QUBIC BLOG POST
The Qubic Way: How Community Power Secured T3chFest 2026
Written by
The Qubic Team
Published:
Jan 26, 2026
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A crowdfunding campaign launched on January 10th, 2026. By January 12th, it was over. Not because it failed. Because it succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.
The Qubic community had just raised 6.97 billion QUBIC to send the network to T3chFest 2026, one of Europe's most important developer conferences. No treasury allocation. No centralized funding body. Just a community of people who believe in what Qubic is building, opening their wallets without hesitation.
This is the story of what happened, and what it says about the Qubic community.
The Rejection That Started Everything
Back in September 2025, Kairos Tek submitted a proposal to the CCF requesting support to represent Qubic at T3chFest. The computors rejected it.
For most projects, that would have been the end. Proposal denied. Move on.
Jorge Ordovás, CEO of Kairos Tek, didn't move on. Instead, he rebuilt the proposal from scratch, refined every detail, and decided to take a different path: ask the community directly.
The new proposal wasn't vague. It laid out exactly where every dollar would go. $1,100 for sponsorship. $2,500 for a technical presentation slot. $1,280 for professional services. The total: $4,880 worth of QUBIC, approximately 6.97 billion tokens at the time.
Jorge published the complete proposal on GitHub with full transparency. Budget breakdowns. Activity timelines. Success metrics. Everything a community member would need to make an informed decision about whether this was worth funding.
Then he put out a simple message:
"Help us to help Qubic."
The First 15 Hours
The response was immediate.
Within hours of the announcement, donations started flowing in. By the 15-hour mark, the campaign had already crossed $2,000.
This wasn't a handful of whales writing big checks. People were contributing whatever they could. Some gave billions. Others gave millions. Every contribution mattered.
Crossing $3,000 at the 24-Hour Mark
At the one-day mark, something remarkable had happened. More than 25 individual donations had come in. The total had surpassed $3,000.
Major contributors started emerging. Garth donated 2 billion QUBIC. QCAP and Eko (Qmine's founder) followed with 1 billion each. But what stood out wasn't the size of the largest donations. It was the sheer number of people participating. Twenty-five separate wallets, all choosing to fund a developer outreach initiative in Spain.
The campaign was 85% complete in a single day.
The Final Push
On January 12th, DeFiMomma made a personal donation that pushed the total across the finish line. 6.97 billion QUBIC raised. Goal achieved.
Jorge's announcement carried a note of disbelief:
How the community has reacted, in less than 48 hours, to ensure that Qubic will be known by over 1800 developers at this important event in Spain and Europe is something we will always remember.
He immediately asked people to stop donating. Any funds received after the goal was met would be returned. The campaign wasn't about raising as much money as possible. It was about hitting a specific target for a specific purpose.
Why T3chFest Matters
T3chFest isn't a crypto conference. That's precisely what makes it valuable.
Held annually at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, T3chFest draws 1,800+ developers to its physical event, with another 10,000+ watching via livestream. The audience is computer science students, professional developers, tech entrepreneurs, and academic researchers. These are builders. People who write code for a living and evaluate technology on its technical merits.
The event features over 70 technical talks across multiple tracks. Sponsors include major tech companies. The organizing university, UC3M, ranks #301 worldwide according to the QS World University Rankings 2026 and sits among the top 10 Spanish universities for employability.
For Qubic, this represents something money can't easily buy: access to a concentrated audience of exactly the people who need to understand what Useful Proof of Work means for decentralized AI.
Jorge brings credibility to this environment. He spoke at T3chFest 2024 with a well-received presentation on decentralized social networks. He's been directing a Master's program in Blockchain and Web3 at the European University since 2016. He spent 25+ years at Telefónica, including seven years leading blockchain product development. When he stands on that stage in Madrid, he's not some anonymous crypto promoter. He's a recognized voice in Spain's technology community.
What the Community Funded
The 50-minute technical presentation will walk developers through Qubic's architecture. Not marketing slides. Actual technical content as to How Useful Proof of Work functions and why it matters for AI workloads. This includes a live demonstration of building on the platform.
Kairos Tek's sponsorship means Qubic branding throughout the venue. Logo on the website. Mentions in newsletters reaching 13,000+ subscribers. Social media promotion to T3chFest's audience. The presentation will be recorded and published to T3chFest's YouTube channel, where 20,000+ subscribers and tens of thousands of viewers will have access to it long after the event ends.
The goal isn't to pump a token. It's to plant seeds and get Qubic on the radar of developers who might just build the next generation of applications. It’s to create relationships with UC3M faculty who could bring blockchain and AI concepts into their research. It’s to position the network as a serious technical project, not just another speculative asset.
What This Says About Qubic
Plenty of crypto communities talk about decentralization. The Qubic community just demonstrated it.
No single entity controlled this funding decision. No marketing department ran analytics on expected ROI. A proposal went out, individuals evaluated it based on publicly available information, and a relentless community chose to fund it, in less than two days.
Compare that to traditional venture capital timelines. Months of pitching. Due diligence processes. Legal review. Term sheet negotiations. The Qubic community moved from proposal to full funding faster than most companies can schedule a board meeting.
This isn't naivety or recklessness. The proposal was detailed. The budget was transparent. The team had a track record, including first and second place finishes at MAD Hack 2025 and Raise Your Hack 2025 with projects like EasyConnect. Community members made informed decisions and they made them quickly.
Ecosystem Projects Working Together
What made this crowdfunding move so fast wasn't just the donations. It was the signal boost.
Projects like Garth, Qubic Capital, and Qmine actively spread the word within their own communities. When established ecosystem players put their weight behind an initiative, it carries credibility. Their followers trust their judgment. A retweet or Discord announcement from a respected project can reach thousands of engaged community members in minutes.
This is how decentralized ecosystems are supposed to work. When something benefits Qubic as a whole, individual projects set aside competition and rally together. More developers building on Qubic means more opportunities for every project in the ecosystem.
March 12-13, 2026: Madrid
When T3chFest opens its doors at the UC3M Auditorium, Qubic will be there. A community-funded initiative, built on a rejected proposal, funded in 48 hours by people who never met in person.
The developers attending won't know the backstory. They'll see a sponsor booth, attend a technical talk, maybe have a conversation about Useful Proof of Work over coffee. That's fine. The value of community funding isn't in the recognition. It's in the outcome.
1,800 developers will have the chance to learn about Qubic. 10,000+ livestream viewers will see the presentation. A permanent recording will live on YouTube. Academic relationships may form. Some percentage of those developers might start building.
All because a community decided to rally together.
The Qubic Way
Jorge's final message ended with three words:
This is the Qubic way.
It's a phrase that could easily become empty marketing speak. But when you look at what actually happened, it carries weight. A decentralized network funded a decentralized marketing initiative through decentralized decision-making. No votes from a treasury committee. No approval from a foundation board. Just individuals, acting on their own assessment, choosing to support something they believe in.
That's rare in any industry but in crypto, where centralization often creeps in through the back door, it's remarkable.
The crowdfunding is closed. The contract with T3chFest organizers is signed, and come March, Qubic will stand in front of Spain's developer community and make its case.
The Qubic community made that possible. In 48 hours.
Learn more about Qubic:
About Kairos Tek: