2023 Blockchain Summer School – Monash University Blockchain Technology Centre

- Julian Kanjere

At the beginning of February 2023, I attended the Monash University Blockchain Summer School hosted by the Algorand Centre of Excellence on Sustainability Informatics for the Pacific (ACE-SIP). It was a two-days well spent at my alma mater as I got the lay of the land for all things blockchain – innovation, research and regulation – in Australia and the pacific region.  

Stablecoins and CBDC

One of the speakers at the event, a representative from Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) spoke about how they issued a Australian dollar stablecoin called the A$DC and are involved in a number of central bank digital currency initiatives in the region. Some quick googling revealed that National Australia Bank (NAB), a rival to ANZ Bank has been piloting a stablecoin called the AUDN. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose value is pegged to an underlying fiat (government issued) currency and allow settling of transactions on blockchain technology in real-time. Issuing of stablecoins by ANZ and NAB – both in the ‘big four’ Australian banks – demonstrates one of the roles banks can play in driving innovation in the web3 economy, leveraging their brand visibility, domain knowledge and reputation.

General Innovation 

The summer school, also showcased/mentioned a number of innovative web3 solutions and opportunities for blockchain in the region. Some of these include: 

  • CValid – a credentialing system for education and recruitment from Monash University. This innovative solution is set to revolutionise the education and recruitment industry, providing a secure and efficient way of verifying credentials.
  • Water Ledger – a distributed, all-digital system modernising the way water rights are shared and reported (read more about Australian water rights here – https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/water-rights).
  • Powerledger – a peer-to-peer renewable energy blockchain trading platform that allows consumers and producers to track, trace and trade every kilowatt of energy that is produced off-grid. 
  • FreshChain – a blockchain-based system to protect Australian exports and provide assurances to trading partners and consumers about the safety and quality of Australia’s produce. FreshChain is a recipient of the Australia Traceability Grants program.
  • RedBelly blockchain – an Australian blockchain platform developed by the University of Sydney and  the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). 

Opportunities

  • The Australian governments Clean energy regulator considering blockchain solutions for “Guarantee of Origin” assurance scheme to verify emissions associated with hydrogen, renewable electricity and potentially other products made in Australia such as metals or biofuels.
  • Sustainable supply chains e.g.tracking and tracing emissions across a supply chain – representing emissions digitally on a blockchain allows supply chain partners to make emissions data readily available and to share it with the next participant in the chain.

Research

Major research themes I observed from the conference included:

  • Formal and quantitative analysis of blockchain platforms i.e. blockchain network benchmarking.
  • Post-quantum computing and blockchain security.
  • Micropayments and streaming payments using channels.

Special mention and thanks to ACE-SIP and the Algorand Foundation for organising the event and the opportunity to participate.

Book launch – More than learning: Entrepreneurship at University of Cape Town

- Julian Kanjere

The University of Cape Town (UCT) has recently published an entrepreneurship book titled More than learning: Entrepreneurship at UCT which describes the UCT entrepreneurial ecosystem and profiles some UCT entrepreneurs (both current students and alumni). The book, aptly named, comes at a time when the role of universities as learning institutions is evolving and aligns perfectly with UCT’s Vision 2030, which is to “Unleash human potential to create a fair and just society“! Entrepreneurs take risks, they dig deep into their human potential. Paraphrasing from Guy Raz, author of How I Built This, entrepreneurs push boundaries, they explore unchartered territory and build products, services or bring ideas that become accessible to (and often change) the world.

Entrepreneurship requires a problem to be solved, a problem solver and a supporting environment to bring an idea to life. The Entrepreneurship at UCT book, edited by Alison Gwynne-Evans, describes the initiatives and structures at the institution that enable entrepreneurship – the UCT environment, and showcases some of its problem solvers and the problems they are solving – the UCT entrepreneurs and their startups. The initiatives and structures in the book, including the UCT Solution Space, the annual UCT Genesis Project, Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Design-Thinking School Afrika, and the Pitch UCT, all offer support, platforms and pathways to entrepreneurship.

The book also profiles a number of UCT founders and the startups they are running, which span a diverse range of verticals including an African language learning platform, an online coding school and an agency supporting traditional Afrikan beer homebrewed by women. Some of the startups include Zaio, Vambo Academy and FoodPrint. Zaio, founded by Mvelo Hlope, creates a personalized learning experience to learn how to code and build digital solutions. Vambo Academy by Chido Dzinotyiwei is an online platform that aims to teach African languages and share various aspects of African heritage. FoodPrint, which I founded, is an agri data platform which connects farmers to information and financial services.

Read more about the book launch here and access the book online on OpenUCT.

Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACE) Conference Barcelona 2023

- Julian Kanjere

In January 2023, I attended the Algorand Centres of Excellence (ACE) Conference in Barcelona. The event, hosted by the Algorand Foundation, brought together over 120 researchers and students from the various Algorand university hubs across the world to advance blockchain education and research. Universities represented included UC Berkley, Monash University and University of Cape Town.

The sessions at the conference covered a wide range of topics including protocol engineering, security and practical applications of blockchain. I got to present on blockchain use cases in emerging markets and how at FoodPrint Labs we’ve built a WhatsApp bot for that is integrated with the Algorand blockchain for record keeping, traceability and access to financial services by farmers in emerging markets.

I also enjoyed a presentation from UC Berkley on research they are doing on DeFi attacks categorised by protocol type (yields, bridges, lending etc) – although bridges have a low number of attacks compared to other protocol types, they rank high in monetary loss resulting from the attacks (i.e. funds are drained from the bridge pools).

John Woods, CTO at the Algorand Foundation also used the opportunity to announce the release of AlgoKit, which is a one-stop shop tool for developers building on the Algorand network. AlgoKit gets developers of all levels up and running with a familiar, fun and productive development environment in minutes. The release of AlgoKit is inline with the Algorand north star of not only providing a robust ledger but best in class experience for developers building on it.

All in all, attending the conference was a great way to kick-off the year, mingle with university innovation units building on Algorand and exchange ideas!

 

 

 

Falling Walls Lab Cape Town 2022

- Julian Kanjere

#FallingWallsLab is a 3-minute world-class pitch competition, networking forum and stepping stone for students and early-career professionals from around the globe by the Falling Walls Foundation (FWF) in Germany. The FWF – channelling the iconic image of the crumbling concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – are on a relentless pursuit to find out: Which are the next walls to fall? To answer this question, FWF hosts the annual Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin where winners from the Falling Walls Labs events – which take place at renowned academic institutions around the world – compete on the global stage.

In September 2022, I had the privilege of of taking part in the Falling Walls Lab Cape Town event at the University of Cape Town (UCT), which was hosted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. I gave a 3 minute talk titled Breaking the wall of smallholder farmer poverty in which I spoke about FoodPrint and how we are using WhatsApp and blockchain technology to provide farmers with production records, financial services and connect them to markets.The novelty in our approach is how we are combining existing and ubiquitous apps like WhatsApp and 4IR tech to provide both utility and agency to users in emerging markets who find themselves in low tech environments (unreliable internet/low resource smartphones etc).

Looking at the numbers, there are 33 million smallholder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa from which 70% of the continent’s food supply is produced. Looking at the bigger picture, there are 600 million smallholder farms worldwide producing ~1/3 of the world‘s food. However, smallholder farmers comprise a large proportion of the world’s poor living on less than $2/day but this can be remedied through the use of accessible technology to provide credit, insurance and access to markets.

Out of 12 participants, the top 3 were awarded prizes – I was awarded 3rd place. The overall winner – Emma Horn – went on to represent UCT at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin where she placed 2nd overall!

Here is a link to the highlights of Falling Walls Lab Cape Town – watch here. Special mention to UCT for hosting and Friedrich Naumann Foundation for putting together the event.

Thoughts on FTX Crypto Exchange Collapse

- Julian Kanjere

2022 has been a “cold” year for the crypto industry – crypto prices collapsed, Terra’s USD stablecoin crashed and last month, the FTX crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy. The resulting contagion affected crypto-lenders such as Genesis Trading, Gemini and Galaxy (and there is a possibility that other crypto trading venues may fail in the near-future).

