이번 Klaytn 스터디 그룹 지원 프로그램에는 총 14개 팀/86명의 스터디 그룹 멤버가 참가해, 스터디 그룹 멤버들과 함께 Klaytn 플랫폼을 학습하고 본인들의 관심사를 기반으로 주제를 선정해 간단한 BApp을 개발했습니다.

이번 프로그램에 참가한 모든 분들이 Klaytn 플랫폼이 제공하는 주요 기능들을 잘 이해하고 Klaytn 기반의 BApp을 개발해보는 좋은 경험이었기를 바라며, 끝까지 성실하게 프로그램에 참여해주신 모든 분들께 감사 인사드립니다.

이번 프로그램에 참여한 주요 프로젝트를 아래에 공유하오니 많은 관심을 가지고 각 프로젝트의 결과물들을 확인해주시기 바랍니다.

[주요 프로젝트 소개]

1. 블록체인 에스크로 거래시스템: Klayment

Klaytn 플랫폼 내에서 가상계좌를 통한 지불을 할 수 있는 플랫폼으로, 현재는 아래와 같은 기능을 제공하고 있습니다.

• 계좌 개설자(판매자)는 Klayment를 이용하여 간편결제를 생성하고 그 결제를 스마트계약에 올려, 간편결제를 QR코드로 생성하여 지원합니다.
• 지불자(구매자)는 Klayment에서 발행한 QR코드를 찍어 본인의 Klaytn 지갑에서 해당 판매자의 상품의 가치만큼 Klay를 지불합니다.

Klayment는 단순히 스터디 그룹 프로젝트 수준을 넘어 앞으로 꾸준히 개발해 실제 서비스로 운영함으로써 Klaytn BApp 생태계에 이바지할 예정인 프로젝트입니다.

• 블로그: https://medium.com/@dbl.mains
• 깃허브: https://github.com/youpd/klayment.io.study
• 데모 웹페이지: klayment.io (구현 예정)

2. 강의 평가 웹사이트: 강평강평

• 블로그: https://github.com/klaytn-study/Klaytn-study-plan
• 깃허브: https://github.com/klaytn-study/Lecture-evaluation
• 데모 영상: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HTjsRq7ac5PDuJ8_x1tK_yQeMXgEX8d8/view?usp=sharing

3. 어학성적 목표달성 보상형 기부 플랫폼: 나눔

• 블로그: https://github.com/CAU-CLINK/Klaytn_Study/tree/master/study_activity_log
• 깃허브: https://github.com/CAU-CLINK/Klaytn_Study/tree/master/project
• 데모 영상: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13q6hD1ifaNVqX__eQpxkTyAbVn8YUPVj/view?usp=sharing

4. 블록체인 쇼핑몰: skkone

• 블로그: https://medium.com/@lsg0385
• 깃허브: https://github.com/lsg1213/KlaytnShoppingMall
• 데모 영상: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FUt9vaLhr_cCOXungkCVpTB38a5YPxJ8/view?usp=sharing

5. 잠금기간을 설정할 수 있는 입출금 앱: 존버

• 블로그: https://github.com/projecttaco/Jonbur/tree/master/docs/klaytn_study
• 깃허브: https://github.com/projecttaco/Jonbur
• 데모 웹페이지: https://projecttaco.github.io/jonbur/

[추가] Klaystagram + Jetstream 연동 프로젝트

• 깃허브: https://github.com/projecttaco/klaystagram
• 데모 웹페이지: https://projecttaco.github.io/

6. 기부형 크라우드 펀딩 BApp: Together Wegetall

• 블로그: https://github.com/SSWU-Klaytn/Klaytn_Study
• 깃허브: https://github.com/SSWU-Klaytn/togetherwegetall
• 데모 영상: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HDRur7VSNnfz7O9dZXIL-c72rXcflZCJ/view?usp=sharing

[프로그램 참가자 후기]

“스터디를 통해 클레이튼 뿐만 아니라 블록체인에 대해 정리하고 공부하고 다른 사람들과 의견을 나눠 볼수 있어서 즐거운 경험이었습니다. 멋진 결과물은 아니지만 그래도 클레이튼을 직접 사용하여 동작하는 BApp을 만든 일도 스터디 후 결과물이 나와서 뿌듯했습니다. 그리고 직접 만들어 봄으로서 클레이튼의 장점을 직접 느껴볼수 있어서 좋았습니다.”

“블록체인 자체가 강의 자료나 인강이 많지 않은데, 그런 점에서 클레이튼은 도움이 되었다고 생각합니다. 강의자가 설명을 해준다는 것만으로도 독학의 한계를 넘게 해주었습니다. 또한, 이 프로그램으로 결과를 내고 저의 지식을 응용할 수 있다는 점이 가장 좋았던 것 같습니다. 팀원마다 실력의 격차가 있는데 서로 배워가며 도와주는 과정에서도 성장하는 기회가 되었습니다.”

“이번에 klaytn study group 지원 프로그램에 참여할 수 있는 좋은 기회를 얻게 되었습니다. 저희 팀은 다른 팀들과는 다르게 블록체인, 클레이튼 공부를 시작하는 사람들로 구성되어 팀 활동 내용을 설명하자면 “좌충우돌”, “우당탕탕”이라는 수식어가 어울릴 것 같습니다. 프로그램을 통해 클레이튼의 개념과, BApp 예제를 학습하여 클레이튼에 대한 이해도를 높이고, 직접 BApp을 계획하고 구현하는 응용활동까지 진행할 수 있었습니다. 스터디는 덧셈게임을 응용한 BApp에 그쳤지만, 이 BApp이 또 다른 시작이 될 수 있을 것이라고 생각합니다. 프로그램을 통해 한단계 성장하여 기쁘고, 이런 기회를 얻을 수 있어 감사합니다!”

“클레이튼을 학습함으로써 활동비도 지원 받고 프로젝트 경력도 쌓이고 사용가능한 플랫폼이 하나 더 늘었습니다. 사용자나 BApp 개발자 입장에서 클레이튼은 사용하기 편한 플랫폼입니다.”

“정말 재밌었습니다. caver.js를 이용해서 사용하기 쉬우면서도 빠른 블록체인 개발 경험을 쌓을 수 있어서 좋았습니다.”

We would like to introduce our data engineer, Jensen Yap, as the second interviewee for [Diversity in Blockchain] series. You can find the diverse perspectives of data in the blockchain. Please enjoy reading his story and career journey to the blockchain industry.

What is your main job in the data engineering team of Klaytn?

My main job is to set up a stable infrastructure for data to transfer them from multiple sources to our data storage. I have to make sure that the collected and transferred data is safe, clean and stable. We are now collecting data from Ethereum and Klaytn, which has a mainnet and one or multiple testnets. After collecting, compiling and saving the data, what data engineering team does is analyzing, modeling, experimenting and reporting them based on safe and clean data sets. It is about laying a solid foundation for data analysis. That is the first step.

What kind of data do you collect and what do these data mean to us?

There are two types, blocks data, and traces data. Blocks data is piling up every time blocks are created and transactions happened in specific blocks. Also, we can understand what happened in these transactions, such as the activities of token created and token transferred. However, blocks data do not show how one block is connected to the other block. That is the reason we should see traces data as well. With all two types of data, we can assume the user journey, from where the users start, where they are going, and where they are now.

The primary reason why we are looking at Ethereum and other platform data is that we can find certain patterns from the previous data of Ethereum and see how certain activities start and go viral. After learning from similar cases, we can apply the same model as Ethereum to our platform. We can find a way of improvements based on the comparison. The examples we can refer to are our governance models and policies to operate the platform. Also, we can identify and judge users’ behavior that abuse and harm the ecosystem of our platform.

If you have any lessons learned from your analysis, could you share it with us?

According to our analysis, transactions in a certain platform are creating every two seconds. That is not what a human can do consistently. We can assume that users are running bots by creating self-transactions at a fast pace automatically. This activity may result from users’ behavior to populate blocks and get more fees, and it is not a healthy signal to our ecosystem. As each platform is establishing policies to deal with abusement, the past data of other platforms can be a good source for us to improve our chain and set up an appropriate policy within our chain.

You have worked for Coupang, Korbit and are currently working for Klaytn as a data engineer. Could you explain your career journey from Coupang to the blockchain industry? What brought you here?

It was right after the coin market went up. I invested in coins at that time. I wanted to know why the price went up and down but there were not the exact facts to convince me. As a data engineer, I wanted to bring a ‘data’ perspective to a new technology that no one is doing well.

I used to deal with trading-related data after moving to Korbit after Coupang because Korbit is an exchange to enable trading of any blockchain assets. A pretty big amount of users in this exchange were actually robots and the volumes of trading in an out from these robots were more than half. I saw how robots influenced the value of the coin. However, staying at a high volume of trading is quite important for an exchange because it shows how healthy this exchange is, even if the transaction was self-made. We can also identify heavy traders and made them stay by giving them exclusive benefits.

In 2014, Mt Gox, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was hacked and 850,000 bitcoins were stolen. Chainalysis was the official investigator in the Mt.Gox bankruptcy case. After this case, Chainalysis, whose business is crime-fighting and regulatory compliance, is contributing to detecting fraud and preventing money laundering with data analysis.

When I heard that news, I was really inspired by what Chainalysis did and realized that it is exactly what I have been looking for. Data can mean more than numbers. It can tell the truth. While not many blockchain companies invest money and time in data analytics, as far as I know, Klaytn is willing to do so and has already many types of data in its chain. That is why I joined here.

As you said, data can be an important source for the top management’s decision-making process. However, human behavior and traces, which are the base of all data, may not be always right because humans are not always reasonable. What do you think about that?

I think the reason why most of the people are not used to data-driven decisions is that our life is not always data-driven but experience-based, surrounding-based, and emotion-based. I do not want to necessarily force people to always be data-driven. But the data-driven decision needs to be part of the conversation within a company.

Let’s take an example of a business meeting that diverse teams are participating in. We look at a presentation material saying that 40% of the users are robots. Teams can interact emotionally discussing this issue during the meeting but the data shows us the truth and help everyone to stay on the same page. There may be different ways to translate the data depending on the team but what they are looking at is ultimately the same.

What I want to do is to create a healthy culture that empowers everyone in a company to articulate and tackle every decision based on data. That is why our data team created a data lake. Building one true source of data is necessary to help people discuss the same truth within an organization. Even though our analysis can be wrong sometimes or has no insights, at least we can give everyone enough space to start a conversation, be more objective and give diverse views and feedbacks.

What are you and your team’s next plan?

The mission of our team is to support other teams to make data-based decisions. We, as a platform player, want to look into Klaytn and define who Klaytn users are, what they do, finding out the differences between healthy users and abusing users and what kind of activity is happening in our chain.

At present, the reputation of blockchain technology itself is connected with what the exchanges do. We plan to release some articles or papers to show the professional and unbiased view about the blockchain. We would like to show blockchain is not about the price on the exchange but it is a genuine technology.

What I want to do personally in terms of data science is to create more open-source tools to analyze the chain. Analyzing a certain chain is very expensive because it is very hard to get clean data to analyze. We are continuously developing a service to use for the community when they want to analyze our public Klaytn chain data.

As you have studied and worked in Korea for a long time, you are exposed to a diverse environment. As a person who has a diverse experience in different contexts, how do you feel about the ‘Diversity’ issue?

I think that the issue of diversity is something we cannot avoid at this time. Technology has been and being advanced in a way to connect people globally. It is getting easier to travel across the border and to get a job in a different country. It means we can be exposed to a diverse environment easily and naturally.

From the perspective of business, your service or product cannot survive only in a local market. To penetrate the global market, we need to understand global users’ needs based on their diversity such as ethnicity, age, and gender.

On the other hand, big data, AI, deep learning are being considered as a hot trending technology to change the world but even right now we do not truly understand what they are and how we can fully utilize them in our daily life. What we need now is to integrate diverse contexts and backgrounds as technology advances.

Blockchain is in a similar situation. Blockchain is still in a very early stage and it is not simple to apply it to the real world for service. We should encourage our community to discuss more our technology with diverse perspectives and imagine how it can change our life with blockchain. This approach can be a healthy starting point if you don’t want blockchain to remain just as a concept.

Diversity in Blockchain Series #3: Jensen Yap, The issue of diversity is now inevitable. was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#Unlock your keyboard, and go hack.

Dear Klaytn readers,

The Klaytn Hackathon was Klaytn’s first blockchain hackathon, and developers were able to create BApps (Blockchain Applications) on Klaytn’s public testnet, Baobab. Klaytn allows developers to build service-centric, user-oriented BApps, and the Klaytn Hackathon was a virtual hackathon designed to allow global developers to unite and work together towards a common goal.

Passionate developers from all around the world joined together to commit and create BApps. During the 5 weeks of the hackathon, developers from across the world joined together virtually, and 4 winners were ultimately selected from the diverse, creative submissions.

The Klaytn Hackathon Winner Interview Series will feature the first and second place winners, BlockDevs Asia and TryCrypto, respectively. Through the series, Klaytn readers will be able to learn more about the winning teams, their projects, and their thought process behind and throughout the Klaytn Hackathon experience.

#1. Introductions

Hello BlockDevs Asia! Congratulations on winning 1st place at the Klaytn Hackathon! Could you please introduce your team and team members? How does it feel to be the winners of the Klaytn Hackathon? :)

Hello Klaytn! BlockDevs Asia is a non-profit community group organized by and for software developers, technology enthusiasts, and business people looking to learn more about developing blockchain apps or systems. By organizing free, educational meetups about complex and technical topics, we dive together with a large group of passionate developers into advancing blockchain technology. To date, we have organized more than 20 events, 2 large hackathons, and 20 meetups.

We all have diverse professional experiences individually, but we are united by our strong interest in blockchain along with our experiences in software development and IT.

Our team members are:

Caspar Oostendorp

• Caspar Oostendorp is a software/blockchain architect, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Oost and Voort, a software consulting company based in the Philippines.

Amadeo Brands

• Amadeo Brands is a co-founder of EOI Digital, a digital marketing agency based in the Philippines with strong roots in blockchain technology.

Roy Selbach

• Roy Selbach is a co-founder of EOI Digital with Amadeo Brands.

Teresa (Tracy) Li.

• Tracy Li has been a software engineer/architect for 17 years. Many of her experiences were in building enterprise solutions for corporations.

Despite our time constraints, we were able to create a working BApp in just a few days by devoting a significant amount of time. We feel nothing but proud for what we have done, and being the first place winners, we are very excited to promote our BApp and the Klatyn blockchain platform to everyone.

#2. The Journey from the Netherlands to the Philippines

Your team, BlockDevs Asia, is currently based in the Philippines, but it seems like some of you are from elsewhere. Why did some of you relocate to the Philippines, and how did all of you come together to form a team? What piqued your interest in blockchain?

With Asia as one of the most promising continents regarding blockchain innovations, Caspar Oostendorp, Amadeo Brands, and Roy Selbach moved from the Netherlands to the Philippines. Blockdevs was founded in early 2017 by Caspar Oostendorp and Chris Verceles. At that time, there were a modest number of developers attending the meetups; then things changed in 2018 — blockchain gained more interest.

We all came together at the start of this year, 2019. We started as volunteers, and we eventually found ourselves continually contributing our skills and resources to grow the organization. From there, we were able to build a good synergy as a team, hence, we decided to formally incorporate it as a non-profit industry organization for blockchain.

What piqued our interest in blockchain was the strong narrative of having a purely decentralized, trustable, and immutable system that grows in open governance. Blockchain gives us the ability to subvert overbearing government and central authorities, which is quite powerful.

Wow, what a dynamic journey! In that case, how would you describe the blockchain community and ecosystem in the Philippines? Would you say that the Philippines is a blockchain-friendly environment?

The blockchain community in the Philippines is very vibrant and interactive due to the 2017 hype that stimulated community growth. There are regular meetup events that occur in different parts of the country. Once we saw how quickly people were starting to become interested in blockchain and crypto, we realized that we should foster and grow the technical talents here in the Philippines. We would like to position the Philippines as a global hub for the blockchain and crypto industries.

#3. Klaytn Hackathon & Klaytn Champ

Why did your team decide to participate in the Klaytn Hackathon? How was the experience? What challenges, if any, did your team overcome and was your team able to grow from the experience?

