Everyone needs a model to get through life and fully achieve their potential. For many African creatives in the Web3 ecosystem, that model is Samuel Olaoyenikan, popularly known as Xeus The Great. Xeus or Baba Xeus as he is fondly called by his students is one of Africa’s brightest Web3 minds, a major player in the global crypto scene and the founder of Nirvana Academy.
The Nirvana Academy is the largest DeFi-focused academy and crypto collective in Africa, Samuel Olaoyenikan established the Nirvana Academy 5 years ago with a simple vision, “To Know Is To Be Free.” Armed with this vision, Nirvana has rapidly grown to be one of the foremost drivers of innovation and development in Africa’s Web3 space with 12 intensive training cohorts and over 10,000 graduates in just 5 years.
For any other person, this achievement may have been enough to relax and retire on. For Samuel, these achievements have only served to fan his passion for knowledge-driven freedom into a flame. And this is why in March 2025, a new initiative was born —The Nirvana Village Square.
Individually, Web3 professionals and enthusiasts in Nigeria and Africa have achieved so much, but compared to the rest of the world, we’re still far behind. If we could accomplish so much individually, imagine what things would look like with a proper collaborative atmosphere. That’s where the Nirvana Village Square event comes into play.
The Nirvana Village Square event is an initiative birthed by Samuel Olaoyenikan to gather Africa’s brightest Web3 minds together in one space to spark the next cycle of Web3 evolution in the continent. It is a space where ideas interconnect, alphas flow unfiltered and rapid growth is achieved by collaboration over competition.
So far, there have been just two editions of the Nirvana Village Square. NVS 1.0 started off with just 50 individuals. Demand post 1.0 was so high that NVS 2.0 but was still strictly to 50 individuals and the results have been evident. Samuel Olaoyenikan and The Nirvana Academy have succeeded in creating an ecosystem filled with hungry and results-driven individuals in DeFi.
Aside from being the founder of the Nirvana Academy, Samuel is also the convener of BlockFest Africa —Africa’s premier crypto festival for devs, creatives, and VCs, as well as the founder of Tevah Foundation. Tevah is a non-profit committed to promoting positive change within communities, with a strong focus on education. So far, Tevah supports over 200 primary and secondary schools and has granted over 5000 academic scholarships to various recipients in Nigeria.
Samuel continues to work to create a world where everyone has access to the knowledge they need to change their lives. To further promote African excellence on the global Web3 scene, Samuel is onboarding African developers into the decentralized AI space via the Nirvana Academy and in partnership with 0G Labs —one of the biggest AI companies in the world, backed by top VCs with over $250M in funding.
There is no questioning the impact Samuel Olaoyenikan has had on thousands of lives and everything stems from one simple vision:
To know is to be free. This is the way of Nirvana
