CAPE TOWN - Blockchain production studio, Linum Labs with a focus on blockchain training, consulting and community aggregation hosted a Blockhain Symposium in Waterfront, Workshop 17 which covered all areas of Bitcoin, Ethereum and cryptocurrency.
The event had guest from across the board of blockhain such as one of the largest blockchain developer studio ConsenSys, Africa’s largest banks such as ABSA and Old Mutual and a few blockchain startups.
The Symposium also marked the end of Linum Labs’ 10-Day Unlock the Block Hackathon in partnership with AIFMRM , which was sponsored by the University of Cape Town, ABSA, Status, ConsenSys, RMB The Foundry, Old Mutual, Microsoft and Pick n Pay.
Speakers at the event included, Monica Singer from ConsenSys, Simon de la Rouviere, Professor G-J van Rooyen from Custos Media, Lohan Spies, James Kilroe from Newton Partners, Niel de la Rouviere and Paul Kohlhaas from uPort.
The winners of the Hackathon, where 20 teams competed for a R100,000 prize with their blockchain prototypes were also announced in the following order:
Team Sudo Tesla, created a blockchain-based tokenised water management system, came in third place.
They won a month of working at Rise Cape Town, a FinTech innovation hub at the Woodstock Exchange.
Teams WhenMoon and Yuna tied for first place as the winners of R100,000 prize.
Team members (WhenMoon?)
- Brandon Kenley Verkerk
- Christopher Maree
- Iordan Tchaparov
- Kavilan Nair
The team created a blockchain application called blockPoll - a pseudo-anonymous, online, blockchain-based voting tool, used to facilitate organisational-based proxy voting and polling mechanisms for a wide array of uses.
Team members (Yuna)
- Kungela Mzuku
- Kyle Roos
- Una Singo
The team created a blockchain application called Proof of Steak - a peer to peer lending network that uses non-fungible tokens, backed by physical assets, as collateral.
“The event has shown us two things, firstly that the applications of blockchain technology in improving people's lives in Africa are immense and second, it is much easier to build those applications than many people think - we just need to work together,” says Paul Kohlhaas, Founder of Linum Labs.