Project name: Rootstock Builder Hub, LABITCONF Buenos Aires 2026 Submission date: 21 September 2026 Total requested: $20,000 USD-equivalent
Delegates and stRIF holders: we’d like your thoughts before this goes on-chain. Questions, pushback on the targets, or suggestions on who should be in that space are all welcome in this thread.
Classification
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Project stage: Growth
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Sector: Community & Ecosystem Growth / User Onboarding
Target audience
Track A, Builders. Early- and mid-stage Bitcoin/Web3 developers and technical founders across LATAM, plus existing RootstockCollective grantees who cohost the space. Labitconf runs a dedicated Developers stage and a technical Workshop stage; this is the population of the Hub’s 1:1 sessions and deployment support target.
Track B, Users. The ~10,500 general attendees, overwhelmingly retail crypto users. 64% of LATAM crypto activity runs through centralised exchanges, so this is a large pool of holders who have never self-custodied or staked. This is the population the wallet-activation and stRIF-staking targets address.
Team information
RootstockLabs is a key contributor to Rootstock, Bitcoin’s Financial Infrastructure for lending, yield and onchain capital markets. The global team develops and commercializes the institutional infrastructure that helps put Bitcoin to work as productive capital, partnering with leading custodians, asset managers and financial institutions to enable Bitcoin-backed lending, tokenized real-world assets and onchain financial strategies.
Rootstock is secured by over 80% of Bitcoin’s hash power and has maintained 100% uptime since 2018. Today, bitcoiners, builders and institutions use Rootstock across BTC-collateralized lending, stablecoins and emerging onchain capital markets. More than 200 dApps have been deployed on Rootstock, from BTCFi protocols like Sushiswap, Layerzero and Oku to major institutional players like Mercado Bitcoin, Animoca Brands and Paystand.
Team
Proposing entity RootstockLabs, submitting on behalf of the Rootstock builder ecosystem. RootstockLabs is the largest builder on Rootstock and will contribute all on-site staffing, coordination and logistics as an in-kind contribution. No grant funds are requested for travel, accommodation or staff time.
Technical capability on the ground RootstockLabs’ Buenos Aires engineering presence means the Hub is staffed by people who can actually help a developer deploy, not only explain.
Ecosystem presence RootstockLabs’ founding team and Rootstock network initial developers are expected on the ground for the conference and available to the Hub’s programming, a level of access no individual booth at this event can offer its cohosts.
RootstockCollective Foundation support Tamara Lerner attends on behalf of RootstockCollective Foundation, independently of the RootstockLabs delivery team, and will verify the on-site figures reported at Milestone 2. RootstockCollective is also represented on the stand itself, so attendees engage with the Collective directly.
Cohosting projects To be confirmed through the open call.
Traction and metrics
Part A: the venue’s traction
Labitconf’s metrics. 10.5K attendees, 420 international speakers, 256 talks, 16 countries, 7 stages, 58 sponsors, 26 universities and institutions in its reach. Labitconf sits inside Tech Week Buenos Aires: 10 days, 27 events, 100K+ attendees in 2025.
Relevant audience structure. A dedicated Developers stage, a technical Workshop stage, an Intro stage for newcomers, and a separate B2B business area. The event is already segmented along the two tracks this proposal targets.
Wider platform. Labitconf sits inside Tech Week Buenos Aires (21 Oct to 1 Nov), which drew over 100,000 attendees across 27 events in 2025. Exhibitors may run their own side events within that framework.
Market context (organiser’s figures, Chainalysis 2026). Argentina has a 20% crypto adoption rate, the highest in Latin America, and 80% of all LatAm crypto ownership sits in six countries with Argentina leading them.
Part B: RootstockLabs’ track record at this venue
RootstockLabs has had a presence at Labitconf since 2023 and appears on the event’s previous-editions sponsor wall. Three editions have produced a consistent pattern:
What this event delivers. Brand engagement: the 2025 booth narrative and the Still Early Café activation performed by RootstockLabs drove substantial engagement, and a join-our-Telegram merch mechanic produced measurable community growth. Thought leadership: RootstockLabs consistently secured speaking slots, interviews and press; the 2025 Buenos Aires programme generated over 15 media articles including 13 tier-1 outlets (combined with DevConnect BA, held the same fortnight). Partnerships: day one reliably produces integration and partner conversations.
What the audience tells us. The 2025 post-event review found the attending audience to be predominantly non-technical, and heavily retail on day two. That is a well-understood profile for this event, and it shapes what a stand can realistically convert: infrastructure speaks to builders, and this crowd is not primarily builders.