To the outside observer, it is easy to conflate the FTX failure as a failure of crypto or more broadly blockchain/web3 (perhaps akin to attributing the dot com busts in 2000 as a failure of the internet). In my opinion, this is not the case, the FTX failure was a failure in governance, risk management & fiduciary duty. It was a failure resulting from centralisation and not a failure of blockchain technology.

How can this be avoided in the future? Distributed ledgers do need governance that is responsible and transparent e.g. proof-of-reserves. In particular, centralised exchanges (CEX) as compared to decentralised exchanges (DEX) do require some guardrails of sorts – e.g. periodic stress testing (liquidity risk & counterparty risk) and reporting. The hope is that regulators come forward with sustainable and not draconian measures as a result of knee-jerk reactions, and trading venues move more towards transparent governance and reporting.

One of the recurring questions in the wake of the FTX failure (together with the others from 2022) is whether crypto has any real-life utility. I wrote a post on crypto utility, financial inclusion and stablecoins where I cite real-life projects (Mandla Money, Stellar Aid Assist) that are using stablecoins to drive financial inclusion and/or deliver humanitarian aid – proving that crypto does indeed have utility apart from speculation.

Although much of 2022 has been crypto winter and dominated by bad press, I share the same sentiments with Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman that “crypto technology’s potential for beneficent societal impact may eventually compare with the impact of the telephone and internet on the economy and society.“

Crypto Utility, Financial Inclusion and Stablecoins

- Julian Kanjere

Is there any utility in crypto? This is a recurring question from crypto sceptics, who tend to argue that there is no utility outside of speculation. In this post, I give 2 examples in which crypto can be used to drive financial inclusion in emerging markets – particularly through the use of stablecoins (a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset class e.g. USD Coin (USDC) which is pegged to USD). Worldwide, there are 2 billion unbanked adults, and these fall into the financially excluded category. According to the South African National Treasury, financial inclusion is the provision and use of affordable and appropriate financial services by those segments of society where financial services are needed but not provided, or they are inadequately delivered.

Case 1 – Mandla Money SMS Wallet. Firstly, in September 2022, I gave a talk at the Apex Developer Conference (hosted by Ripple & XRP Ledger Foundation) in Las Vegas on how crypto-assets can drive financial inclusion in emerging markets (click here to watch). In my talk, I made reference to one of the innovative projects that I have been involved with – Mandla Money SMS Wallet – which is a digital wallet that allows users to receive, transact and store value using digital assets via SMS (text message), with no need for a smartphone or an internet connection. The Mandla Money SMS Wallet is built on top of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) which is a decentralized, public blockchain that is fast, energy efficient, and reliable. By making use of stablecoins issued on the XRPL, together with SMS technology which has been around for a while, anyone with a mobile device (including feature phones) has a means to access previously unavailable financial services.

Case 2 – Stellar Aid Assist. More recently (December 2022), Stellar Development Foundation announced the launch of Stellar Aid Assist which makes use of stablecoins to deliver digital aid at scale (e.g. in Ukraine). According to the Stellar team, cash-based interventions serve as a lifeline to millions worldwide in support of basic needs and Stellar Aid Assist – which is fast to deploy and rapidly scale to meet a moment of crisis – gets money into the hands of those who need it, quickly and at low cost.

Considering that there are 2 billion unbanked adults worldwide and that it is possible to send crypto-assets in low-tech environments (where there are no smartphones or internet access) using blockchains such as XRPL, Algorand & Stellar, it is clear that there is a real opportunity to drive financial inclusion in emerging markets through use of blockchain payment rails and stablecoins. So, is there any utility in crypto – I believe the answer is a resounding YES!

Apex Developer Summit Las Vegas 2022

- Julian Kanjere

Last month I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the premier event of the XRPL Ledger (XRPL) community – The Apex Developer Summit in Las Vegas, USA. At the event, which is hosted annually by Ripple and the XRPL Foundation I got to meet and engage with the XRPL community, which included David Schwartz, a co-founder and current CTO at Ripple.

Before jumping into a summary of David Schwartz talk on The next iteration of XRPL, recall that XRPL is a decentralised, public blockchain led by a global developer community – think of XRPL as a public good. XRPL makes use of a federated byzantine agreement algorithm that enables fast & cheap transactions with finality achieved in 3 to 5 seconds (in simpler terms, transactions with XRP or XRPL-issued assets complete in 3 – 5 seconds). You can learn more about the XRPL here and join the community on discord here.

