Dunya Labs brings EOS blockchain to India with Catalyst

Dunya Labs hosted the inaugural sessions of its Catalyst Series in Bengaluru. Catalyst, a programme of hands-on blockchain developer workshops, was launched in partnership with the Government of Telangana Blockchain District as part of the State’s blockchain education efforts.

The aim of the Catalyst Series is to guide technologists in understanding, experimenting with, and developing on cutting-edge public blockchain protocols. In India, less than 1% of the country’s developers have exposure to blockchain development, and experience is limited to platforms such as Hyperledger and Ethereum. Catalyst aims to bring India to the global blockchain frontier through community participation and developer education.

This series is a first-of-its-kind EOS workshop and hackathon, kicking off with a three-weekend-long curriculum covering the EOS protocol architectural design, developer tooling/environments, and smart contract and dApp (decentralized application) development. Hundreds of applicants sought the opportunity to attend the workshops, which featured sessions by international blockchain experts across Ukraine, China, Korea and the United States.

The workshop concluded with India’s first EOS Hackathon on November 24, 2018. Teams were tasked with building an EOS dApp within one day for a prize of INR 70,000. Numerous innovative ideas and use-cases emerged from the hackathon, such as utilizing blockchain to streamline and audit government benefit schemes, decentralized predictive markets and augmented reality-based gaming platforms with tokenized virtual goods.

Dunya Labs launched and conducted this event in partnership with pioneers from the blockchain industry including local leaders Incrypt and Koinex, as well as international EOS block producers EOS Canon, EOSYS, CryptoLions, Attic Lab, AlohaEOS, EOS Nation and Meet.One.

“The Catalyst Series is the first blockchain programme in India focused on the frontier protocols which are emerging in the space. Our goal is to give the Indian developer community a taste of cutting-edge innovations in decentralized technologies, and equip them with the knowledge and skills to build on the decentralized Internet of the future.” said Cathy Guo, Co-Founder and CEO, Dunya Labs.

“Through our collaboration with Government of Telangana, we aim to provide more collective opportunities for developers to build decentralized blockchain applications, in turn propelling India towards leadership in the global blockchain industry." added Srikar Varadaraj, Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer, Dunya Labs. “Telangana’s IT Minister and IT department have taken a great, forward-looking stance for blockchain education and new initiatives.”

EOS is a general-purpose smart contract platform developed by Dan Larimer, who also built application-specific blockchain platforms Steemit and Bitshares. EOS is often considered as an alternative to Ethereum, which was launched in July 2015. Since the EOS mainnet launch six months back, the EOS platform has witnessed explosive innovation, activities and community engagement with over 500,000 account holders, more than 5 million transactions made per day, and one of the most exciting infrastructures and dApp development platforms in existence. (www.dappradar.com).

“I was amazed by the vibrancy and infectious energy of all participants. It was incredible to see so many technology enthusiasts choosing to spend their weekends with us. One of my favorite aspects of hosting these workshops was interacting with each participant - from blockchain newcomers to dedicated believers. There’s already strong demand for teams to continue working together on building dApp ideas! We plan on expanding these workshops in 2019 to cover more world-class protocol projects, and are excited to bring more hands-on building opportunities to India” - Grace Guo, Head of Business Development, Dunya Labs.