What changes this year. The Collective has a product this audience can act on directly. Staking takes ten minutes, requires no development work, and connects an attendee to the builders the treasury funds. That is a different proposition from anything available at this event before, and it is why this proposal sits with the Collective.
Grant request
Total requested: $20,000 USD-equivalent, paid in USDRIF per standard Collective disbursement, released across three milestones tied to acquisition and conversion outcomes rather than event costs. A progress report for each milestone is posted to the RootstockCollective Discourse forum during that milestone’s week.
Milestone 1: pre-event builder pipeline and secure space. $15,000 (75%, on approval)
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Bilingual (ES/EN) “Rootstock Quickstart” onboarding kit published and distributed to Labitconf’s builder/developer attendee list
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Secure builder hub to promote to RootstockCollective builders and confirm attendance, including applications from at least 3 builders to cohost alongside RootstockCollective
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Builder Hub space design and on-site staffing plan finalized
Milestone 2: on-site Builder Hub activation. $3,000 (15%, on delivery of on-site KPIs)
30 to 31 October 2026, Buenos Aires
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Staffed Builder Hub running structured 1:1 technical office hours, mainnet-deployment sessions and ecosystem workshops across both days
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Live showcase slot for 3 to 5 existing Rootstock grant recipients, turning current grantees into ecosystem messengers on-site
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Target: 40+ 1:1 technical sessions delivered; 25+ new wallet activations or testnet-to-mainnet deployments logged during the window
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Staking campaign with 150+ new stakers in the total campaign period, each airdropped 20 RIF plus 0.000037 rBTC for gas so they can stake on the spot. Capped at 4,000 RIF and 0.0074 rBTC, enough for 200 wallets, funded by the Collective independently of this grant
Milestone 3: post-event conversion and reporting. $2,000 (10%, 30 days post-event)
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Follow-up outreach converting Hub contacts into Discord members, grants-forum sign-ups or grant pre-applications. Target: 10+ pre-applications or forum threads opened
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Public recap report published to the RootstockCollective Discourse forum during the milestone week, with a full KPI readout for stRIF-holder transparency
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Case studies on 2 to 3 standout builders engaged at the Hub, published as ecosystem content
Mission and vision
This is not event sponsorship. RootstockCollective’s grants exist to fund measurable ecosystem growth: new wallets, new mainnet transactions, new builders shipping on Rootstock. The guidelines are explicit that funded work has to show that kind of outcome, not just visibility.
RootstockLabs organizes and staffs a Rootstock-branded community section at Labitconf, funded by RootstockCollective and representing the whole Rootstock community, and invites builders from across the ecosystem to cohost, showcasing their own projects to Labitconf’s attendees at a fraction of what an individual booth or sponsorship would otherwise cost each of them.
RootstockLabs handles the venue logistics, space design and on-site coordination end-to-end; cohosting builders simply bring their product and get direct, structured access to the real users, developers and investors in the room. That’s the growth mechanism: each cohosting builder walks away with new users and connections for their own project, and pooling the cost across many projects, alongside the grant, is what makes this dramatically cheaper, and more measurable, than any one project sponsoring alone.
LABITCONF is simply the highest-density concentration of exactly those people anywhere in Rootstock’s core LATAM market this year: 300+ speakers, thousands of attendees, 16+ countries represented. Rather than buying a sponsor logo or a booth, this proposal funds a shared, cohosted builder showcase that treats the conference as a distribution channel, not a destination: an open cohosting invitation and pre-event pipeline, an on-site activation measured in user connections and deployments rather than booth traffic, and a 30-day conversion window that feeds straight into the existing Collective Grants pipeline. Every dollar maps to a growth metric the community already tracks, wallets, deployments and grants-pipeline sign-ups, so this is accountable to stRIF holders in exactly the same way as any DeFi or tooling grant.
Product details
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Physical. A Rootstock-branded community section representing the Rootstock community, funded by RootstockCollective and with the Collective represented on the stand, within (or adjacent to) Labitconf’s exhibitor zone. Built as a shared showcase space with rotating demo stations and presentation slots so multiple ecosystem builders can cohost and showcase their own projects to attendees, rather than a single passive booth
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Cohosting model. RootstockLabs covers and runs the venue logistics, space design, staffing and on-site coordination; an open call invites RootstockCollective builders to apply for a cohosting slot, so participating in Labitconf costs each builder a fraction of what an individual booth or sponsorship would
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Digital. QR-driven flow at each builder’s demo station linking attendees straight to that project’s product, plus a shared entry point to the Rootstock Developer Portal quickstart, testnet faucet and Collective Grants application page
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Localization. All on-site and pre-event materials bilingual (ES/EN) for the LATAM audience
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Integration. Attendee connections and sign-ups per cohosting project tracked centrally so results are auditable by the community after the event
Description
For builders. Grant-stage projects on Rootstock have products and no distribution. The cheapest independent presence at LATAM’s largest crypto event is $5,000 for two square metres, unreachable for a project operating on a $20 to 35K grant. The result is that the builders funded by the Collective are systematically absent from the region’s biggest room, while the ones who can self-fund buy their own booths. The ecosystem shows up fragmented, or not at all.
For the Collective. RootstockCollective has roughly 3,000 stRIF holders. Meanwhile 64% of Latin American crypto activity runs through centralised exchanges, a very large population of holders in Rootstock’s core region who have never self-custodied, let alone staked or voted. The largest annual concentration of those people walks past Rootstock every year without being converted.
The audience here is heavily retail and, per the 2025 review, predominantly non-technical. Infrastructure is a builder proposition, so a protocol stand has limited purchase on someone who is not going to write a contract. Staking is different: ten minutes, no development, and a visible link between a person’s stake and the builders it funds.
Solution
The visitor path. A conference attendee comes to the Hub, opens or connects a wallet, and stakes RIF. A screen shows which projects the Collective’s treasury is currently funding, and one of those founders is standing at the next table, demoing. The loop the Collective runs onchain, compressed into ten minutes and three metres.
The builder path. Rootstock ecosystem projects apply through an open call for a rotating half-day demo slot, with conference passes from the Collective’s allocation. A grant-stage project gets in front of 10,000 attendees for a fraction of the $5,000 entry price, and leaves with its own contacts, attributed and handed back.
RootstockCollective funds the space. RootstockLabs runs, staffs and coordinates it at no cost to the grant. Attribution is attached at the point of contact, a unique code per demo station, so both paths produce verifiable onchain outcomes rather than estimates.
Unique value proposition
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One grant, a cohort’s distribution. Cost pooling means this funds reach for four to eight projects, not one.
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No staffing cost. RootstockLabs contributes the people; every grant dollar goes to space, materials and incentives.
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The mechanism is the product. This is not a stand that explains the Collective, it is the Collective’s own loop running live, with the funded builders physically present as proof.
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Verifiable by anyone. The attributed address cohort is published; the community checks the chain rather than trusting a report.
Alternatives considered
Each builder sponsors individually. Cost to the Collective: $0. Reach for grant-stage builders: only self-funded projects. Outcome: fragmented presence, and the Collective’s own grantees excluded.
RootstockLabs-only booth. Cost to the Collective: $0. Reach: none. Outcome: brand reach without ecosystem participation or a retail conversion path.
Larger sponsor tier ($50 to 75K). Cost to the Collective: above the $35K cap. Reach: high. Outcome: priced on billboards and media naming, which fails the guidelines.
Equivalent spend on paid digital. Cost to the Collective: $20,000. Reach: none. Outcome: no staking conversion, unproven in-region, no builder benefit.
Do nothing. Cost to the Collective: $0. Reach: none. Outcome: no Collective presence in LATAM in 2026.
Cohosted Builder Hub (this proposal). Cost to the Collective: $20,000. Reach: 4 to 8 projects. Outcome: retained stakers and builder distribution, measured onchain.
Project roadmap
Phase 0: approval. 21 September to early October
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KYB verification complete: w/c 21 Sept
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Off-chain proposal published to the grants forum: 21 Sept
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Community feedback window: 21 to 26 Sept
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Live AMA with delegates: w/c 21 Sept
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On-chain proposal submitted once the feedback window closes
Success metric: proposal approved and Milestone 1 released.
Phase 1: build and recruit. 21 September to 28 October
(runs in parallel with Phase 0)
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Exhibitor slot conditionally held pending the vote, confirmed and paid on Milestone 1 release: w/c 21 Sept
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Cohost open call published, with selection criteria: w/c 21 Sept
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Cohost applications close: 8 October
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Cohosting projects confirmed (minimum 4, including RootstockCollective): 15 October
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Booth build and demo stations ordered: 16 October
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Attribution infrastructure live and tested: 20 October
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Bilingual quickstart kit and materials produced: 24 October
Success metrics: 4+ cohosting projects confirmed; attribution tested end-to-end against a live test stake before the event.
Phase 2: event. 29 October to 1 November
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29 Oct. Opening night: institutional and partner conversations
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30 Oct. Day 1: Hub open, programme weighted to builders and BD
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31 Oct. Day 2: Hub open, programme weighted to retail onboarding and staking
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1 Nov. Close: on-site figures collected and verified
Success metrics: cohost slots delivered as scheduled; on-site counts verified by the Collective’s representative; figures published within 7 days.
