Guava produced 9 major events and activations for Stellar across 4 continents over two years — from intimate founder summits in Seoul to a 450-person hackathon feeding the global conference. 1,000+ operators connected. 195 pipeline signals from a single afternoon. Events aren't extras. They're growth systems.
Stellar didn't hand Guava a 500-person hackathon on day one. It handed over a room in Brooklyn.
What earned everything after was consistent across every market.
The relationship began with a curated room for senior marketing operators — people who understand the challenge of building authentic distribution in a noisy industry — and scaled into a multi-continent program that now feeds Stellar's flagship global conference.
The mandate expanded at every step because the model worked. Guests in someone else's room. Then programming partner. Then presenting partner. Then end-to-end operator of the largest hackathon in the ecosystem's calendar.
Nine engagements across five regions, and every one designed to answer the same question: How do we turn a moment in the room into measurable momentum for the business?
| # | Engagement | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Marketers in the Arena — New York | Brooklyn, US | June 2025 |
| 02 | Off The Record: Seoul | Seoul, KR | Sept 2025 |
| 03 | Marketers in the Arena — Buenos Aires | Buenos Aires, AR | Nov 2025 |
| 04 | Stellar House Mexico City | CDMX, MX | Apr 2026 |
| 05 | Marketers in the Arena — Miami | Miami, US | May 2026 |
| 06 | Marketers in the Arena — CDMX | CDMX, MX | June 2026 |
| 07 | Stellar House Rio + Builders Night | Rio, BR | Aug 2026 |
| 08 | Token 2049 Marketing Salon | Singapore, SG | Oct 2026 |
| 09 | Hack Meridian Lisbon | Lisbon, PT | Oct 2026 |
Concept through strike, with the same team in the room that drew the plan. Handoffs are where events break. Guava stayed embedded from design through delivery in every market.
Korean Blockchain Week, Mexico Fintech Summit, Consensus, Stablecoin Conference LATAM, Token 2049, Meridian. Every activation borrowed density from a week the audience had already committed to, rather than trying to manufacture attention from zero.
Seoul's playbook was built on trusted referral partners who owned their own relationships. LATAM confirmed it. Lisbon is built on it. Regional partners activate their own communities. Guava builds the machine they plug into.
The Roast becomes content. The hackathon feeds the conference. Two recap videos in Miami. An interview runway in CDMX. A founder cohort carried from Mexico to Rio to Singapore to Lisbon. An event that ends when the room empties was scoped wrong.
The format was born here. Crypto marketing had a panel problem — too many stages, too little honesty. MITA New York was designed as the correction: a curated room for people actually shaping how crypto speaks to the world.
The Marketing Roast was introduced as the signature moment — two live sessions where real projects were critiqued openly by senior operators. No softening, no polish. The Roast proved instantly that the audience wanted honesty more than comfort.
Result: 99+ guests, 15+ speakers, proven format, founded the IP that would scale across four continents.
Korean Blockchain Week concentrates the entire APAC industry in one city. Guava went the opposite direction: an invite-only dinner for long-form conversation rather than a large mixer.
The strategy was referral-led distribution instead of broadcasting. Trusted local connectors built the guest list, which proved to be the highest-leverage acquisition channel. This became the Seoul playbook and traveled to every relationship-driven market after.
Result: 188 registrations driven, 13% of signups from a single referral partner, full evening retention, format validated for intimate, cross-ecosystem curations.
Argentina doesn't need crypto explained to it. Hyperinflation, dollarization, and stablecoin adoption are lived economics. Buenos Aires was built on that insight: local speakers addressing the country's real conditions directly, without crypto-as-speculation framing.
Full localization, not translation. Venue as narrative — Artlab is culturally significant, not a hotel ballroom. This edition tested whether the format could double in size without losing what made it work.
Result: 200+ attendees, largest edition at that point, format validated at scale, foundation for everything Guava has since built for Stellar in LATAM.
