The FinHub | Volume 3

UBRI Connect 2022

From the 21st to the 22nd of September, UCT Financial Innovation Hub COO Anda Ngcaba, General Hub Manager Lindiwe Kers and MPhil in Fintech student Titose Chembezi attended the University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) Connect 2022 hosted by the UCL School of Management in London.

UBRI is a university partner programme that collaborates with universities worldwide on research and development in blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Some notable universities in the network included the University of Oxford, the University of California, ETH Zurich, and the University of Cape Town.

Titose forms part of a start-up named Nautilus, which has taken to market research from UCT in confidential computing and blockchain technology. A flagship product from the start-up is the Nautilus Wallet, which offers a low-vulnerability, non-custodial wallet. The wallet turns anyone with a smartphone into a connector to facilitate payments for those that do not have one while maintaining a high level of security and privacy for all parties. The objective is to achieve financial inclusion primarily for use cases in CBDC pilots, cross-border remittance projects and social grant payments.

On day two of the conference, Titose presented a demo of the wallet and interacted with the audience to explain the impact their technology can have on the market. This comes months after the team was awarded a grant during XRPL's second wave of grants which helped them further their venture.

Furthermore, Titose received a shared Ripple Impact award with Julian Kanjere, a PhD student from UCT working on Mandla Money - a blockchain-enabled digital wallet for the unbanked.

“The UBRI network is a chance for academia to really help shape and improve developments in the blockchain space. I appreciate Ripple's efforts in supporting research because the grant to my university has been fundamental to my education at UCT.

This is why I applied to be an XRPL Campus Ambassador to UCT in the inaugural cohort. I hosted a few free webinars to educate and inspire other students to learn about blockchain technology for free and give back. The award that Julian and I received represents the calibre of innovation from Africa when supported. I hope to see more universities from the continent in the network in future years!" Titose Chembezi.

Algorand Developer Greenhouse

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 Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix. Asia Crypto Week took place this year from 26th September to 2nd October 2022. The event, hosted Singapore at the Flower Dome in the Marina Bay Gardens, consisted of Tech Talks which involved presentations on the ecosystem as a whole and Hack Shack which involved developer workshops.

Software developers Gary Lu and Julian Kanjere had the opportunity to attend the Algorand Tech Talk on Tuesday and the inaugural Algorand Greenhouse Hack Shack on Wednesday and Thursday.

During the tech talks on the first day, the team at Applied Blockchain presented a session on London Bridge - a secure bridge between the Algorand and Ethereum blockchains, 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 at the Financial Innovation Hub," Julian Kanjere.

The Beaker framework built on PyTeal, the Algorand smart contract language binding on Python, was presented during the week. The framework allows you to focus solely on business logic without worrying about the PyTeal boilerplate that has to go with it. Gary believes it is an absolute game-changer in every way.

In addition, there was also a session about the AlgoKit - 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 main net'' will have tools that include a command line tool for initiating and managing projects, a one-click network simulator and a VS Code plugin which is similar to Truffle, Ganache and the VS Code solidity plugin by Juan Blanco.

"The Algorand Developer Greenhouse was a massive success in my eyes, and I can't wait to attend future iterations of the event. The Algorand ecosystem has come a long way, and I am so incredibly grateful and proud to be a part of it," Gary Lu.

Mudala

As the call to action to decarbonise the global economy advances, firms are facing increasing pressure to implement net-zero strategies. To achieve net zero, firms need to reduce energy use through process optimisation, move away from the combustion of fossil fuels, and shift to zero-carbon technologies to generate electricity. However, in some cases, emissions are unavoidable, whilst firms lack the incentive to reduce their carbon emissions in others. This has led to carbon markets - trading systems wherein carbon credits are sold and bought.

Carbon markets are trading systems in which carbon credits are sold and bought. The 2022 MPhil in FinTech students recently developed a proof-of-concept decentralised exchange for carbon credit trading called Mudala. Mudala, meaning 'green' in Tshivenda, is a solution to a 'carbon offsetting exchange, using blockchain technology' use case provided by Investec Bank as part of a collaboration to offer a collective learning experience between their Fintech Partnerships and Innovation team and the UCT Financial Innovation Hub.

The project culminated with a demo day at Investec Cape Town, where the students successfully presented the business case, showcased the platform and engaged in a Q&A that followed. Julian Kanjere, who oversaw the project, was proud of the outcome and commented that, "These projects are meant to prepare our students for real-world technology projects that are complex, fuzzy and require collaboration - this project with Investec delivered just that."

CBDC on Algorand

As payment systems progress, many individuals in the financial technology sector believe that issuing central bank digital currencies is the next natural step.

Naveed Ihsanullah, vice-president of engineering research, Pietro Grassano, business solutions director for Europe, and Co-Pierre Georg, associate professor and director of the University of Cape Town Financial Innovation Hub and member of Algorand's economic advisory committee, joined Lewis McLellan on the OMFIF podcast.

In this podcast, the three experts shared their latest findings on CBDCs based on their 2022 report "Issuing Central Bank Digital Currency on Algorand". Included in the report are the benefits of CBDCs, designing an efficient CBDC and economic considerations when issuing CBDCs.

In this session, Lewis asked an essential question about privacy. Co-Pierre and Naveed responded that there needs to be an appropriate balance between KYC and protecting privacy as well as creating guidelines for KYC.

While it is the assumption that CBDCs intend to replace banks, the team do not foresee CBDCs being competitive with the commercial bank framework. Instead, CBDCs are "the lifeline for banks so that they're competitive with tech companies as they become more prominent," Co-Pierre.

