are bringing about during the advent of the Open Web. 

Kang was chosen because of her tireless work in the Web3 community. On top of creating one of the most vibrant meetups in Asia under KryptoSeoul, she’s also one of the main organisers of BUIDL Asia, as well as numerous hackathons and meetups, and has been a pivotal player in helping bring together some of the brightest technical talent under one roof. But getting to this point has been anything but easy.  

Watch an extended NEAR Foundation video interview with Erica Kang below.

Stepping off the ladder 

Kang graduated from Stanford with a major in international relations and policy, giving her the foundations for being able to bring people from diverse backgrounds closer together. After graduating, she joined Korea Telecom, one of the largest telco companies in Asia, working in the strategy division, but found it stifling. 

“It’s a very conservative culture,” says Kang. “The hierarchy is dramatic. Juniors don’t have an opportunity to strive for creating new things or innovations, even though they have amazing ideas. It’s hard to bring it up.” 

But a chance encounter with a friend took Kang on a different path. “A friend recommended a very unique seminar, back in 2017. It’s very rare in Seoul, Korea to kind of have that kind of a seminar, especially on crypto.” 

The opportunity to jump into an emerging new field of technology, and away from the hierarchy of corporate South Korea was too tempting.

“Since then, I’ve been in the rabbit hole ever since.” Kang brought her experience in bringing people together in a role she describes as closer to a digital “diplomat” and started organising meet ups in and around South Korea from 2017 onwards.  

Kang was well placed. South Korea has become one of the leaders in Web3 technology. The South Korean government has invested US$21 million into local services looking to utilize the metaverse, and has established a US$30 million metaverse fund to help startups expand. 

Earlier this year, South Korea’s parliament approved the country’s first standalone crypto asset legislation, which integrates 19 crypto-related bills and authorises the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to oversee crypto asset operators and custodians. 

But it hasn’t always been easy working in Web3.

Growing Pains

 “I’ve been working in the space since 2017, and I did feel a lack of female culture here. It was devastating at times. And it was frustrating too. I really had to eliminate my femininity and had to prove I could really go up there and do my thing,” says Kang. 

But the hard work, says Kang has paid off. “I think people get it now. I’ve just been building, and make a difference.” Kang is now considered one of the key pillars of the South Korean, and broader east Asian crypto community.

She has also become a sounding board for many young female entrepreneurs thinking about jumping into the Web3 space. But Kang suggests they tread with caution. 

“I think it’s really important for newbies to do your own research. Learn a lot and indulge yourself but when it comes to engaging in certain projects, and certain people investing in those people, you really have to be careful.” 

Kang stresses there are reputational challenges working on some projects, but the opportunity to innovate and come up with new solutions to old problems is unique in the Web3 space. 

The post Women in Web3 Changemakers: Erica Kang appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

Dallara is one of the 10 finalists of the 2023 Women in Web3 Changemakers List, an annual competition designed to champion women pushing boundaries in the space. Dallara, along with nine other outstanding candidates, is showing the industry the change women are bringing about during the advent of the Open Web. 

Dallara was selected because of her work helping ambitious leaders confidently succeed without constant self-doubt or working 24/7. 

“There’s always been this golden thread throughout my whole experience, which is helping other people thrive, elevating people, especially women, because we didn’t have much of a voice back then, when I first started out.” 

But Dallara’s expertise in helping others came at a personal cost. Dallara had to learn through challenging personal experiences what happens when the fast-paced world of Web3 creeps ever further into your personal life and what can happen when boundaries are not in place. 

Watch an extended NEAR Foundation video interview with Emily Rose Dallara below.

Burning out  

“I’ve had two burnouts and two layoffs, both related,” says Dallara, from her home in France.  “I just wanted to succeed. I wanted to make all the money that was promised. I wanted to learn as much as I could. And I just didn’t see another way of working. It was a 24/7 grind.”

Dallara began her Web3 journey while living in and working in Bali. “I was very much on the humanitarian side. I did a lot of work in Southeast Asia and Japan, helping with merchant onboarding, and had my own e-commerce platform for women.”

She found a niche helping young female entrepreneurs accept crypto from international clients, creating payment rails for merchants, before joining Bitcoin.com as a marketing manager. A flurry of advisory roles followed, and her CV quickly became a Who’s Who of the crypto community. 

“I just didn’t have the boundaries in place. I didn’t have a support network in place, I didn’t have the experience to prevent that from happening. So I burnt out. And then a bit later when I was a marketing director.” 

Finding a new path

After a period of recovery and reflection, Dallara began to ask herself if she wanted to stay in the industry, and if she did, what would a different path look like. And it was during this period she found that a lot of the clients and colleagues she had worked with had experienced similar issues. 

