Dear Earth Citizen, 

The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index rated Venezuela as having the worst rule of law in the world. It is a country in chaos and where Democracy Earth Foundation will be placing intensive focus in the coming months.

In the face of the regime’s widely condemned snap election planned for May 20 we launch the #VzlaProponeCambio (Venezuela Proposes Change) initiative, in collaboration with human rights and Venezuelan citizen activists, to provide Venezuelans with new ways to raise their voices in the fight for democracy. Read a message from the team here (English | Spanish).

Sovereign Pilot in Venezuela

As a political action, #VzlaProponeCambio is both autonomous and inclusive – by Venezuelans, for Venezuelans, to be heard inside the country as well as internationally. To provide new democratic governance alternatives for Venezuela beyond today’s corrupted political-electoral conjuncture gets at the core of the Democracy Earth mission. In doing so, we are creating spaces for the consensus of ideas and the consolidation of proposals, and fighting for a free Venezuela. Stay updated on the  #VzlaProponeCambio website and stay tuned for more information on how to participate and follow this initiative.

Development Update

A Hack Weekend brought the extended team of European coders together in Paris mid-month; we’re proud to announce that momentum since then has produced a working dAPP and massive updates to our v1.0 initial release with greatly improved scalability. We deployed a Blockstack login, activated a jurisdiction feature as well as an agora feature with mobile editor, and more. We encourage you to visit the alpha test web app at vote.democracy.earth, experiment with the Twitter-like interface, make a proposal, place a vote…or just leave your feedback in the timeline.

 
We hope you enjoy this sneak peak of the work from our extraordinary open source UI/UX design team leaning into the challenge of coding the blockchain app onboarding experience in a decentralized world where the user is the customer instead of the product.

Token Pre-Sale and ICO

With the pace of our planned pilot studies and deployments, we will be giving ourselves an additional month to test and develop Smart Contracts, therefore the public token sale is now targeted for July-August timeframe, with a multi-country founder’s tour announced prior. Sign up for notifications of the DEF ICO Founder’s Tour and regular updates on other DEF happenings.

The pre-sale  will remain open until the cap is reached. Verified accredited investors can start the pre-sale SAFT execution process; and a review copy of the SAFT can be found here. As a reminder: although the pre-sale is open to CoinList-verified accredited global investors (excluding NY and China) the public token sale will be open to all. Join our Telegram ICO Group to chat directly with a cofounder.

Democracy Earth Around the World ??????????

• Santi Siri took part in an invitation only Decentralized and Encrypted NYC, and was a guest at Yale, the Harvard Kennedy School and Boston College during Boston Blockchain Week. 
• Pia Mancini talked Cities as Open Collectives at Civic Tech Toronto while Eduardo Medina attended PutinCon in New York. 
• Herb Stephens was a panelist on the World Affairs program “Blockchains: A Tool For Social Good?”
• Santi Siri filmed this Ask An Expert series of video Q&A on how not to screw up the the promising future of blockchain technology. 
• Democracy Earth Ambassadors made appearances in Peru, Chicago, Ukraine, and Brussels.
• We attended the annual Skoll World Forum at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School in London, where we were reminded by Skoll Foundation President Sally Osberg in the most relatable way possible that connection is not just a tool but a human impulse, transcending the physical borders of the nation states that, increasingly, are less relevant to our human future than the borderless commons of the Internet that connects us all. 

Next ???????????? 

• We’re headed to the Human Rights Foundation’s Oslo Freedom Forum later this month
• Paula Berman will teach an online course on Blockchain in the Public Sector.
• Eduardo Medina will represent DEF throughout Latin America, speaking at events in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and attending ETHBuenosAires – check our Facebook Events page for details.
• Alex Jupiter will present Sovereign in the GovTech Pioneers pitchfest in Vienna.
• Santi Siri will be visiting Israel in late May.

DEF Ambassadors Program

We welcomed three new Ambassadors since our last newsletter: Hannah Wolfman-Jones is raising awareness of liquid democracy in the greater Chicago ?? area, Justin Graside who heads the Partido Digital Uruguay ??; and Andrew Chambers of Perth ??, a demtech activist of more than 35 years. Stay tuned for more ambassador announcements and important program developments soon!

Listen Up! Podcasts

• ?Santi Siri is interviewed on the BlockCrunch podcast talks Geopolitics and the Blockchain
• ?Pia Mancini on Evolving To New Systems of Power on the Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future podcast
• ?Herb Stephens on Democracy Salon talking Organizing and Accountability on the Blockchain

Thank you for reading – follow us on Medium for some exciting announcements very soon! Thank you as always for being part of the Democracy Earth community.

Democracy Earth Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in San Francisco, California. Democracy.Earth. On twitter.
Donate: opencollective.com/democracyearth
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