Black
in Blockchain.
A transcontinental gathering of builders, founders, researchers & artists rewriting the protocols of ownership — from Lagos to Port-au-Prince, Montreal to Brixton.
We've always been early — this time, the ledger remembers.
Black in Blockchain is a collective, a correspondence, and a commons. We convene Black professionals working at the frontier of decentralized systems — protocol engineers in Nairobi, DAO governors in Dakar, smart-contract auditors in Atlanta, NFT artists in Kingston, DeFi researchers in Paris.
For five centuries the diaspora has been a network without nodes. Blockchain is the first infrastructure we can own collectively, across oceans, without asking. This is not a conference. It is the beginning of a shared memory.
Chapters across the diaspora.
América del Norte
From Harlem's first crypto collectives to Toronto's Web3 founder circles — the longest continuous line of Black builders on-chain. Home to our founding assembly and the Montreal hub.
Toronto · Houston · D.C.
Blocks we remember.
Not every entry on the ledger is a transaction. Some are arrivals. A partial timeline of Black presence in decentralized computing — told in blocks.
The genesis block.
Satoshi mines block zero. The ledger begins. Somewhere in Montreal, a sixteen-year-old reads the white paper at a library terminal and doesn't sleep for two nights.
First Black Bitcoin meetups.
Small circles form in Atlanta, Harlem, and Oakland — mostly men, mostly self-taught, all early. The number of Black wallets is measurable. It is not yet a movement.
Lagos boots up.
Nigeria becomes the world's second-largest P2P Bitcoin market per capita. Stablecoins quietly become the de facto savings technology for a generation.
The NFT inflection.
Black artists from Port-au-Prince to Johannesburg sell directly to collectors for the first time in their careers. The gallery was never coming. The wallet was.
Protocols by us.
The first cohort of Black-founded L1s, L2s, and DAOs raise institutional rounds. We stop being users of the infrastructure and become its authors.
B.I.B. is signed.
37 founders, engineers, and researchers sign the founding assembly across four continents. The collective opens membership. This page, this screen, is part of that block.
You arrive here.
2,800 members. 37 chapters. One collective. A summit in Lagos this December. The ledger continues. Your signature is the next line.
What we build together.
Six pillars, one purpose: concentrate Black capital, knowledge, and signal inside the infrastructure of the next century.
Founder circles
Private rooms for Black founders raising for protocol, infrastructure, and consumer Web3. Quarterly convenings, warm intros, deal-flow discipline.
Fellowships & diaspora fund
Paid residencies for engineers, auditors, and researchers at leading labs — paired with a member-governed fund writing first checks into Black-founded Web3 companies globally. Six months inside the machine; small cheques, long memory.
Policy & advocacy
Representation at the tables where rules are written — Lagos to Brussels to Washington. Policy briefs, testimony, principled noise.
Data & research
An annual state-of-the-diaspora-on-chain report. Adoption indexes, developer pipelines, remittance flows, and capital trajectories — measured, published, open.
Aligned orbits
A living directory of Black-led and Black-centric collectives, DAOs, funds, and institutions working adjacent to ours. The diaspora is a network; we name the nodes.
The dispatch
A weekly newsletter distilling the week in blockchain, Black leadership, and diaspora economies. Editorial, specific, unhurried. Sent Fridays.
The numbers behind the ledger.
Selected findings from the annual state-of-the-diaspora-on-chain report. Q1 2026 edition, partial. Figures are B.I.B. research estimates.
Crypto adoption — % of adult population holding or using crypto, 2026
Source · B.I.B. ResearchBlack devs on-chain
Active Black developers contributing to tracked protocols and repos globally.
Growth trajectory
Members · 68× growth since founding.
Capital deployed
Into Black-founded protocols, infrastructure, and consumer Web3 in 2025.
Organisations you should know.
A curated, living directory of Black-led and Black-centric collectives, DAOs, funds, and institutions operating in decentralized systems. The diaspora is a network — these are its named nodes.
