The Blockchain movement is continuing to surge forward in Costa Rica as this past weekend Club Union hosted the Tico Blockchain conference in the heart of San Jose. This marks a monumental step for the Blockchain movement as Tico Blockchain was the first major Blockchain conference in Costa Rica. There was roughly 175 in attendance, that came together to share their passions and dreams for a decentralized world. The attendees ranged from permaculture enthusiasts that are using Blockchain to save the planet all the way to government officials that believe Blockchain has the power to change how government works.

Tico Blockchain Schedule

The main goal of Tico Blockchain was to increase exposure of local projects and to really just start a conversation in the country about Blockchain. The conversations were centered around how Blockchain can be adapted and adopted by a wide range of sectors and industries to benefit consumers and producers alike. The major Blockchain protocols that where up front and center at Tico Blockchain were Bitcoin, Ethereum, EOS, Hyper Ledger, Nimiq and Lisk. These protocols and platforms were touched on in many different talks. The topics ranged from security to scalability. Each of the protocols demonstrating their benefits and use cases.

Jake Simmons of Lisk Central America represented Lisk and delivered a talk focused on scaling blockchains horizontally with the Lisk Blockchain application platform. He gave an overview of the current Blockchain ecosystem and what the current scalability limits are of each of the major protocols. He also highlighted the scalability needs of current day applications and processers like Facebook, Twitter and Visa. These two overviews really accentuated the need and demand to find a viable scaling solution when it comes to Blockchains. The presentation also reviewed micro-service oriented architecture and how this design pattern is used in current day web development to scale applications and their infrastructure horizontally. Simmons articulated how this design pattern can be adapted to Blockchain applications in the form of side chains and demonstrated how they could be used in a similar fashion to scale Blockchain applications horizontally. One example he gave was that you could have an application like Facebook and have many sidechains. Each chain controlling one small segment of the application. For example: One chain for likes, one for posts, one for comments and one for events. The presentation went over very well and generated a lot of questions about Lisk and the proposed sidechain architecture. You can find his full presentation below:

Lisk Central America at Tico Blockchain 2019

Jake Simmons also took some time out at Tico Blockchain 2019 to speak with Ricardo Carranza of Nimiq to talk about the event and his experiences in the Blockchain space. You can find the interview below:

Lisk Ambasador Interviewd by Nimiq Community Manager

Tico Blockchain was put on and organized by the Blockchain Association of Costa Rica and sponsored by Nimiq. Special thanks goes out to Otto Mora and Daniel Rojas who are on the board of directors of the Blockchain association of Costa Rica and were the main drivers in making Tico Blockchain 2019 happen. After everything was all said and done, Daniel Rojas said the following about the event.

“The Tico Blockchain event was the first organized event of its fashion . It took a lot of coordination with the venue, speakers and sponsors.”

Daniel also had the opportunity to converse with the attendees throughout the day and was able to gage the overall consensus of the event.

“When I asked the attendees, most of them said that the event met and exceeded their expectation. From the speakers and topics, to the overall organization of the event.”

Otto Mora’s main goal for the event was to get regulators and the Central Banks involved in the conversation about Blockchain and he feels he accomplished this goal and added the following about the event.

“Tico Blockchain was truly a unique event in Costa Rica, that I hope will foster a bigger Blockchain culture in the country. We were happy to see participants from the Central Bank and regulators engaging in this conversation about how we can benefit Costa Rica with the adoption of Blockchain Technologies.”

Overall the event was a big success and brought many different Blockchain enthusiasts together. There is already a lot of buzz for next years Tico Blockchain conference and the ideas are flowing how we can make it even bigger and better than this year’s. Lastly I would also like to give a special thanks to Xavier Fernández of EOS Costa Rica and Ricardo Carranza of Nimiq for helping make this event possible. It was a community effort to get this conference off the ground and make it a big success. Keep an eye open for big things to come from Costa Rica involving Blockchain and be assured that Lisk will be a big part of that thanks to Lisk Central America!