We first learned about Klatyn from Asia Blockchain Review. They asked us to co-organize an event to introduce Klatyn in Manila, Philippines. After the event, we saw the huge potential of Klaytn.

We later noticed the hackathon by coincidence, which gave us many opportunities to build on Klaytn. We decided to participate in the Klaytn Hackathon since we are strong advocates of blockchain technology and would like to push mainstream adoption forward. We also believe that Klatyn has the potential to drive blockchain technology since Klaytn is developed by Ground X, a subsidiary of its multi-billion, parent company: Kakao.

The Klatyn hackathon was an opportunity for us to showcase a fully functional blockchain application (BApp) to the world. Despite our busy schedules, we managed to devote a significant amount of time to create the Klatyn Champ BApp, which is a challenge game for all users with verifiable scoring and certification. We have implemented an ownable smart contract that stores each user’s level information and certificate while also verifying developer activity at the same time. Our goal is to make technical documentation and onboarding with Klaytn more fun through gamification and incentivization.

We are always motivated to promote positive usage of blockchain, which is the main reason why we joined the hackathon. We also strive to encourage developers to build tools that would help solve real world problems, especially in the areas of corruption and government bureaucracy.

By partnering with bright talents, we put each of our skills into play and encouraged each other to produce the best possible results. The major challenge we faced was the time constraint and our busy schedules, but we all pulled it through. Asides, not only did we learn to work effectively as a team, but we also learned how to work with Klaytn. This opens future doors for building blockchain tools and for utilizing Klaytn.

Looking back, would you participate in the Klaytn Hackathon again? Why or why not?

Yes, definitely! We strongly believe in Klaytn’s mission, and we firmly believe in the technology that Klatyn has established. Secondly, we’d like to expand our reach globally to promote Klatyn and blockchain in general. We, of course, learned much through this experience, but it was a fun process overall to work with Klaytn to build a winning app.

Do you have plans to continue and develop your project, Klaytn Champs? What additions could you make to Klaytn Champs to improve it even more?

It’s good that you ask that question — currently we are building out the project even more. Thanks to the hackathon, we saw a huge potential for this tool. After the announcement that we were winners, we immediately created a roadmap with the end goal of pushing it to the public. With the addition of many new courses and features such as leaderboards, referral programs, and integration, we are aiming to take a prominent position in rewarding and onboarding developers onto Klaytn. We are confident that Klaytn Champs can be beneficial for the long term strategy of Klaytn.

#4. Klaytn from a Developer’s Perspective

Having experienced Klaytn first-hand, are you continuing to use Klaytn? How has Klaytn helped you and your team?

Yes, we are using Klaytn to further develop Klaytn Champs. Klaytn has helped us as an easy-to-start-with platform, and we see great potential for Klaytn especially in Asian markets due to Klaytn’s enterprise blockchain system. Since Klaytn is based from Solidity, contracts are easily portable, which makes it very easy to get started.

For our last question, we would like to ask if you would recommend Klaytn to other developers. How is Klaytn different or better from a developer’s perspective?

Klatyn has more user-friendly developer tools and documentation compared to other blockchain platforms. It is easy and quick to set up and get started. Since we are all familiar with Solidity, we were able to build our smart contracts quickly. We also didn’t have that much difficulty in integrating our contracts with the frontend. We used caver-js, and it was pretty straightforward.

Once again, congratulations! We look forward to inviting your team to our all-expenses paid, TXGX conference in November!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

The next article in the series will be an interview with our second place winners — TryCrypto! Please be on the lookout for more content and events from Klaytn.

[Klaytn Hackathon] Winner Interview #1 — Blockdevs Asia was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#Unlock your keyboard, and go hack.

Dear Klaytn readers,

The Klaytn Hackathon was Klaytn’s first blockchain hackathon, and developers were able to create BApps (Blockchain Applications) on Klaytn’s public testnet, Baobab. Klaytn allows developers to build service-centric, user-oriented BApps, and the Klaytn Hackathon was a virtual hackathon designed to allow global developers to unite and work together towards a common goal.

Passionate developers from all around the world joined together to commit and create BApps. During the 5 weeks of the hackathon, developers from across the world joined together virtually, and 4 winners were ultimately selected from the diverse, creative submissions.

The Klaytn Hackathon Winner Interview Series will feature the first and second place winners, BlockDevs Asia and TryCrypto, respectively. Through the series, Klaytn readers will be able to learn more about the winning teams, their projects, and their thought process behind and throughout the Klaytn Hackathon experience.

The previous article introduced BlockDevs Asia, the first place winners of the Klaytn Hackathon. In this article, we will introduce our second place winners, TryCrypto.

#1. Introductions

Hello TryCrypto! Congratulations on winning 1st place at the Klaytn Hackathon! Could you please introduce your team and team members? How does it feel to be the winners of the Klaytn Hackathon? :)

Thanks so much, it feels awesome. We’re really excited about Klaytn’s mission to make blockchain usable and we’re excited to be part of that mission.

Our team is TryCrypto, and we’re building the foundational building blocks for Web3.0. For the Klaytn Hackathon, we built SmartPage, a product that allows people to deploy a BApp without writing code.

Our team is three people: Nik Kalyani, Chase Chapman, and Niharika Singh.

Nik Kalyani:

• Nik is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about emerging technology trends and teaching about technology. Nik is a 12-time Microsoft MVP and the co-founder of TryCrypto as well as WhenHub, a blockchain-based startup. Previously, Nik co-founded DotNetNuke, a CMS in the Microsoft ecosystem (acquired in 2017).

Chase Chapman:

• Chase is the co-founder of TryCrypto and she’s on a mission to make blockchain technology accessible. As a business student at the University of Michigan with no technical background, Chase saw the need for empathy in the space and began working with Nik on what is now TryCrypto.

Niharika Singh

• Niharika is a masters student studying Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich. Niharika’s insatiable desire to learn and help others learn drove her to begin writing Medium posts. Now, she is a top writer on Medium in Bitcoin with about 3,000 followers.

#2. The Remote Collaboration Experience & Blockchain

Your team, TryCrypto, is currently based in Mountain View, California, but it seems like some of you are located elsewhere. How did all of you come together to form a team? What piqued your interest in blockchain?

We are definitely spread geographically! We’re based out of Mountain View, California, where Nik lives, but Chase lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Niharika recently moved to Zurich for graduate school. We were already working together on projects for TryCrypto when we came across the hackathon, which was aligned with our overall vision for TryCrypto. We were very excited to see a project that focuses on usability, so we knew we had to participate in the hackathon.

As for how we became interested in blockchain:

Nik Kaylani: Nik has been developing software since he was a teenager, constantly looking for innovative new technologies to explore and use. Nik first got into blockchain mining Bitcoin and became excited about the technology when he discovered the ability to program blockchains with smart contracts on Ethereum.

Chase Chapman: Chase became interested in blockchain while working in marketing, specifically looking at the potential for blockchain to track rights to personal data. After exploring more, Chase realized blockchain could impact almost every industry and became very excited about the potential for the technology.

Niharika Singh: Niharika began her journey into software development during her bachelors. Niharika explored many technologies until she resonated with blockchain. Eventually, she started documenting her learnings in Medium posts which connected her with the blockchain community. On learning about blockchain at a deeper level, Niharika loved the underlying philosophy of blockchain: self-sovereignty.

Wow, what a dynamic journey! In that case, how would you describe the blockchain community and ecosystem in the U.S.? Would you say that the U.S. is a blockchain-friendly environment?

The U.S. is blockchain-friendly — there’s a lot going on here and some exciting projects coming out of the U.S. The blockchain communities here are strong, and there’s a lot of diversity of thought when it comes to the approach. People are taking mass adoption of blockchain technology and applications. That being said, we’re really excited to get more involved in the blockchain scene in Asia, specifically Korea.

#3. Klaytn Hackathon & SmartPage

Why did your team decide to participate in the Klaytn Hackathon? How was the experience? What challenges, if any, did your team overcome and was your team able to grow from the experience?

We first learned about Klaytn through Nik, who saw a post about the Klaytn hackathon, and we thought that this would be an awesome opportunity to support the usability movement in blockchain.

We were very excited about Klaytn’s focus on user-friendly blockchain experiences. At TryCrypto, we are very focused on usability, so the goals of Klaytn were aligned with our own. Ultimately, we believe that decentralized technology does nothing if no one can use it. We decided to participate in the hackathon to help further that shared mission of providing user-friendly experiences for the decentralized web.