Phase 3: conversion. November
Follow-up to Hub contacts, cohost contact lists returned to each project, grants-pipeline introductions made.
Success metric: T+30 public report published to Discourse by 1 December, in the Milestone 3 week, with the full KPI readout.
Phase 4: retention, close-out and follow-up. December 2026 to May 2027
Success metrics: T+90 retention cohort published by 29 January 2027; community call held; unclaimed staking incentive balance returned to treasury; follow-up report published to Discourse in May 2027, covering long-term staker retention and the progress of the builders who cohosted.
Performance targets
Targets are reported across two tracks. In both, the retained figure is the headline; day-of counts are reported as context.
Track B: users (primary)
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Wallet/staking flows completed on site: 150+ (context, not a KPI)
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New stRIF stakers attributed to the event: 75+ (reported)
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Still staked at 30 days: 55+ (reported)
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Still staked at 90 days: 45+ (primary KPI)
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Attributed wallets with 3+ transactions at 30 days: 40+ (secondary)
Measured against a base of approximately 3,000 stRIF holders, the 90-day figure represents a ~1.5% increase in the Collective’s staker base from a single two-day activation. Staking incentives are paid only against verified 90-day retained stakes; any unclaimed balance returns to the treasury.
Track A: builders
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Cohosting projects: 4 minimum (including RootstockCollective), 5 target, 8 stretch
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Technical conversations logged at the Hub: 40+
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Testnet or mainnet deployments initiated on site: 10+
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Grants-pipeline entries within 30 days (pre-applications or forum threads): 8+
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Cohosts receiving their own attributed contact list: 100%
Funding efficiency
Value delivered is calculated against the cheapest independent presence available at this event, the $5,000 entry tier, plus the USD-priced conference passes included in our tier and distributed to cohosting builders ($1,950).
Against a Collective contribution of $20,000 in every case:
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4 cohosting projects: $21,950 value delivered, FES 1.10×
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5 cohosting projects (target): $26,950 value delivered, FES 1.35×
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6 cohosting projects: $31,950 value delivered, FES 1.60×
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8 cohosting projects (stretch): $41,950 value delivered, FES 2.10×
Four cohosting projects, including RootstockCollective, is the hard floor below which the Hub does not proceed. Five is the target and the point at which funding efficiency clears the 1.2× benchmark, and unspent funds return to the treasury below that number.
How outcomes are attributed
Attribution is built before the event, not reconstructed after it. Each cohost demo station carries a unique code; the staking flow carries event-tagged referral codes so each stake is attributable onchain. The attributed address cohort is published, so the community verifies results on-chain independently rather than relying on our report. The cohort is measured at T+0, T+30 and T+90. Day-of counts are verified on site by the Collective’s representative.
What we will not claim
Badge scans, booth footfall, social impressions and media reach are not reported as outcomes of this grant. They are not evidence of ecosystem value and we are not asking to be funded against them.
Conclusion
RootstockCollective has funded builders who have products and no way to reach the region where Rootstock’s users actually are. LABITCONF puts 10,000 of those users in one room, and the entry price for a builder to be there independently, $5,000 for two square metres, is more than most grant-stage projects can justify.
This proposal pools that cost. For $20,000, the Collective funds a shared Builder Hub that four to eight ecosystem projects cohost, run and staffed entirely at RootstockLabs, in which the Collective’s own loop runs live: stake, see what the treasury funds, meet the builder it funded.
Three editions at this event have shown us where its value sits: strong brand reach, consistent media and speaking coverage, and genuine partnership conversations on the institutional day. What has not been available until now is something an attendee can act on the same afternoon. Staking is exactly that, and it belongs to the Collective. That is what makes this year different.
Three commitments come with it. Outcomes are measured as retained stakers at 90 days, not activations on the day. Attribution is built before the event and the address cohort is published, so the community verifies the results on-chain rather than taking our word for them. And reporting is public: a readout at 30 days, a retention readout at 90, a follow-up in May 2027, and a community call, all posted to Discourse, with the final tranche paid at 30 days against verified conversion outcomes.
No costs are incurred before this vote. The exhibitor slot is held conditionally pending the outcome, and if the proposal is not approved, nothing is spent and the Hub does not take place. What is being decided here is whether the Collective wants a presence in its largest untapped market this year.
We ask delegates and stRIF holders to support this proposal. The open call for cohosting projects is will be live on the RootstockCollective Builders Telegram group, and the Collective’s members are the people best placed to tell us who should be in that space.
Social and community
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Website: rootstock.io
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RootstockCollective: rootstockcollective.xyz
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X: @rootstock_io
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Discord: discord.gg/rootstock
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Developer Portal: dev.rootstock.io
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GitHub: Rootstock · GitHub
