Builder Residency
A co-living & collaboration for the commons program to develop decentralized infrastructure.
October 24 - November 14, 2025
Live, work, and build alongside peers shaping the future of real-world crypto tools.
For those working on tools for the real world.
Builders
Researchers
System Designers
Set in Buenos Aires
Timed right before Devconnect, the residency supports focused work, peer exchange, dedicated mentorship, and public visibility—giving builders the structure and network to accelerate their work.
Our riverside venue just outside Buenos Aires has shared indoor and outdoor spaces, a pool, and plenty of greenery. It’s a quiet setting for work, collaboration, and rest.
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The right conditions for deep thinking and practical progress.
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Structure
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Collaboration
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Shared vision for impact in public goods funding
Funding the Commons is the best Public Goods Community in crypto and their Public Goods residency is easily one of the top residencies in our space. I was able to exponentially accelerate my product, meet incredible talent and make lifelong friends good as family.
Arun Philips
DreamStarter.xyz
formerly Polygon
RealFi = Real-World Finance Infrastructure
RealFi:
Building for the Real World
Our third Builder Residency leans into the theme of RealFi: building crypto tools that connect meaningfully with real-world finance, coordination, and access. We're interested in projects that are usable, needed, and grounded in reality: merchant payments, shared treasury tools, cross-border remittance, and infrastructure that makes public goods funding visible, practical, and trusted.
RealFi isn’t DeFi 2.0. It’s about designing infrastructure that works where systems are broken, unreliable, or simply missing. That might mean helping people send money across borders, access savings without a bank, run a local treasury, or verify identity without handing over everything.
This residency is an invitation to build with friction in mind: to work through trade-offs, local constraints, and actual needs. It’s for builders who care less about perfect models and more about what gets used. Buenos Aires offers a setting where those questions are real—where crypto can meet cash, coordination, and community in the same room.
RealFi Hack Tracks
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Funding Systems
Transparent, flexible ways to allocate shared resources.
Financial Access:
Savings, payments, and money tools for people outside traditional rails.
Coordination Infrastructure:
Tools for groups to act, govern, and respond—online or off.
Identity & Trust:
Privacy-first systems for verification, reputation, and credentials.
AI for Public Use:
Auditable, small-scale models that serve real community needs.
Climate and Commons Governance:
Bioregional governance and climate-aligned infrastructure.
Residency Tracks
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Funding Systems
New ways to move and allocate shared resources: grants, treasuries, quadratic flows, and programmable funding.
Financial Access
Payments, savings, remittances, credit, and stablecoin tools designed for everyday use where traditional rails fall short.
Coordination & Governance
Tools for collective action, civic participation, shared ownership, and bottom-up governance in both digital and physical communities.
Identity & Trust
Verification, credentials, and portable reputation systems that prioritize privacy and autonomy.
AI for Public Use
Auditable, open AI models built to support coordination, decision-making, and public infrastructure.
Climate & Commons Governance
Systems for tracking, managing, and protecting shared environmental resources through open data and collaborative governance.
Program Structure
A focused container for creative work, real-world testing, and collective momentum.
Weekly sprints & peer reviews
Thematic workshops with mentors and partners
On the ground media and storytelling
Local field trips and cross-residency exchange
Wellness practices, support, and collective reflection
By the end of the residency
Participants will have advanced a prototype, forge new collaborations, and showcase their work during Devconnect week.
Target Builder Profile
We’ll select around 20 residents through an open call and invited cohort. Technical and non-technical builders are welcome, with a project in progress or a strong idea ready to develop. You should be comfortable working in a collaborative, co-living setting. We especially invite applicants from Latin America or building for the region.
Developers
Designers
Protocol Engineers
Researchers
Economists
Civic Technologists
What to expect as a builder
You’ll join a remote cohort of developers, designers, and researchers all building toward one goal: deployable infrastructure. To get there, we’ve designed the hackathon to be structured but flexible, with just enough scaffolding to help you ship.
Teams of 1–5 builders
Join solo or with a small team. If you're coming in alone, no problem—many people are. You’ll have chances to connect with others before and during the hack if you want to team up.
Weekly office hours with experienced builders
Talk through your challenges, get unstuck, or pressure-test an idea. You'll have access to people who've built core infrastructure, launched projects, and navigated the edge cases.
Hands-on workshops from supporting organizations
Expect sessions on technical tools, design principles, real-world use cases, and emerging coordination patterns—from people building in the open and learning as they go.
Midpoint check-in to share progress and get feedback:
Halfway through the hack, we’ll bring everyone together to share early demos, ask for help, and exchange ideas. It's a moment to recalibrate, connect, and build momentum heading into the final stretch.
All coordination through DevSpot:
DevSpot is going to be our home base. It’s where you’ll share updates, ask questions, post deliverables, and stay in sync with mentors, teammates, and the rest of the hack community.
Timeline
Sep
10
Monday
Applications close
Oct
24
Friday
Residency Begins
Nov
14
Friday
Residency Ends
Nov
19
Wednesday
Project Showcase at FtC Buenos Aires
Community partner highlight
5000+ CITIZENS &
400+ START-UPS
Crecimiento is Argentina’s powerhouse for Web3 innovation—mobilizing talent, capital, and community across LATAM. Its Aleph pop-up city in Buenos Aires brings together founders, builders, investors, and public-sector allies to co-create decentralized tools, from payment rails to self-sovereign identity.
As fellow members of the Protocol Labs network and co-builders of the residency, we partner with Crecimiento to anchor participants in a thriving local ecosystem that’s shaping Argentina’s onchain future and proving how public-goods infrastructure can take root in the real world.
This is your Testimonial quote. Give your customers the stage to tell the world how great you are!
This is your Testimonial quote. Give your customers the stage to tell the world how great you are!
This is your Testimonial quote. Give your customers the stage to tell the world how great you are!
Areas of Focus
We supported teams working on projects in areas including (but not limited to) the areas described below. See links for examples of projects our grantee community has worked on.
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Coordination and Funding infrastructure
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Stealth Donations & Meta-Addresses
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Aggregation indexer for civic and public data
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Sybil Attack Detection AI/ML Tool
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Trustless apps
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Quantitative and qualitative Impact Evaluators
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Hypercerts: Impact Certification
Projects & Achievements from Berlin Residency
Residents contributed to the public goods funding ecosystem through their projects. The outputs included an open-source software tool, library, or system, along with a well-documented repository. We also encouraged participants to share their knowledge through blog posts or presentations at future Funding the Commons events
Past Hackathon
Virtual Hackathon 2023
From 1-30 September 2023, Funding the Commons hosted its first-ever Builder Residency — a transformative, month-long, immersive experience that took place in Berlin, Germany.
Attendees experienced the power of collaboration and innovation as builders and hackers came together to focus on the advancement of public goods funding infrastructure, impact evaluators, impact certification systems, and other elements of the public goods funding stack in both Web2 and Web3 applications.
We value open-source and the outputs of the residency are accessible and usable by the wider community, which is why we invited and accepted highly collaboration-minded individuals into our first (but certainly not last) residency program.
Testimonials
Community Love
Robert Rose
Speaker
This is your Testimonial section paragraph. It’s a great place to tell users how much you value your customers and their feedback.
Alex Smith
Robert Rose
This is your Testimonial section paragraph. It’s a great place to tell users how much you value your customers and their feedback.
Drew Carlyle
Robert Rose
This is your Testimonial section paragraph. It’s a great place to tell users how much you value your customers and their feedback.
Jessica Davis
Robert Rose
This is your Testimonial section paragraph. It’s a great place to tell users how much you value your customers and their feedback.