From a technical perspective, the ability to generate a JSON Schema on the fly to create HTML elements that users can instantly grab for interacting with a smart contract was a challenge. On the business side of things, our challenge was thinking through ways to support both marketplaces that SmartPage creates. SmartPage allows users to pay to deploy smart contracts from a template, but it also requires developers who contribute to that library of smart contracts, which effectively creates two different marketplaces.

We worked remotely across three different time zones, so that always requires extra coordination. Using UTC is certainly one of the best ways to coordinate work in that situation. We didn’t have too many issues, but we had been working together remotely as a team for a couple of months prior, so we worked well together for the hackathon.

Looking back, would you participate in the Klaytn Hackathon again? Why or why not?

Yes! The Klaytn Hackathon was a fantastic experience and we are so grateful for the opportunity. The team was communicative and helpful, and the hackathon was a great opportunity to get acquainted with the Klaytn ecosystem.

We learned a lot and improved our dynamic as a team. One of the best parts about having such a diverse set of perspectives and experiences on our team is that we always learn from one another, sometimes when we least expect it. SmartPage was a new and interesting challenge both technically and in terms of telling a story.

Ultimately, the hackathon was a learning experience for the entire team and we are so glad we participated.

Do you have plans to continue and develop your project, SmartPage? What additions could you make to SmartPage to improve it even more?

We are continuing to develop SmartPage and expect to launch in early November. At launch, the focus will be in the gaming industry, but we expect to expand beyond gaming after the initial launch.

As far as improvements, we are working to make the experience of selecting a smart contract and customizing that contract very intuitive. We’re also considering partnerships with firms focused on design — we want to make sure SmartPage users have the best web design tools they need to build beautiful decentralized apps. Ultimately, our goal is to make SmartPage the go-to for anyone building a decentralized application.

#4. Klaytn from a Developer’s Perspective

Having experienced Klaytn first-hand, are you continuing to use Klaytn? How has Klaytn helped you and your team?

The Klaytn team was helpful and knowledgeable, answering questions and ensuring we had the resources we needed for a successful submission. We will continue to use Klaytn and hope to partner with Klaytn in the future to provide support for new applications as we continue to build SmartPage.

For our last question, we would like to ask if you would recommend Klaytn to other developers. How is Klaytn different or better from a developer’s perspective?

From a technical perspective, Klaytn provides unique flexibility that makes developing new solutions or integrating blockchain technology into existing systems simple. Klaytn also provides a unique benefit to developers in terms of enterprise backing — the hybrid model and corporate partnerships make it a reliable business platform. Their emphasis on usability is really an important part of building on Klaytn and the developer tools reflect that focus.

Klaytn’s positioning as South Korea’s representative blockchain is beneficial to developers who want to get involved in that ecosystem. We are excited to see the future of Klaytn open up opportunities for developers hoping to get involved in the South Korean blockchain ecosystem (and beyond) and we hope to get more involved in that ecosystem as well.

Once again, congratulations! We look forward to inviting your team to our all-expenses paid, TXGX conference in November!

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

This is the final article in the Klaytn Hackathon Winner Interview Series. We hope that readers enjoyed the content and learned more about Klaytn and the Klaytn Hackathon.

As always, subscribe and stay tuned for more exciting updates from the Klaytn team!

[Klaytn Hackathon Winners] Interview #2 — TryCrypto was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi, Klaytn Fans!

We would like to introduce the opportunity to be part of the Klaytn Week!

As we have announced before, two big events will take place as part of the ‘Klaytn Next’ on 28 and 29 November at MOSS Studio in Seoul, Korea. One is ‘Klaytn Governance Council Summit’ for the Klaytn’s Governance Council members and another is TXGX, an annual technology forum to introduce Klaytn’s core technology and use cases.

We truly believe in the power of the community to make our open-sourced Klaytn platform more stable and powerful. The more blockchain community is engaged, the closer the mass adoption of blockchain is. That is why we also welcome and support various events driven by Klaytn community besides two events hosted by Ground X.

Then, what is going to happen during the week of Klaytn Next? Please suggest to us if you want to host seminars, conferences, tutorial sessions, or any form of activities (community@klaytn.com). Be part of the Klaytn Week!

Tutorial Session by Sogang University

• When: 09:30 on 25th, November
• Where: Sogang University Computer Science Department
• Topic: Introduction of Klaytn & Technology
• Registration: None (Invitation Only)

Tutorial Session by UnivChain

• When: 19:00 on 25th, November
• Where: Taebong-ro, Seocho-gu, Seoul 114 (Yangjae R&CD Innovation Hub 1F Playground)
• Topic: How to Deploy Blockchain-based Application on Klaytn
• Registration: https://www.onoffmix.com/event/198712

Tutorial Session by Gacheon University

• When: 16:00 on 26th, November
• Where: Gacheon University
• Topic: Introduction of Klaytn & Technology
• Registration: None (Invitation Only)

Blockchain Open Seminar by Skkrypto (Blockchain Association @ Sung Kyun Kwan University (SKKU))

• When: 18:00 on 26th, November
• Where: International Hall 90110, Humanities and Social Sciences Campus, Sung Kyun Kwan University
• Topic: Blockchain for Social Impact
• Registration: http://bit.ly/2OiAQvI

Klaytn Champions Meetup by Klaytn Hackathon Winners

• When: 18:00 on 28th, November
• Where: 3F, Milim Tower, 14 Teheran-ro 4-gil, Gangnam-gu
• Topic: Introduction to Klaytn Champ & Hands-on Workshop on Klaytn
• Registration: No registration required
• More Information: https://bit.ly/2pCrjr7

[Klaytn Next] Be Part of the Klaytn Week! was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Klaytn readers,

Building blockchain communities is one of the key elements in making the blockchain business successful. There are three reasons why blockchain companies must consider building and growing blockchain communities. In the blockchain industry, a community acts as a partner in development, a contributor to the project, and as a supporter of the project. Klaytn helps so that communities can grow stronger, since they are the most important assets in the development of the platform. In this new series of articles ‘Community Building Series’, we share interesting ideas about community building, what it means, and why we need them. We get together with blockchain community experts from the Southeast Asia region and discuss their experiences and thoughts as well as the current status of blockchain community formation.

In this second article, we share an interview with Ellena Ki, who is a Marketing Leader at Infinito Solutions, headquarters in Singapore. Infinito Solutions is a part of the esteemed Infinity Blockchain Group with offices in Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Europe.

#1. From finance person to blockchain

KJ: Hello, Ellena. It is a great pleasure to have you for an interview. Please introduce yourself to Klaytn readers about what you do as a community builder at Infinito Solutions.

Ellena: Hi, KJ and Brian. It is an honor for me to participate in the Community Building Series as the second speaker. I am Ellena Ki, and I work at Infinito Solutions in the marketing and business partnership department. My main role is to expand the Infinito ecosystem and enhance the Infinito brand by partnering with top blockchain service providers. At Infinito, the marketing team aims to establish strong branding among crypto communities and the blockchain industry as a whole. We work closely with business and technical teams so we can make better products, services, and solutions in order to improve customer experience.

We strongly believe in the power of collaboration, as we can leverage the expertise of many to enhance and deliver better value to our community. That is why our team is focusing on partnerships with industry experts. We must bring new value to the Infinito ecosystem to achieve maximum benefits for our users and customers.

Brian: Alright! I’m now curious how you entered the blockchain industry.

Ellena: I spent the past 15 years of my professional life in the finance industry, working in Japan and Hong Kong. My work centered in particular around intercontinental finance services: the flow of money across borders including fixed income, equities, funds, settlement, custody, collateral management, fund settle, and more. After years of working in the finance world, I was seeking something new. That is how I eventually ended up in the blockchain world. I realized that the transparent yet secure way of recording data means that system breaches, funds misappropriation, and lack of consumer trust will become issues of the past. I also realized that a smart contract of blockchain can optimize the cost and speed of the transaction significantly — industry leaders are gradually seeing the value of blockchain and will eventually try to utilize it.

#2. Thoughts about Community Building from Ellena

Brian: A common sentiment throughout the blockchain space is that blockchain companies regard the community as a very important part of building a blockchain ecosystem for their projects. Would you share your thoughts and opinions on why blockchain companies focus on community building so much?