Black Women Blockchain Council
Training, certification, and advocacy for Black women entering Web3 careers. The original and the standard.
Visit · bwbc.ioDecentralized Africa
Pan-African DAO coordinating protocol research, developer grants, and policy across fourteen nations.
Visit · decentralized.africaAfropolitan
A digital nation building on-chain infrastructure for the African diaspora. Membership, governance, and cultural capital.
Visit · afropolitan.ioBlack Blockchain Summit
The annual gathering where policy, protocol, and community converge. Founded by Sinclair Skinner. Still the blueprint.
Visit · blackblockchainsummit.comCulture DAO
A capital collective investing in Black artists and founders building on-chain culture infrastructure.
Visit · culturedao.xyzAfrican Digital Asset Framework
Policy coordination body across 12 African central banks developing shared digital asset regulatory standards.
Visit · adaf.africaBlack in DeFi
Researcher commons for Black professionals working in decentralized finance. Weekly calls, open-access papers.
Visit · blackindefi.xyzCaribbean Coin Guild
Artist and engineer guild spanning the anglophone and francophone Caribbean. Remittance, culture, sovereignty.
Visit · cccg.networkThe Genesis Archive
IPFS-hosted archive of Black contributions to decentralized computing. Papers, repos, interviews, oral histories.
Visit · genesis.archiveThe feed.
Ethereum Foundation announces $40M grant pool for African L2 infrastructure.
ETH ResearchNigeria's central bank greenlights cNGN stablecoin — first sovereign-backed launch in Africa.
Bloomberg AfricaAdaeze N. joins Coinbase board — first Black woman appointed in the exchange's history.
The BlockSolana passes 10M daily active wallets — 40% from African and Caribbean nodes.
Dune AnalyticsRwanda launches Pan-African blockchain sandbox with Ghana, Senegal, Kenya.
Africa ReportB.I.B. fellow Amara O. raises $22M Series A for Lagos-based DEX Protocol Kofi.
TechCrunchHaiti passes digital remittance act — USDC corridor now legally recognized for transfers.
AyiboPostBase announces "Africa Track" — dedicated infrastructure team in Accra and Lagos.
Base BlogJean-Claude M. named Chief Economist at Stellar Development Foundation.
Stellar NewsroomSouth Africa's SARS begins accepting capital gains in crypto — first G20 nation.
Daily MaverickCelo completes merge to Ethereum L2 — mobile-first chain now EVM-equivalent.
Celo BlogTonantzin Carmona publishes Black on the Block — the definitive history of Black crypto since 2009.
Brookings PressThe faces behind the ledger.
We used to build for platforms that would shut us out. Now we build the platforms. That's the only difference — and the only one that matters.
My grandmother sent money home through Western Union for forty years. I wrote the smart contracts that retired it. I think about her every time a block confirms.
The diaspora has always been a network. We just never had a shared ledger. Now we do. Everything before this was a rough draft.
Find your chain.
The collective convenes by geography and by protocol. Join the working group for the chain you build on — weekly calls, private channels, member-only AMAs.
Ethereum
Solana
Base
Bitcoin
Polygon
Celo — Africa's chain
Stellar
Arbitrum
The gathering.
Lagos — the source
Year 03 · Return to Africa. Three days on protocol, policy, and pleasure at the edge of the Atlantic.
Montreal — the hub
Mid-year convening. Private founder dinners, on-chain karaoke, a closing set by a legend to be announced.
Kingston — the island
Caribbean regional · dancehall, DeFi, and a day on the water. Open to members and one guest.
London — the ledger
European regional · policy salon at the Barbican, Afro-futurist showcase at 180 Strand, closing dinner in Brixton.
Nairobi — rising
Technical summit. Engineers, auditors, protocol researchers. The unofficial headline of Africa Blockchain Week.
We are waiting
for you.
Verification takes roughly 72 hours. The work begins the moment you sign.
Apply to the collective