Two workshops led by practitioners rather than advisors — people who had actually run the function at scale. A private dinner built relationships with the people who matter most. Running both during Fintech Summit week turned proximity into institutional meetings.
Programming delivered: Marketing 101 for Blockchain Founders (Brandon Rodriguez, ex-Etherfuse, Paystand, Visa leadership) and Community Is Not a Channel (Victor, 1M+ member communities at BNB, Bitso, Plume).
Result: Deepened Stellar's institutional footprint in Mexico, opened direct conversations with regional fintech and banking players, prepared the ground for the CDMX summit two months later.
First edition with Stella as presenting partner. First built explicitly as a content engine. A single-day summit opening Consensus week, with speaker bench deliberately spanning Optimism, Chainlink, Meta, Delphi Digital, Solana Foundation, Exodus — beyond Stellar ecosystem so the room reads as industry, not company.
The critique format was designed generous rather than harsh, celebrating teams while giving candid feedback in front of peers.
Result: 129 check-ins, 514 applications, 408 companies represented, 5.0/5 satisfaction, 31% founders/CEOs, 519 emails captured for follow-up. Perfect score.
The capstone celebration for the Myosin x Stellar accelerator cohort, and the highest-conversion edition in the series.
Participants completed weeks ahead, giving teams time to sharpen go-to-market before presenting to investors and institutional fintech leaders. Local partnerships with the university and leading crypto media meant partner-network discovery drove high-intent registration.
Application form designed to qualify Stellar interest at registration, turning the guest list into a pipeline asset before anyone walked in.
Stellar Pipeline Generated:
The intro list spans stablecoin FX, rural payments rails, cross-border remittances, AI agent payment infrastructure, and LATAM neobanking. The #EnLaArena hashtag ran organically across attendee posts with live tags to @StellarOrg and @myosin_xyz.
Result: 279 approved applications, 80+ attendees, 150+ companies, 38% founders/CEOs, 4.8/5 satisfaction, 70% of the room raised their hand for Stellar.
The program continued scaling: Rio with a focus on technical depth for founders already building on Stellar; Singapore bringing the founder cohort forward from Mexico to Token 2049; and Lisbon with the largest scope Guava has held for Stellar — a 450-person hackathon feeding the Meridian global conference, with regional activations across four continents.
Every edition built on the learnings from the last, with each market's success becoming the template for the next.
The largest scope Guava has held for Stellar. Hack Meridian Lisbon is the entry point into the Stellar ecosystem during its most important global moment of the year. A 450-person hackathon across two days, built to convert first-time builders into long-term ecosystem contributors and existing projects into the next stage of traction.
Most hackathons run into the same issues: low-intent participants, messy onboarding, unfinished projects, and no follow-through. Guava's design attacked each directly:
| Objective | Measured by |
|---|---|
| Increase Meridian attendance | Hackathon → Meridian conversion, Day 0 showcase, team retention |
| Create large-scale awareness for Stellar | Total applications, target region applications, activation → application conversion |
| Increase project completion rate | Teams formed, projects started, projects submitted, submission rate |
| Strengthen ecosystem engagement | New developers onboarded, partner engagement, project continuation, ambassador pipeline |
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Total attendees across the series | 1,000+ |
| Speakers and judges programmed | 50+ |
| Companies represented | 1,000+ |
| Emails captured for follow-up | 1,500+ |
| Stellar interest signals (CDMX single edition) | 195 |
| Average satisfaction (Miami + CDMX) | 4.9 / 5 |
| Continents activated | 4 |
Companies represented across the series: Stellar Development Foundation, 1inch, Certora, Optimism, Chainlink, Meta, Etherfuse, Delphi Digital, Solana Foundation, Exodus, 0G Labs, Wonderland, Piggy Wallet, Stratosphere, Syklo, BANORTE, Mercado Pago, Bitso, CNBV, Grupo Salinas, Bradesco México, Profuturo, BitGo, Tala, Quantoz, Moni, and many more across regional ecosystems.