Ellena: The blockchain industry is still fairly young, and the communities are not as large or mature in comparison to other industries. Blockchain technology users tend to be a niche demographic that are very tech-savvy. The average consumers, however, usually believe that blockchain products are difficult to use, prone to scams, and are not practical. Therefore, to expand the mass adoption of this technology, blockchain companies need to develop easy and safe to use products and services. Additionally, they should aim to solve the needs of real users so that they become viable in the mainstream market — where less tech-savvy users value speed and convenience above all.

KJ: Okay. Could you tell our readers what kind of communities your company is trying to build?

Ellena: Infinito has always been building its ecosystem around community needs. We support the most wanted blockchains, functionality, cryptocurrencies, and DApps (Decentralized Applications).

Our wallet expanded its functionality beyond send and receive. We included support for unique utilities of specific blockchains such as managing EOS resources, claiming NEO GAS, etc. We also collaborated with IOHK and Binance to give our wallet the best performance for Cardano & Binance Chain networks users. As for DApp support, we have been working with Ontology and EOS partners as our technology providers.

We join and host many meetups, programs, events, and charities to engage better with our communities as well as reward them for being part of the Infinito ecosystem. These include global EOS account registration campaigns, frequent token airdrops from ecosystem partners, programs for global users who meet us, and community campaigns such as referrals, bounties, and more.

Infinito will issue utility token INFT soon, which has been well-rated as BB by TokenInsight, a leading crypto project rating and analysis agency. We also organized INFT airdrop exclusively for participants who participated in many events such as Bibox Meetups. We have been and we will continue to do various AMAs with global partners such as Ontology, IOST, COSMOS, COCOS, and more. As you can see, Infinito is always seeking collaboration with the industry’s best to deliver better services to our communities.

Our soon-to-be-released INFT token is designed to encourage community growth, specifically for the Infinito ecosystem. With features such as staking to receive benefits, voting for Infinito product roadmaps, rating for service quality of ecosystem DApps and etc., we aim to accelerate growth in the number of blockchain users and developer communities in our ecosystem. This will help us achieve the final goal of mass adoption.

Brian: Can you give us the pros and cons about community building in your country? Also any thoughts on your government’s stance on blockchain (in general / cryptocurrency / development, etc.)?

Ellena: Our country, Singapore, is very open to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. All blockchain and crypto businesses operating in the country must comply with the official laws set by the government. Thus, it is less complicated to build a community in Singapore compared to less open-minded countries, where laws are unclear. On the other hand, due to the market being so open, there is more competition not only now but also in the future.

Currently, Infinito ecosystem users come from many different parts of the world and have a diverse array of needs. This is why the products, services, and solutions of our ecosystem must cover a wide range of demands. And this is why one of our top priorities is to always understand and serve the different needs of the community.

The Singaporean government is open to blockchain technology and many blockchain projects on the market. Quite a few of them are even supported by the government itself. This is why Singapore is currently regarded as “the heaven of blockchain” — the country understands how much impact this technology could have to our society. We believe that Singapore is on the right track, and we believe that is is crucial for more countries to recognize the immense potential of blockchain: daily lives can be much improved using this new technology.

Vietnam is one of the key markets Infinito is focusing on. There are many reasons as to why Vietnam’s economy is rapidly growing. The government and the public have a high level of understanding in fintech, a large number of crypto users, as well as a skilled blockchain developer community. For these reasons, Vietnam is being regarded as a high potential market for many blockchain companies.

We organized many rewards for Vietnamese users. INFT airdrop at ‘Cointime Summit 2019’ event is one of them. The most notable event was last year’s “Junction x Hanoi,” in which our team had the honor to lead a team of young Vietnamese developers to gain global recognition. Infinito is also looking forward to collaborating with blockchain companies in Vietnam. We will build a strong network and promote Vietnam as the blockchain hub of Asia.

KJ: We know that you are a blockchain enthusiast who is building blockchain communities in Southeast Asia. Please share your experiences so we can understand more about the community building, even though we have not experienced it directly. And lastly, you mentioned that it is very important for blockchain companies to create communities and collaborate together to make a better blockchain ecosystem. Could you share your personal thoughts on that regard?

Ellena: Communities are developing high interests in the practical use cases of blockchain technology. The most notable one is DApp services — especially fiat gateway — and security tokens. This is something that we have foreseen. We have geared up to support security tokens as well as focusing on expanding our ecosystem of services and developing the new payment platform, InfinitoPAY. A seamless experience will be the main selling point. Service providers will need to prioritize this aspect to effectively develop their products and grow their user base.

Infinito is always open to collaborations with global blockchain players. In fact, we have formed strategic partnerships with leading blockchain players such as Binance (China), EOS Block Producers and Block Producer Candidates, Ontology, IOST, and many more. We work with big players like IOHK — the company behind Cardano blockchain (Hong Kong), ONTology (China), prominent tech companies, media, and DApp partners worldwide such as Kyber Network, Changelly, ETHFinex, and etc.

In the past, we have successfully collaborated with EOS community leaders and achieved over 12,000 users joining the rising EOS blockchain. We also have them access EOS DApps. Infinito was one of the first names in the industry to support Binance’s assets and services including BNB Coin and Binance DEX (decentralized exchange) on our ecosystem via official collaboration. At the moment, we are talking to various global partners such as Sofitto, CryptoWolf, Wisepass, EOS Account Creator, DEXEOS, and many more companies for an upcoming membership program, which will provide premium benefits and incentives to our ecosystem members.

Brian: For our last question, could you give our readers some final advice regarding gathering people to build blockchain communities?

Ellena: It would be best to really learn and know about the market. Then you can target the right partners. Understanding the demands and expectations of your target community will help you more than anything when you are trying to build one effectively. Having a strong partner network, and I recommend prominent regional players, can significantly boost your branding as well as help you gain trust from communities. Aside from technical collaboration, there are many valuable areas of cooperation that you can explore, such as events and community programs. Be ambitious!

Community Building Series #2: Ellena Ki, the professionals of Community Building in Southeast Asia was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

# Why Klaytn focuses on building a community.

Dear Klaytn readers,

Building blockchain communities is one of the key elements in making the blockchain business successful. There are three reasons why blockchain companies must consider building and growing blockchain communities. Unlike other technologies, a “community” is what develops “blockchain” as a core partner. For example, developers from different communities can also participate in blockchain ‘platform’ projects indirectly by creating relevant blockchain tools. And developers who belong to the ‘platform’ community contribute codes directly to this open-sourced project, which is public on GitHub. Therefore, having a community is very important in developing blockchain projects in technical aspects as well as scaling the project to a realistic size so that mass adoption can be achieved. Not only the individual developers, but the communities themselves can also contribute to the project. Community members could be willing to join bounty programs and provide their feedback on a platform or service to improve the project, or spread news about the projects to the public and get rewarded through airdrop. That feedback could help the blockchain project to meet users from the public. In addition, communities participate in ICO and IEO of the project by buying the tokens, the blockchain company to develop their business, and thereby the participants’ loyalty goes up. It means that the community is an important nutrient for the growth of the blockchain project.

In the blockchain industry, a community is a partner in development, a contributor to the project, and a supporter of the project. Klaytn helps communities to grow healthy, and this growth of communities is one of the most important assets in the development of the platform. Klatyn strives to build a community, considering it as the key element. In this new series of articles ‘Community Building Series’, interesting ideas and thoughts on meanings of community buildings are shared to rethink why we need them. We talk with blockchain community experts who work in the Southeast Asia region and cover their experiences and thoughts as well as discuss the current status of formation of a blockchain community. Additionally, they share how they work and what they have experienced while building a better blockchain community in each country or a company.

In the first article, we share an interview with Nicole Nguyen who is the Head of APAC at Asia Blockchain Review (ABR). ABR, the largest initiative of a blockchain media company, connects all blockchain enthusiasts through a range of group discussions, technical workshops, conferences, and consulting programs.

#1. Becoming Blockchain Local Expert

KJ: You are one of few female blockchain enthusiasts in this Southeast Asia blockchain scene. I think that you’ve been a pioneer in evolving the blockchain ecosystem, fostering the industry by connecting the major blockchain players in the crypto space.