“Because it’s such a rapidly changing space that’s constantly innovating, they feel that if they don’t stay on top, or they don’t have all the information they need, or they don’t reply to Slack messages all the time, that they’re not going to succeed. That’s what they’re scared of. And so this was a fear that I carried as well. And it took me a long time to unravel that and understand that it wasn’t a valid fear.”

But Dallara used that fear to help her understand what she should do next. After qualifying as an accredited coach, she decided she wanted to help other women learn the lessons she had without having to burn out first. 

“We’re trying to create a bit of a movement. We can’t just go say to the VCs, ‘you need to train the people that you’re invested in as better leaders’. It’s not as simple as that. We have to make people aware first, we can’t make any changes without that.”

Given her experience working at the breakneck speeds of the Web3 world, would she recommend the industry to other women? “It’s a huge opportunity. I would never have been in the roles I’ve been in in web two, it would have been a much, much slower process. It gave me the space to understand what I was really good at, in a really short time because people kept throwing opportunities at me because it was rare to have a woman who was a marketing leader in the space.” 

Dallara advises any women looking at this space to be, above all, curious. “Know that you can make this whatever you want to make it. There’s no rules. You can build whatever you want to build, you can create the role, whatever you want to create. And it’s up to you to determine how you do that. And when. 

The post Women in Web3 Changemakers: Emily Rose Dallara appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

From the winners of the Women in Web3 Changemakers awards being announced to exciting ecosystem developments, here’s a run down on all things NEAR from Collision 2023!! 

ICYMI: Major Announcements @ Collision

NEAR kicked off Collision with a roar, with two major news items rolling hot off the presses yesterday. Here’s the scoop: 

NEAR Foundation and Alibaba Cloud Join Forces 

First off, the NEAR Foundation announced a major partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. The two will collaborate to offer Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) as a service and multi-chain data indexing to NEAR developers, users, and the broader ecosystem. 

The goal is to make building decentralized applications on the BOS a breeze, and working with one of the world’s biggest tech infrastructure companies is a huge step in the right direction. Alibaba Cloud will also enhance plug-and-play capabilities for BOS builders everywhere, from China and APAC to Europe and the Americas.

Winners of the Women of Web3 Changemakers Awards

In other news, the ten winners of the Women in Web3 Changemakers initiative were just announced. These incredible women are leading the charge in the Web3 space, and NEAR Foundation is proud to recognize their outstanding contributions. 

Selected from over 200 nominations and voted for by the public, these were chosen based on their inclusive and innovative ideas, impact within the Web3 space, and their contributions to significant projects. Read the full announcement for NEAR’s Women in Web3 Changemakers winners. 

Highlights from NEAR at Collision 

Geekpay breaks barriers in crypto transactions on NEAR

GeekPay, a crypto payments platform for businesses and freelancers built on NEAR, surpassed $500,000 in total transactions during Collision. It also just hit 205 verified users, companies, and 120 transactions. GeekPay is transforming how companies handle digital currency payments to contractors, eliminating the need for lengthy wallet addresses and providing greater security for cross-border transactions.

“NEAR is a perfect ecosystem and technology for cross-border payments in digital currencies for remote workers and contractors,” said Veronica Korzh, CEO and co-founder of GeekPay.

GeekPay supports a range of digital currencies including NEAR and ETH, including functionality with tracking and analytics, secure payment processing, invoicing, and transaction categorization. GeekPay hurdling the $400,000 transaction mark shows that the future of crypto payments for work is being built on the BOS.

Tenamint launches Toronto Regional Community with a bang

Tenamint, a marketplace for fractionalized trading card collectibles built on the NEAR blockchain, christened the launch of the NEAR Toronto Regional Community during the NEAR Toronto Launch Party. The soiree was held on an iconic yacht, the Yankee Lady, during a sunset cruise for an epic post-event party to cap off Collision.

“We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the NEAR Toronto Regional Community, a vibrant community dedicated to fostering collaboration, innovation, and growth in the Toronto region’s blockchain ecosystem,” said Sal Chaudhry, Tenamint co-founder and Toronto local.

“At the NEAR Toronto Regional Community, we’re on a mission to foster collaboration, education, and entrepreneurial support within the blockchain community,” Sal added. “We aim to empower individuals and businesses in Toronto and beyond to explore, adopt, and thrive in the world of blockchain technology and beyond,”

NEAR after Collision: Onward to ETHCC

Collision 2023 is only beginning, but the BOS momentum won’t stop in Toronto. NEAR will also be at the Ethereum Community Conference (ETHCC) in Paris, from July 19th to 23rd.

From exciting cross-chain discussions to insightful panels, interactive workshops, and pitch events, ETHCC promises to be another remarkable platform for BOS building and the wider NEAR community.

