Nigeria’s blockchain education platform Web3Bridge hosted the local blockchain community at its Demo Day yesterday, where graduating members of its latest cohort showed off projects built on Base, the layer two blockchain ecosystem that sponsored the cohort’s activities. Web3Bridge’s founder, Ayodeji Awosika, described the event as a demonstration of the value of the 17-week boot camp.

“We had about 56 applications when we launched the program in July, only 22 are graduating today. Our program is a competitive one that accelerates the blockchain skills of participants,” Ayodeji said in a NODO interview on Wednesday. “Several L2 communities including Arbitrum and Scroll also came around to engage and learn about our work.”

The program, which required participants to live, work, and learn in a settlement at Ikorodu, introduced them to the fundamentals of blockchain technology and the technicalities of building out decentralised applications (dApps). From programming languages such as Solidity to hands-on activities like testing smart contract vulnerabilities and token swapping, the program provided offered an opportunity to comprehensively explore blockchain technology from a technical perspective.

“I’ll always recommend Web3Bridge as the go-to program for blockchain developers. It gives one that solid foundation to specialise in any aspect of blockchain development,” said James Osunkiyesi, one of the participants who was awarded a brand new Macintosh laptop for gaining the most points in a system that tracked participants’ activity.

The projects displayed were Earth Sustain, a dApp that connects donors to biodiversity projects; Gig Secured, an Upwork-like solution that leverages blockchain to create seamless experiences for freelancers and contractors; Address Watcher, which monitors wallet addresses and provides instant notifications and transaction insights for owners; and WasteWise, a solution that incentivises plastic recycling with redeemable tokens. All projects were built on the Base blockchain—as part of the partnership with Web3Bridge.

“We are excited to work with Web3Bridge as they train and support the next generation of smart contract developers,” said Morgan Williams, the Asia-Pacific expansion lead for Coinbase. Williams was in Nigeria two months ago speaking to locals on efforts to expand her company’s footprints in Africa. By then, Base, through its Ecosystem Fund, had just made its first investment into a local startup: Onboard, a money app founded by Nestcoin’s chief executive Yele Bademosi. The fund invested in five other startups across the world, including Avantis, OpenCover, BSX, Paragraph, and Truflation.

Base, a subsidiary of publicly traded US exchange Coinbase, is leveraging an ecosystem of over $80 billion in assets and 110 million users to expand globally. Williams in an earlier interview shared that the company was also looking to support small blockchain projects in Africa with grants.