Aug 13, 2020
A Look Beyond the Veil of the Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
The first-ever local SuperheroLeague was carefully organized by the ækiti community with “A Look Beyond the Veil of the Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies” as the key theme ended with a blast.
After rigorous weeks of planning, tireless nights, and effort put in by the ækiti team in picking the best individuals to anchor the first-ever Local SuperheroLeague and made it a success, four amazing personalities were selected; they came together to make it as incredible as it can be.
The ækiti first SuperheroLeague began with an introduction from the league host ‘Akinola Blessing Debby,’ welcoming everyone to the league. The host gave a simple presentation of herself and an explanation of what the league was all about. Right before the first speaker came to the stage for her session, a few rules were put in place by the host to avoid distractions and confusion. She also spoke regarding the league’s contest, which was still ongoing at that time.
Bookoons commenced the league speaking on ‘Cryptocurrencies: A Cause For Adoption.’ She took us on a journey, starting from the basics; she defined cryptocurrency as a ‘digital means or medium of exchange.’ She explained that without a cause, there could be no effect; therefore, there is a problem that cryptocurrency is to solve or ease.
She listed several problems that Nigeria as a nation is facing that necessitates the adoption of cryptocurrency in our daily routine including;
- reduction in the value of Naira,
- excessive stamp duty,
- Corruption,
- money laundering, etc.
She explained that the control of wallets is almost impossible to gain without the owner’s authorization. She credited cryptocurrency with the ability to open you up to opportunities, access to new possibilities, and meeting people all over the world. She further explained the decentralization of cryptocurrency. Which gives you absolute control of whatever you own, as long as you work with a trusted platform.
Bookoons rounded it up nicely by answering questions asked by the audience through the chatbox and giving excellent advice of not being greedy as nothing good comes without hard work.
Barineka immediately anchored the second session, speaking on ‘Superhero and its Use Cases.’ He began by explaining that we have centralized social media that are controlled by one central server, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc. He went on to explain the dangers of centralized social media poses including;
- Security (hacking of various celebrity accounts to carry out elaborate scams),
- Censorship (no freedom to share what you want),
- Privacy (most social media apps have a right to peek into your phones), etc.
He then spoke on decentralized social media like Superhero, which is still a work in progress but already a great medium. Unlike decentralized media, Superhero gives incentives for your work. He explained that Superhero is a social media built on the æternity blockchain that serves as a means to reward good deeds and great efforts. It also has a human-readable address, reducing the need always to write up the wallet address or copying the address.
He went on to share his screen and taught the audience to create their superhero wallet, create a .chain name(e.g: aeternityekiti.chain), how to tip, how to claim tip, etc. However, due to an unstable internet connection, Emmanuel Joseph (the lead for the ækiti community) took a few minutes to adequately explain and show how Superhero works, especially how to create a wallet, send tips, claim tips, etc. He ended the session by answering questions from the audience.
The third session, which took us right into the developers’ playground was the first technical session of the league and was anchored by Goodness Ezeokafor teaching on ‘Sophia, A Better Smart Contract Programming Language.’
He began by explaining that Sophia is a language used to build SmartContract on the æternity blockchain, and it is an essential program or a transaction that automatically control or document legal relevant activities to end a contract or an agreement. He explained that all decentralized æpps make use of a SmartContract, and when it comes to value transfers, it checks if a user has that amount before sending it to the recipient without having to bring in a middle man.
He explained writing Sophia codes is pretty easy for beginners to dive into as it is quite more comfortable than other SmartContract platforms. He then showed us how to make use of the mighty AEstudio(æternity’s Web Sophia Text Editor) to write smart contract codes by explaining the syntax and method by writing a ToDo List SmartContract. The Todo List SmartContract saves the name, owner, status, creation date of each task. He created the task record, the state of the contract, function that creates tasks, function that reads tasks, and lastly, a function that completes tasks.
He ended the session beautifully by answering questions asked by the audience.
The final session ended the league with a bang with Emmanuel Joseph(JET). He anchored the second technical session by teaching on the ‘History of the æternity Development Suite.’ He began by giving a simple introduction of himself and the topic he was up to speak on. He gave a brief presentation on æternity for those who were new and hard vague or had no idea of what æternity is.
He defined æternity as ‘a blockchain technology that has a strong aim of solving blockchain scalability issues.’ He further explained that technically æternity blockchain is an Erlang based smart contract platform engineered by programming pioneers to address some of the most fundamental challenges that the native blockchain had earlier on. He said that generally, æternity is an open-source blockchain platform that solves the problem of scalability, usability, efficiency, governance, and contract security.
He went on to the development tools on æternity including;
- AEStudio (an editor on https://studio.aepps.com); he took his time to show the audience what is fantastic about AEStudio by giving a realistic view of the editor.
- AEProject (can be used to develop full-blown æpps like Superhero and can be found https://aeproject.gitbook.io)
He then went on, informing the audience on how to get learning resources. The first place to get learning resources according to JET is on æternity GitHub account, and he advised the audience to visit https://github.com/aeternity/tutorial to see amazing tutorials by the æternity team showing developers how to do some things that they need. He assured everyone that the tutorials are always updated by developers who get appreciated with AE tokens for updates made.
The second place that learning resources can be gotten is the Documentation Hub. He explained that Documentation Hub was under maintenance; he, however, showed the audience what it looks like using the link. The last place for learning resources taught by Emmanuel Joseph is the ækiti community. He said that the ækiti Lead and Co-Lead always try to help developers solve whatever problems they encounter using the æternity tools. He advised visiting https://aekiti.com to view information and also to subscribe to ækiti’s YouTube channel to get regularly updated videos and tutorials on everything a developer might need. He finally advised viewing the ‘Online Session — Developer Study Jæm(Ekiti State)’ for those that want to learn about building æpps on æternity blockchain.
He ended the session by explaining that the recommended SDK for development is the JavaScript SDK and that the latest release made by the team at that time is the version 7.5.0 JavaScript SDK. He finally answered some questions and ended the session.
The contest commenced on the SuperHero platform, as the participants were challenged to reward good deeds through the means of tipping the content creators, depending on how relevant it was to our theme.
The contest started 48 hours before the league and ended 24hrs after the league (14th to 17th July 2020). All Participants strictly followed the rules of the contents which were;
- Have a superhero wallet.
- Join ækiti Telegram group chat.
- Post at least one social media post during the period of the contest.
- Include all hashtags in your tip description.
More than 400AE was awarded to the participants. The contest reward was placed in stages, there are;
- Beginning stage: is the first stage where all participants who created a superhero wallet for the sake of the contest get 10AE, for reimbursement of a newly created .chain name and also to tip.
- Advanced stage: here, all participants that have tipped at least three contents got another 10AE.
- Winners stage: here, the winners of the contest learned, were chosen based on the number of Tips they made and how relevant it was to the league theme.
The winner got a total of 120AE, 2nd runner up got a total of 80AE, 3rd runner got a total of 60AE, while other participants were awarded 40AE to 15AE for participating.
Tips can be found on https://superhero.com using the hashtags: #superhero #superheroleague #aekiti, #aekiticontestwinner, #aekiticontestrunnerup, #aekiticontestfrontrunner, and #aekiticontestant.
Despite the network issues and glitches during the league, we got positive feedback from the audience on how much they enjoyed and learned a lot from the league. The host concluded the league, by apologizing for the glitches and network issues, and the league came to an end.