Now, back to David Schwartz’s keynote, he started the talk with a look at the XRPL design fundamentals which include:

  • An integrated decentralised exchange (DEX) – the XRPL has features an inbuilt DEX since the beginning (circa 2012).
  • Invariant checking – the ledger has an ability to check for bugs without corrupting the ledger.
  • Rekeyable accounts – XRPL features rekeyable accounts, which is a feature that allows for changing the transaction signing key without changing receiving key.
  • Issued assets – XRPL supports the ability to issue custom assets (e.g. stablecoins or anything fungible that has value and behaves like currency) with ease.

David went on to note some of the exciting XRPL innovations which include:

  • XLS-20d – a proposed standard to issue NFTs on the XRPL i.e. mint/burn/hold/trade NFTs. The XLS-20d is designed for scale.
  • Project Clio – a development initiative to create massive storage reduction for servers that handle queries from clients. This will increase throughput, reduce cost to access the ledger and allow the ledger to scale (bearing in mind that the ledger cannot go any faster than consensus can).
  • Hooks -a feature of XRPL that allows developers to add smart-contract like functionality to the XRPL. Hooks are small, efficient pieces of code being defined on an XRPL account, allowing logic to be executed before and/or after XRPL transactions.
  • Sidechains – a feature of XRPL that allows anyone to run a sidechain to the XRP Ledger while having the freedom to decide how their chains work. You want XRPL mechanics but assets from other chains e.g. running an EVM sidechain to allow even more developers easy access to XRPL’s feature set and bring existing Solidity-based smart contracts written for EVM-compatible chains to the XRPL. Sidechains allow you to innovate at the blockchain level i.e. L1 level e.g. if you wish to tweak the TPS you can do so. Sidechains ultimately provide horizontal scalability.

In addition to David’s keynote, the summit included other keynotes on NFTs, blockchain and law, and new ways to build with some of the ecosystem tools. Here are links to the keynotes:

And then I earlier I mentioned that I got to speak at the conference. I gave a talk on how to send and receive XRPL-based assets in low-tech environments e.g. in place where there is no internet connectivity or smartphones. Here is the link to my talk – Transacting in Low-Tech Environments, Julian Kanjere – I will write a post on this soon.

 

2022 Impact Award from Ripple blockchain’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI)

- Julian Kanjere

Last month (Sept 2022), Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) hosted the 2022 UBRI Connect Summit at the University College London’s School of Management. The 2-day event brought together scholars, researchers, and thought leaders in the UBRI network to showcase blockchain initiatives, share knowledge, and inspire future research. This was very much aligned with the UBRI’s north star of championing blockchain research and development in academia. Themes covered at the event included financial inclusion, central bank digital currencies and decentralised finance (DeFi).

At the event, Titose Chembezi and I were awarded the 2022 UBRI Impact award for our work towards financial inclusion in emerging economies using blockchain technology. Receiving this award speaks to the global relevance of solutions coming out of emerging economies such as South Africa, as well as the research being carried out at the University of Cape Town and its Financial Innovation Hub. This also reaffirms my belief that financial inclusion is a human right, and blockchain technology can be a force multiplier in achieving economic access and opportunity for all, one block at a time!

#blockchain #financialinclusion #ripple #UBRIConnect2022

 

Asia Crypto Week 2022

- Julian Kanjere

Asia Crypto Week is a week where blockchain enthusiasts and industry veterans from around the world get together for a series of independently organised blockchain events. The week is primarily anchored on the world’s premier crypto event – Token2049, and concludes with the F1 Singapore Grand Prix. This year, Asia Crypto Week took place from Monday 26th September – Sunday 2nd September 2022. Thanks to the Algorand Foundation, I had the opportunity to attend the Algorand Tech Talk and the inaugural Algorand Greenhouse Hack Shack – both events held at the Flower Dome in the Marina Bay Gardens. 