Nicole: Thank you for your compliment. I have been involved in the space for over 3 years now. At ABR, my role is spearheading the regional initiative to become the top of mind news, media and community platform for players interested in Southeast Asia.

KJ: To get to know more about you, we would like to ask you how and why you entered the blockchain industry.

Nicole: “Three years ago, I have had the privilege to be the first marketer in Infinity Blockchain Labs — the sister company to Asia Blockchain Review. Since then, it has been a crazy joyful rollercoaster ride for me in this blockchain world. To be able to experiment with new initiatives and meet new inspiring people every day keeps me moving forward. Knowing that I can continuously learn new things from other people, stay fearless of the unknown and inspire more people to join the ride with us is wakes me up every day.

Interestingly, my previous professional career had no involvement in tech or emerging tech at all. I used to work for Unilever and a couple of other multinational organizations plus set up a fashion startup on my own before experimenting with this novel technology called blockchain. “I had to start from scratch. I was learning new things every day, talking to absolute strangers and building my network in a totally new domain — Very challenging yet rewarding at the same time.”

Brian: So you seem to be enjoying your dynamic journey in the blockchain scene. Let’s talk more about what you have been doing specifically as a community builder.

Nicole: “I have started observing more about what other people do and learn from them directly. It may sound different from what a traditional community builder does, but I believe despite how much social media are changing the way we communicate or interact, humans prefer real connections. And mutual interest between people make people more interested in others and this helps your personal growth as well.

For media platform, I produce contents that feature blockchain projects and entrepreneurs to grow our network and partnership. Besides the media platform, we organize our Unblock event series regularly in 3 key cities: Ho Chi Minh City, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. We also helped with organizing the ‘Klaytn Hackathon Meetup’ in Ho Chi Minh City and Manila. We love bridging people with all these useful events and grow the community as a whole. But the best part about my job is still bugging my colleagues, acquaintances, and friends to teach me, who is a technology illiterate, what the latest issues in blockchain space have been. I think they will miss it if I stop doing so one day.”

#2. Thoughts about Community Building from Nicole

Brian: Many blockchain companies emphasize the importance of the community because they believe that a better blockchain platform/service can be built with developers contributing to the open sourced project. Could you share your thought on what the blockchain community is?

Nicole: I believe that blockchain sets itself apart from other technology because of the impact communities can have to blockchain technology. In the blockchain space, the community includes everything from your prospective investors, evangelists, contributors, first hand users as well as everything in between that keep your product up and running. It is almost impossible for you to live in the blockchain space without having a community.

KJ: You regard a community as not just a representation of a single role, but also as prospective investors, evangelists, contributors, and first-hand users. Then what do you think of how the communities will evolve in the future? Is there any implication to other blockchain companies?

Nicole: “The community would get more diverse now that more players from mainstream industries are joining the game. Also, I think the community will get even more focused on a specific type of audience, instead of trying to befriend everyone. We now have more niche communities targeting specific trend or business or interest. For example, in trading, we now have communities for traders, family offices, IEO, STO, margin traders, etc. By targeting specific needs, these communities will play more important roles in the landscape. This, consequently, requires blockchain companies to put more efforts in coming up with a relevant community strategy since they need to be really specific and single-minded who they should speak to and what setting or languages they should use.”

Brian: It is very interesting that communities will be broken down by the interests and it is actually trending in the communities of ABR. So in this flow, how will you promote the growth of the community and go along with them? What is your community’s development plan and how will you proceed?

Nicole: “I always believe that sharing knowledge is the most powerful element of connecting people and building a community. You will grow the community and at the same type grow as an individual as well, without even knowing it. Then, the community building will be embedded in your DNA. This way, you will also be able to provide value to the people in your community. At ABR, we encourage our team to share knowledge, connections, and support to our members and our community and we have been able to receive generous rewards for such initiatives. We hope to connect with like-minded people and together we will be able to spread the blockchain spirit further!”

#National Community Building & Government Position of The Blockchain

Brian: So let’s move on to a more realistic example. In your country, what difficulties have you encountered when building a community? And what are some good points?

Nicole: “I have been working on a regional scale rather than within one single country. For now, Thailand is our main focus and this represents lots of excitement as well as challenges. You can never run out of the fun in Thailand and the market has just started to get exciting. However, local partnership and connections are extremely important in Thailand and it is relatively challenging for a new international player to be able to tap in the ecosystem here within a short run. Still, challenges amass such as a huge gap between the expat and local communities in Thailand, low blockchain awareness and sporadic education schemes which demand collective efforts from not only ABR but other players. Community growth in Thailand requires significant persistence and efforts. However, I believe that the growth comes with commensurate benefits now that Thailand has prominently positioned itself in the regional map. Thanks to forward-thinking regulations and initiatives from the government.”

KJ: It is impressive that Thailand’s blockchain regulation is pioneering and the government is also cooperative with the blockchain related industry. Can you tell us more specifically about this, especially given the current situation in which many countries are regulating blockchain technology?

Nicole: “I would like to share my opinion on both countries — my home country Vietnam and my second home, Thailand. It is interesting to see how different governments in the region are shaping their strategy around blockchain. Vietnam has exceptionally strong in tech talents, operation cost and entrepreneurship. However, the infrastructure in the country is not ready for mass adoption and the government is taking a more skeptical stance towards cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. On the other hand, Thailand started more slowly yet with its stable financial infrastructure, higher financial literacy and especially the appetite for innovation, Thailand now stands a better chance of getting ahead in the race. The regulators such as SEC, Bank of Thailand, etc. are showing positive moves towards accommodating blockchain, not only from the perspective of the regulator, but also as an adopter. All these exciting movements help shed the spotlight on the blockchain landscape in Southeast Asia, making this region the go-to destination for quality and long term blockchain projects and entrepreneurs.”

# Collaboration Possibility

KJ: We know that you are a blockchain enthusiast building blockchain communities in Southeast Asia and beyond. Please give us your thoughts and share your experiences that helped us to gain more indirect experience with the community building. Lastly, you mentioned that it is very important for various blockchain companies to create communities and collaborate together to make the better ecosystem of blockchain. Could you give your opinion with that?

Nicole: The nature of Asia Blockchain Review is connecting projects outside Asia with the Asian ecosystem. So we are definitely open to any partnerships both with local or international projects. We are aiming to onboard 300–500 top projects in Asia on our platform within 2019 and thereby create one of the largest and most important gateways for blockchain.

At the end of the day, blockchain technology can only prove its value through real life applications. Thanks to collective efforts from connecting platforms such as ABR or GroundX, we will be able to connect like-minded people to address the diverse needs of stakeholders. This will allow us to validate how blockchain can really make the difference and ultimately lead to mass adoption.

The following will be an interview with Infinito Solutions community representative. Please keep us interested.

Community Building Series #1: Nicole Nguyen, the Professional of Community Building in Southeast… was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are excited to introduce the first interviewee for [Diversity in Blockchain] series, Songyi Lee. She co-founded 37 Coins and worked for Metadium as Chief Strategy Officer. She refers to herself as “the pioneer of blockchain diversity”. As an early female player in the blockchain industry, she has prioritized her efforts on solving real-world problems by using blockchain technology. And now, she is on a quest for her next destination.

In addition to ‘the pioneer of blockchain diversity,’ Songyi has quite a number of other descriptions that did not seem to match the co-founder or CSO position at a private firm:

Zentrepreneur¹, Creative Director, Host of guesthouse named ‘B-Salon’…

When you introduce or describe yourself in a professional setting, it is typical to use your company name or position. But Songyi’s identity, expressed by her various experiences and personal values, puzzled us; it was difficult to get a full grasp of her. It was only later we realized that all of this complexity is perhaps what makes her just the right person to be the first interviewee for [Diversity in Blockchain] series.

After the interview, we could sense that her complex personal inclinations, experiences, and thoughts all converge into one story and create one individual named ‘Songyi Lee.’ She focuses fully on discovering herself and listening to her voice.

#The Blockchain Journey Narrated by A Self-Explorer

While she has various modifiers to explain herself, her favorite is ‘self-explorer.’ As ‘self-explorer,’ she has been able to ponder about her wants and needs, what she can do to change the world, and take actions. Then, what could have made this self-explorer dive into the world of blockchain?