So after immersing yourself in Collision 2023, remember to mark your calendars for NEAR’s presence at ETHCC as well. Here’s to continuing to make waves in Web3 and expanding into the Open Web – with you as the BOS!

The post NEAR at Collision Highlights appeared first on NEAR Protocol.

“These Changemakers show us that together we can make a positive difference and shape the collective good of Web3,” says Marieke Flament, CEO of NEAR Foundation. “We must continue to help one another and nurture a strong, international community that includes both men and women.”

The Women in Web3 Changemakers competition illuminates the groundbreaking work of influential women in the Web3 space. As this platform appreciates the significant strides made by these remarkable women, it’s important to recognize the unique journeys of all ten winners, each of whom has contributed to the evolution of the blockchain industry.

Women behind the success of Web3 honored at Collision

Candidates for the Women in Web3 Changemakers award come from all corners of the globe, each making unique marks on the Web3 ecosystem in their own respective ways. Each of the following women made the final top ten because they’ve carved out a niche, advocated for transformative solutions, and been a part of breakthrough blockchain initiatives.

The full list of winners includes:

• Emily Rose Dallara: Web3 Leadership Coach and Podcast Producer
• Janine Grainger:  Co-founder and CEO, Easy Crypto AI
• Bridget Greenwood: Founder, The Bigger Pie
• Cathy Hackl: Chief Futurist and Chief Metaverse Officer at Journey
• Erica Kang: Founder and CEO, KrptoSeoul
• Irina Karagyaur: Founder and Director, BQ9
• Veronica Korzh: Co-founder and CEO, Geekpay
• Zoe Leavitt: Founder and CEO, Glass
• Alana Podrx: Founder and CEO, Eve Wealth
• Yaliwe Soko: Chair, United Africa Blockchain Association

Handpicked by public vote from a pool of hundreds of applications, these Changemakers were assessed on criteria of inclusion, influence, and innovation. Each woman demonstrated the ability to drive societal good, make a substantial impact in the Web3 community, and contribute to critical projects, uplifting the global female presence in the Web3 landscape.

“The Changemakers show that we can forge our own path into the ecosystem and create a collective narrative that has the power to break down barriers to entry and make Web3 more inclusive for everyone,” Flament continues. “I’m extremely honored to be championing this initiative and to spotlight these exceptionally talented women.”

The diverse journeys of Women in Web3 Changemakers

All ten winners of the Women in Web3 Changemakers awards come from a variety of backgrounds, geographies, and skill sets. Yaliwe Soko, for instance, is championing opportunities in Web3 to alleviate poverty and provide opportunities across Africa. Others like Cathy Hackle are icons in spheres like the metaverse.

Erica Kang, meanwhile, spearheads KryptoSeoul and was responsible for  BUIDL ASIA 2022 conference, attended by ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin and NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin. And through her organization The Bigger Pie, Bridget Greenwood is building an entire support ecosystem to advance both women and minorities in blockchain and crypto.

Another changemaker, Emily Rose Dallara, is a Web3 leadership coach and podcast producer, who uses a Holistic Growth Coaching method to help overwhelmed leaders thrive — without the burnout. Helping to make digital assets more accessible, Kiwi-born Janine Grainger is the co-founder and CEO of Easy Crypto, a simple and secure way for anyone to get involved in crypto. Irina Karagyaur, the founder and director of BQ9, is working to turn great ideas into even better Web3 products through her crypto-fintech boutique advisory firm. 

With Geekpay, co-founder and CEO Veronica Korzh is streamlining and securing digital payments without the stress and need for long wallet addresses. Zoe Leavitt, the founder and CEO of Glass, has set up shop in the loyalty space, allowing customers to level up their nights out by earning rewards from their favorite alcohol brands. And Alana Podrx, the founder and CEO of Eve Wealth, has created a community of women who share portfolios, co-invest, and support each other in self-guided wealth management through peer-to-peer learning. 

Celebrating the individual successes and collective efforts of these Changemakers reflects the massive impact and influence of women in Web3. From Africa to Asia, from the metaverse and marketing to crypto media and education, each winner has blazed her unique trail and is impacting the Web3 ecosystem, inspiring both men and women to do the same.

“I’m grateful for the hundreds of nominations we received from peers and employers who took the time to highlight the many achievements that the global female workforce has made to their organizations,” Flament continues. “By casting their ballot, the international community has shown that the contributions of women are being noticed.” 

By celebrating the contributions of these Changemakers, the NEAR Foundation underscores its commitment to diversity, inclusion, and innovation in the Web3 space. As females in crypto continue to make strides, it’s vital to recognize and appreciate the efforts of women who are paving the way for an equitable and inclusive future in Web3 and beyond.

The post Web3’s Leading Ladies: NEAR Foundation Honors 2023’s Women Changemakers  appeared first on NEAR Protocol.