During the tech talks on the first day, I particularly enjoyed the session on the London Bridge, presented by the team at Applied Blockchain. London Bridge is a secure bridge between the Algorand blockchain and Ethereum blockchain which allows the transfer of tokens between the former and the latter network leveraging the additional security of Algorand state proofs and trusted execution environments (Intel SGX). This was particularly intriguing as data privacy and security is one of the major themes in the FinTech projects I am involved with.

In addition to learning about the London Bridge, I also enjoyed learning about the AlgoKit which is a productised version of developer tools for Algorand that will be released in the next few months. AlgoKit, whose tagline is “a single tool to go from concept to mainnet” will have tools that include a command line tool for initiating and managing projects, a one-click network simulator and a VS code plugin etc (similar to Truffle, Ganache and the VS Code solidity plugin by Juan Blanco if you familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem). 

All in all, it was great to network with peers and investors, listen to talks from technology leaders and get my hands dirty during the hack shack workshops.

Outside of the Algorand events, I got to network with some of the TOKEN2049 crowd, enjoy the views from the top of the Marina Bay Sands and capped of the weekend with the F1 Marina Bay Night Race which did not disappoint.

Food for Thought from FoodPrint – June 2022

- Julian Kanjere

Julian here, founder and CEO/CTO at FoodPrint. I’m excited to be sending out an update on how we are progressing as an AgTech startup. FoodPrint is a digital food supply chain platform connecting producers, buyers and consumers. At FoodPrint, we believe in short, sustainable and transparent supply chains – they are the answer to fairer and more sustainable food systems across the globe.

I’m especially excited about 2022 as we have been setting structure and process to the business – our team has grown and going forward we will send out regular updates such as these.

Funding
2021 was a good year for us. We won the Inqola FEED Innovation Prize (South Africa), which was followed by funding from the Algorand Foundation (Singapore). With this funding, we have been able to grow the team, build our WhatsApp chatbot and anchor our supply chain solution on the Algorand Blockchain to bolster trust in the supply chain data.

We are looking to raise some seed funding in the near future, if you are an investor and would like to chat, reach out here.

Team and Partnerships
The FoodPrint team is growing, and in particular, our tech team is firing on all cylinders. We have an immediate need for a Community Manager – someone with expertise in agriculture, connections to farmers and cooperatives, entrepreneurship and community building. In addition, we are also seeking to partner with more AgriHubs/food cooperatives and bulk produce buyers/retailers – we would like them to hop on board as early adopters of our platform. If you can assist with either, drop us an email here.

Product Updates
WhatsApp Chatbot
At the end of 2021, we started work on our WhatsApp chatbot, and I am excited to say that we are almost ready to pilot this. Using our low-tech WhatsApp chatbot, farmers can register to the FoodPrint platform, and everytime they harvest and sell produce, they record this on the chatbot – creating a digital record (anchored on the blockchain) that links them to potential buyers and finance service providers (in future). The WhatsApp chatbot will be free
to use for smallholder farmers.

If you are a farmer, and would like to try out our chatbot, send a WhatsApp message to us here – https://wa.me/+27711463479 –  and you will be notified once the chatbot is live.

FoodPrint QR Codes for Track and Trace
The FoodPrint platform also supports product-specific QR Codes for consumers to scan, and read the claims or the story behind the food they are buying or about to consume. Here is an example – scan with your mobile device – and see what a provenance record looks like.

If you are a food retailer or business, and wish to provide a unique experience for your customers
(a digital touchpoint to drive consumer engagement), or a farmer wishing to tell the story about
your farm, get in touch here.

Harvest Box
We have partnered with PEDI AgriHub in Philippi Cape Town, and are piloting a fresh produce harvest box in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town! We are especially excited about this as this is an immediate way for us to add value to local farmers and provide the farmers they support with market access. The harvest box contains fresh, quality seasonal produce. If you would like to purchase a weekly fresh produce box, you can get in touch here.

Visit to University of Zurich Blockchain Center
And lastly, last month, I had the opportunity to share how FoodPrint is bringing blockchain technology to food supply chains in sub-Saharan Africa at a blockchain workshop in Zurich, arranged by the University of Zurich Blockchain Center and University of Cape Town. This was well received and networks established – innovation and collaboration feed and build upon each other!

That’s all for now. Until the next update, eat your greens!

Julian Kanjere
Founder
https://www.foodprintlabs.com