“As a self-explorer, I have been able to examine my own special capabilities and potentials. Through the process, I believed that it was my job to actively understand and solve real-world problems. I studied social welfare in college and worked at World Vision, the international humanitarian organization. While working at World Vision, I had an incident with a refugee, which ultimately led me to step into the business of blockchain. During a business trip to Mali in West Africa back in 2013, I met a refugee named Fatima, who had been subsidized by her husband in Côte d’Ivoire and living off a bag of money that had been handed to her. I was shocked to find that there were still people like Fatima, who seemed so far away from the kind of world that we were living in. In “our” world, we could send as much money as we wanted to our friends and families living abroad through our online banking system. Witnessing the gap between these two different realities — one that actively uses technology and the other that doesn’t — I had an intense desire to close this gap.”

Songyi then co-founded 37 Coins, a service by which people could send receive Bitcoin via SMS. Although 37 Coins did not last long due to market limitations, she was not discouraged to consider the potential of blockchain technology as a useful tool to resolve many social problems. Rather, her failure encouraged to study harder and deeper.

“When I started 37 Coins business, it was not easy to implement the features I wanted, as the technology was not mature, the team was small, and also there were not enough resources to work with. Besides, I did not have enough time to fully understand and communicate with the team members who came from diverse backgrounds. It was only after the 37 Coins project failed that I started to have fundamental questions about myself. I was exhausted both mentally and physically, but at the same time, rather ironically, I was given an opportunity to look deep inside of me to think about who and what I really am, how I cope with disasters, and what it is that I really want. Such questions gave me the power to stand on my own and gave me a chance to live my life thoroughly, not controlled by others or my external surroundings.”

Running a startup company was definitely not a simple task, and returning to the blockchain industry would have been a much more difficult decision, we assume.

“Although 37 Coins failed to prove its business model in the market, I was able to better understand the philosophy behind blockchain technology and the potential social impact that blockchain could create. The industry grew at a fast pace and the market perceived the technology only as a tool for speculation. My colleagues and I were overwhelmed by the rapid speed at which blockchain technology was growing, and at the same time, feeling a bit deprived by the new-rich who have recently profited enormously out of the crypto investment. In the midst of this crypto craze, I wanted to contribute to shaping the direction that this industry is heading in a more positive light.”

#Self-Sovereign Identity — the Answer to Who I Am

Returning to the blockchain industry, Songyi decided to work at Metadium hoping to find an answer to the question that she has always posed: who am I? The current identity system in society does not allow the actual owner of the identity to control his or her data; instead, it is owned and managed by a central entity or organization. On the other hand, when the data is leaked, it is not the central entity that is damaged, but the owner. It is estimated that there are about 1.1 billion people² in the world including women, children, and refugees living without official identities. This is not to be overlooked as it means that they would not be able to integrate into a social system without official identities. For instance, they cannot receive basic support such as education or healthcare from the government. It is almost as if they are invisible, excluded, and completely powerless.

On the contrary to the traditional registration system that consists of specifically given numbers like Social Security Number(SSN), Metadium breaks away from this traditional concept of identification to pursuing an idea of considering a variety of factors and elements to define a single identity. Name, age, occupation, academic background, as well as preferences, religion, and sexual orientation are the elements that express and reveal ‘oneself.’ The individual characteristics that are presented online and offline spaces also have to be recognized as their unique identities. In order to implement this new concept of identity, a secure and convenient identity verification solution is needed. And Songyi believed that blockchain technology could provide the solution to this identity issue, which is also the question she had for herself.

The Self-Sovereign Identity model enables individuals to not only possess sole ownership over their online and offline identities but also control the sharing and distribution of their personal data. With this model, the individuals have the power to own, manage, and utilize their identities without any intermediaries. A single company doesn’t — and also shouldn’t — have all the solutions, and the fact that there are many companies and projects working on identity solutions shows that there is so much to be done in this realm. She is again looking for the new space to contribute her experiences and insights.

#Individuality and Diversity

“There are no two people in the world who are exactly the same. That is why we must live as ourselves, and make sure that the answer to ‘who am I?’ is reflected in our identity. The world will then be made up of truly diverse individuals. We must recognize and support the characteristics and potentials of every individual. In reality, however, such diversity is often deemed as a cause of conflicts and problems. People form groups and cliques by putting themselves under a single frame rather than recognizing each unique individuality. Conflicts arise among differing groups — women v. men, old v. young, native-born v. immigrants, those with disabilities v. those without, etc. People often generalize a person’s characteristics as the entire group’s characteristics. “Why do women behave that way?” “Why are young people like that?” On the other hand, there can always be ‘good’ conflicts that can contribute towards making a better society and not leave hate. Such ‘good’ conflicts start when people become more open-minded to diversity and understand others’ potential. Blockchain is a kind of technology that can identify and test the potentials of individuality and also realize democratic, fair, and transparent values.

Songyi believes in the power of communities consisting of autonomous individuals who seek to define their identities from fresh perspectives. Throughout her career journey and personal life, Songyi has explored the philosophy and characteristics of blockchain, such as community, autonomy, and decentralization. We are happy to have another story of why we should value and acknowledge personal identity and diversity from her valuable experiences as well as the self-sovereign identity project, which seeks to give people their own unique identities.

[1]: Zentrepreneur is a newly coined term combining words ‘zen’ and ‘entrepreneur,’ and is used to refer to an entrepreneur who adheres to the core essence of values

[2] “Identification for Development Global Dataset | Data”. data.worldbank.org. Retrieved 2017–11–28.

Diversity in Blockchain Series #2: Songyi Lee, the Pioneer of Blockchain Diversity was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We are delighted to introduce to you a new series: [Diversity in Blockchain]. As Klaytn is dedicated to mainstream adoption of blockchain, it is important to explore the greater ecosystem and observe the works and visions of those who are contributing to this ecosystem. This [Diversity in Blockchain] series will be an opportunity to shed light on unique stories, works, and impacts that individuals around us are making.

#squatforchange

#squatforchange is a trending hashtag that has recently echoed throughout Instagram. A man had to squat down to change his baby’s diaper in a men’s washroom that had no diaper changing station. After this post went viral on Instagram, many fathers shared their similar experiences. One said he had to take off some of his clothes and put them on the bathroom floor to take care of his baby’s diaper.

The preconceived notion that mothers are the only ones to change diapers has given some men uncomfortable experiences with their babies at men’s washroom where there is no diaper changing station installed. Why do we still somehow believe that it is only women who take care of children? Washrooms are just one example. Many services and products we use in our daily lives may also be equipped with such prejudices and inconveniences without us even realizing them.

There are, however, some efforts that seek to reflect the diverse demands of people to the services and products that we use.

#toylikeme

Toy Like Me, a campaign that first started in the U.K., calls on toy manufacturers to make toys that reflect various human physical features and characteristics. By playing with toys that resemble themselves, the children with disabilities or diseases can recognize that their differences are not so ‘different’ after all. They also learn to accept themselves just as they are. A number of big toy brands like Playmobil and Lego are attempting to reflect such diversity to toy design and manufacturing, and by doing so, they are sending a powerful message that everyone should be included and celebrated.

#emoji

The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit corporation devoted to developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data, particularly the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in all modern software products and standards. Last February, Emoji 12.0 data has been released with 59 new emojis, including emojis for hearing aid, wheelchair, mechanical arm and leg, cane, and guide dog. This update is the result reflecting the voices that there are not enough emojis to express the emotions and feelings of those who live with disabilities.

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We live together with a variety of people with diverse characteristics whether they be gender, religion, language, race, or sexual orientation. In addition to such varying external features and appearances, we all have individual tendencies and characteristics, which we want to be able to express through the products and services we use. To meet such desires and needs, the services and products must be able to capture the diverse characteristics and individual behavior patterns of people. In particular, a kind of world that technology embodies should be able to reflect a broad spectrum of varying perspectives, because a kind of bias that the technology connotes could be rather frightening.

Let’s take a look at the AI — Artificial Intelligence — cases. According to a Fortune news article published last October, Amazon has developed an AI-powered recruitment system based on people’s resumes accumulated over the past 10 years. This system, however, downgraded resumes with the word “women’s” in them, and also marked lower scores to those who graduated from women-only colleges. Amazon’s efforts to improve its system failed and ultimately had to kill the entire project in 2017.