Listen to the full podcast using this link: https://lnkd.in/ezG7bbWj

DevCon 2022

Anda Ngcaba participated in two panels at DevCon hosted in Bogota, Columbia, from 11th to 14th October 2022.

The Giga team at UNICEF invited Anda to participate in a panel discussion at DevCon. Giga is a global initiative between UNICEF and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that aims to connect every school to the internet by 2030. There are currently 2.9 billion people without internet access, and 96% reside in developing countries.

Giga is part of the UNICEF innovation office and is the only named initiative for connectivity in the United Nations Secretary-General's Digital Co-operation roadmap and common agenda.

Giga hosted a panel at DevCon that discussed how blockchain could help connect the next billion. Gerben Kijne; the blockchain lead for Giga at UNICEF; Naroa Zurutunza, mapping and technology lead at Giga; Rajesh Sinha, the founder of Launchnodes; and Salima Bah, state counsel directorate of science Sierra Leone, joined Anda.

This panel discussed how Giga uses Ethereum staking to fund school connectivity in Rwanda. It also discussed ways to bridge the digital divide using blockchain, such as fractional ownership of last-mile infrastructure and connectivity credits.

"During this panel, I had the opportunity to share some insights from some of the exciting projects we're working on at the Financial Innovation Hub. It was also interesting to hear how companies leverage blockchain to solve the digital divide, particularly on the African continent. This is a testament to various use cases blockchain offers beyond financial services," Anda Ngcaba.

Beaker

By Gary Lu

Beaker is a bleeding-edge smart contract development framework built on PyTeal for the Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM). A well-known engineer of Algorand Inc., Benjamin Guidarelli spearheads the framework's development. In case you were curious like I was, Benjamin chose the name Beaker to pay homage to Flask, the micro web framework for Python, due to how much he enjoyed working with it in the past.

While still in alpha, Beaker has come a long way and already offers developers many benefits. When asked what his top three reasons would be for using Beaker, Benjamin mentioned (1) code structure, (2) convenience, and (3) the community of builders working towards making the framework better.

I can vouch for all the points above from my experience with Beaker, which has been incredibly positive. In a nutshell, I would describe what the framework looks to achieve as follows: it seems to boost productivity when developing AVM smart contracts by abstracting PyTeal and testing boilerplate/complexity away from the developer so that they may focus solely on business logic critical to their application. Beaker has already saved me time and effort while developing and testing my smart contracts. For example, regarding code structure, Beaker gives me a way to concretely define methods of a smart contract familiarly without having to worry about routing. When it comes to convenience, a great example of this is the built-in application client that makes deploying and testing my smart contracts with the Algorand Sandbox completely trivial.

Regarding Benjamin's third point precisely, I enjoyed using Beaker so much that I made a small contribution to the framework. While designing a set of smart contracts that used the factory pattern, I noticed that Beaker could not yet compile deeply nested smart contracts. I opened up an initial pull request with a half-baked solution and collaborated with Benjamin (who was incredibly responsive and helpful) to improve it. We then arrived at a result we were both happy with, and the pull request was merged. With the factory pattern being a popular design pattern in smart contract development, I believe this addition to Beaker will be incredibly beneficial. I can't wait to make more contributions in the future.

As for the next big step for Beaker, Benjamin aims to productionalise it, i.e., add more testing and documentation, before releasing the beta version as part of Algokit - an upcoming all-in-one collection of tools used to see through the entire lifecycle of developing and deploying AVM web3 applications.

When looking at the Algorand developer ecosystem as a whole, I can't help but notice that it is making great strides in the right direction. Developer experience is incredibly vital, and its improvement can only lead to more and better applications in the future. While chatting to Benjamin, he underlined a philosophy I couldn't agree more with: "We chew the glass, so the folks coming up don't have to."

Persistent Barriers, New Frontiers: Fintech Futures in Africa

Software developer, Takunda Chirema, attended the Human Economy Conference 2022 hosted at the University of Pretoria (UP). The title of this year's conference was Persistent Barriers, New Frontiers: Fintech Futures in Africa.

The Human Economy Research programme at UP conducts interdisciplinary academic research on the inequality of the global economy and how participants behave as actors in these economies. The study is interested in how ordinary people respond to the institutional forms that perpetuate structures of inequality. The "human economy" is seen as being made and remade by people. The concept is based on a holistic conception of human needs and considers humanity's interests.

The Human Economy Research programme at UP conducts interdisciplinary academic research on the inequality of the global economy and how participants behave as actors in these economies. The study is interested in how ordinary people respond to the institutional forms that perpetuate structures of inequality. The "human economy" is seen as being made and remade by people. The concept is based on a holistic conception of human needs and considers humanity's interests.

Takunda attended the conference to provide insights into how Africa can leverage blockchain technology for a crypto-based future. The discussions centred around financial inclusion using financial technology and whether this can benefit the most vulnerable in the economy. Research into micro-credit, for example, in South Africa, concluded that it made a small percentage of the upper-class wealthy whilst exploiting the black community. This form of credit is not sustainable and only pushes the poor into mass indebtedness. Questions arose regarding whether fintech companies or the government should solve financial inclusion problems for specific low-income brackets through social grants.

"Blockchain technology has enabled innovations for the financial inclusion of the underprivileged. This group in society has been exploited and only sunk deeper into debt instead of being freed from it through micro-lending. Lowering the price of entry into real estate or the stock market from which most of the elite make their gains is essential. With blockchain, this can be achieved through the fractionalisation of assets. We can see examples like Lofty, tokenising real estate, where one can own a piece of property for as low as 50 USD. There is a lot of room for innovation, and I think Africa has real-world problems that can be addressed using blockchain technology," Takunda Chirema.