The results of an AI-powered beauty contest held by a group of scientists in Russia in 2016 are also a similar case. When a contestant sends her headshot, the artificial intelligence, supported by complex algorithms, would make evaluations on her beauty by examining various factors including facial features, symmetry, wrinkle marks, etc. However, because the system considered light skin-colored contestants to be more attractive, only 1 out of 44 finalists turned out to be a dark skin-colored contestant. Meanwhile, Google also had to officially apologize because Google Photos auto-tagged colored people as gorillas.

It is dangerous to assume that technology can solve all the problems of this society. Technology is not a ‘cure-all.’ Only when those who develop and utilize technology have balanced and open perspectives can technology contribute towards creating more positive impacts with inclusivity and openness.

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The blockchain technology is often dubbed as the potential game-changer for diverse industries and markets, and it is thus necessary for those who utilize blockchain to consider the potential issues of diversity and inclusion in advance. We need to make rooms for blockchain to grow into a safer and more reliable technology with robust security. It must be able to meet the diverse needs of end users and reflect such needs in blockchain application services.

In addition, the distinct characteristics of blockchain technology also point that we must take diversity into a great consideration. The nodes in a blockchain network must reach a consensus in the process of recording and modifying data. In doing so, the process and standards of reaching a consensus as well as the governance model should be created in a systematic manner in order to avoid the unfair decision.

The nodes are also rewarded in proportion to their contribution to the network. The same is true of the application services created based on this underlying technology. In the blockchain world, a new economic or social model can be established in which anybody who contributes to the network can benefit based on his or her contribution. That naturally leads to the importance of considering issues of how much incentives will be rewarded to whom in which occasions when designing a token economy.

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Klaytn is a public blockchain platform. It is a playground upon which service providers and users can freely interact. In doing so, Klaytn strives to be as inclusive and universal as possible, not being wholly owned by any single entity. The ‘platform’ is supposed to be open for everyone. The more diverse stakeholders behave positively within the platform, the higher the platform’s value becomes.

To this end, we Klaytn will use our ‘diversity lens’ when developing the platform and partnering with various service providers with whom we build together our ecosystem. Just as a person with poor eyesight wears glasses to see things more clearly and accurately, we seek to approach potential issues with inclusive and universal perspectives so that they can transform into new innovations. Such ‘diversity-lens,’ ‘gender-lens,’ and ‘minority-lens’ can hopefully contribute to taking greater opportunities and many more possibilities into consideration when developing our Klaytn platform.

We plan to explore the greater blockchain ecosystem by working with those who make up this ecosystem with their diverse experiences and backgrounds. This [Diversity in Blockchain] blog series will attempt to shed light on their unique stories, their works, and the impacts they are creating. We hope this series can provide the opportunity to broaden our perspective with which we examine the blockchain technology and industry.

Diversity in Blockchain Series #1: Why Diversity Matters to Us was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Background

In an acknowledgement of the multifaceted nature of development, the member states of the United Nations agreed to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The SDGs address the global challenges we face, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. With limited resources available for humanitarian, development and peace work, demonstrating results and building evidence are more important than ever. Firm results and sound evidence serve to enhance the accountability of stakeholders, prioritize resource management, correctly identify sources of impact, and help project managers’ timely action and responses after interventions. While the need for better data collection, information and knowledge management and evidence building is dire, traditional data collection and analysis methods often have issues with timeliness, processing and measurement of progress of the global goals. This complexity is reflected in the way some SDG indicators have been classified into distinct tiers: Tier 2 indicators are those that lack regularly produced data, and Tier 3 indicators are those without internationally established methodology or standards of measurement.

In this light, a new data collection system to augment or supplant existing data sources or to generate completely new statistics could revolutionize how we measure progress on the SDGs. When existing datasets have issues of data quantity, quality, representivity and sustainability, there is much room for substantial improvement in the data value chain. Some of the major bottlenecks in traditional data collection approaches include poor quality of data collected, insufficient data quantity, unsafe data storage, lack of entities to collect required data, and lack of dedicated resources.

What we need now is an innovative digital solution

Blockchain technology can provide solutions for these challenges through its inherent characteristics such as immutability, traceability, and decentralization. Blockchain has several positive aspects lacking in traditional data collection systems: transparency of information being collected, sustainability of data collection by incentivizing actors to provide information over a longer timespan, and ability to engage with wider range of stakeholders in activities that are aligned both with their own economic/social interests and with the SDGs. By leveraging collective intelligence through a decentralized and participatory platform, blockchain technology can move the needle in terms of data quality, quantity, sustainability and representivity. In doing so, insightful data collection by empowering citizens will be innovative to the field of international development.

Ways to crowdsource data with blockchain with or without a token incentive mechanism

A decentralized blockchain platform can be an improved channel to collect data without a centralized controlling agency to oversee data collection and validate the results. More specifically, data crowdsourcing through a blockchain platform may solve the aforementioned challenges in measuring SDGs. This can be achieved 1) without any token incentive mechanism (Case 1) or 2) with a mechanism to motivate participants to register relevant data points (Case 2).

Case 1. Collecting new data points through distributed ledger technology (DLT).

Case 2. Enabling long-term, sustainable data collection by introducing an incentive mechanism.

Case 1

On this shared public platform, participants register relevant data points, contributing to the accumulation of data. For projects with impact indicators that lack an existing dataset, accumulated data on the blockchain platform could help provide grounds for building datasets. DLT’s features such as immutability and traceability increase the efficacy and credibility of data. In addition, DLT could provide value-added datasets on top of existing data, enabling bottom-up data collection, possibly with a wider reach. This newly generated dataset could also be triangulated with existing data and indicators for validation and verification. Also, two different sets of data could be overlaid to yield new meaningful insights.

For the SDG indicators, relevant organizations may consider using this approach for Tier III indicators. Tackling multiple challenges prevalent in Tier III indicators, data collection through DLT can help set up a data collection system for the indicators and encourage data generation by crowdsourcing data in ways that have not been possible with existing methods. In terms of Tier I indicators, crowdsourced data in a participatory way augments or complements the existing sources.

Case 2

With an incentive mechanism, blockchain motivates data contributors in various ways so that required information for certain indicators can be collected. For instance, a public sector organization may customize and diversify incentive mechanisms for different indicators in order to properly incentivize participants to report only relevant information to the blockchain platform. This can be applied to sustainable data collection for Tier II SDG indicators, which have clear international standards and methodologies for measurement but lack regular production of data. In other words, not only incentivizing participants to register relevant data points, DLT with a token incentive mechanism also enables sustainable data collection because participants would collect data in a longer span and in a regular manner. This incentive mechanism could also broaden the scope of data collection. The importance of regular production in a wider scope is widely recognized; this also leads to a better data life cycle, which ranges from data generation to data purging via data synthesis with other inputs to generate meaningful insights for stakeholders. Furthermore, a ”smart contract” could be used to ensure that only the data points reviewed and approved by other stakeholders as relevant are recorded in the ledger, thereby bolstering the quality of collective knowledge.

There could be various types of data contributors. For example, numerous civil society organizations could become data contributors; databases acquired from diverse resources and surveys (either qualitative or quantitative) could be recorded on this co-owned, distributed ledger to create one shared knowledge hub. Through this mechanism — in which civil society organizations and donors could mutually benefit from innovative financing plans — meaningful datasets will be available for all relevant stakeholders in the international development scene, laying fertile ground for limitless range of cooperation.

There are some elements to be considered…

In order to determine which data are to be collected through a public blockchain platform, several criteria — such as data accessibility or literacy — may be considered. For example, to easily crowdsource data, piloting indicators with youth having a high level of technology literacy would be relatively easy. For a pilot project, it would be better to utilize existing demographic information and choose ranges of potential sample population that is willing to participate in data collection.

This post has covered some possible applications of blockchain for better data collection. Looking forward, another feasible feature to consider would be implementing an embedded data verification mechanism by introducing ”smart contracts” with which people can reach consensus in a democratic way. Stay tuned for further writing on this feature!

If anyone has thoughts or feedbacks on this article or has ideas for innovative collaborations or dialogues, please do not hesitate to contact our manager (community@klaytn.com, Minjee Kim) in Social Impact team of Klaytn. Klaytn is looking forward to your comments and ideas.

Toward Better Monitoring and Implementation of the Global Goals by Empowering Communities with… was originally published in Klaytn on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.