BEIRUT, LEBANON, 9th of June, 2022 – Amidst the economic crisis that hit Lebanon since 2019, and the hyper-devaluation of the local currency, where the Lebanese Lira has lost it value, by 95%, the Darwazah Center for Innovation Management & Entrepreneurship (DC) at the Olayan School of Business (OSB) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) organized a 48-hour hackathon in partnership with i-Park and Beirut Digital District on May 27-29 in order to engage the Lebanese youth in building ventures to aid the economy of Lebanon enabled by blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The opening ceremony on May 27 included 2 panels on the Lebanese local challenges and opportunities as well as the global trends and their relevance to Lebanon featuring Cryptocurrency experts: John Nahas, Vice President of Business Development at Ava Labs (https://www.avax.network/); Harry Halpin, CEO of blockchain privacy startup Nym Technologies and former MIT scientist; Fatemeh Fannizadeh, a Crypto Legal Advisor based in Switzerland; Ray Hindi, CEO/CIO and co-founder of L1 Digital (https://l1.digital/), Zurich, in addition to local talent: Cyrus Azad, Vice President of Business Development at Digital Transit, Charbel Ghossan, the founder and CEO of Digital Transit (https://digitaltransit.io/), Abdulwahab Alzuaby, the CTO of Arcadous.gg and Rafic Farra, the founder of Walleti & Coinsultancy.
The hackathon participants attended pre-hackathon workshops by guest lecturers from AUB and other universities focused on how blockchain technology can help economies like Lebanon that suffer from hyper-inflation. Dr. Bijan Azad, Director of The Darwazah Center; Zein Elabdin Zaher, Research Associate at the Darwazah Center; Dr. Elie Nasr, Chairperson of Computer Science, and Information & Communications Technology Department at AUST; Abdulwahab Alzuaby and Cyrus Azad, Digital Transit. Following the information sessions, the participants were divided into 6 teams who received mentoring by top-notch experts including the latter in addition to Fatemeh Fannizadeh, Harry Halpin and two developers from Darkfi (https://dark.fi/), to design, develop, validate, pivot and take their idea to the next level towards launch within 48 hours only.
Panelists points were consistent emphasizing key challenges and opportunities for crypto to fulfill its potential. John Nahas called for a laser sharp focus on, “Removing adoption barriers and for mainstreaming of crypto which is core mission of Ava Labs.” Ray Hindi, the GM and co-founder Swiss Asset Manager, with 600 million dollars worth of digital assets made it clear that, “Sophisticated institutional investors, such as university endowments, who are underwriters of the recent a16z 4.5 billion dollar fund, announced on 25 May 2022, understand that there are cycles in crypto assets, but we need to bring that knowledge to all investors.” Harry Halpin’s main point was to counter the hype by mainstream media that “Crypto technology is not a speculative asset, but enabler platform to tap into de-fi’s enormous potential”. The Swiss de-fi lawyer Fatemeh Fannizadeh concluded “Crypto approach and technology unleashes novel means of financial services governance which we have not seen before and we have the opportunity to build it from the ground up by empowering ordinary people who have never had the chance to do this”.
On the Demo Day, 29 May at 5 pm, the six finalist teams pitched their venture ideas and were evaluated by the internationally renowned jury: Dr. Harry Halpin, Fatemeh Fannizadeh, Sami Kteily, remotely Gabriel Cardona, a Developer Evangelist at AVA LABS, and Masoud Sakkijha, an expert in Digital Transformation in financial services, and Dr. Elie Nasr of AUB/AUST.
The closing ceremony was marked by the speech of the world famous Bitcoin expert, Amir Taaki, a co-founder of Agora movement in De-Fi, hacktivist, and programmer who is known for rewriting a portion of the bitcoin code and for pioneering many open source projects. Taaki who was listed by Forbes in 30 Under 30 in 2014 gave a very inspirational speech at the closing ceremony, he made a call to action for de-fi to make a difference, “We need to find our inner strength and power and now we have an opportunity to open avenues to the rest of the world”.
Nour El Saadi, on the Hackathon team wining first prize said, “I am a biology undegrad doing my masters in business analytics. The Hackathon pushed me way beyond my comfort zone allowing me to dive into the world of cryptocurrency while being mentored by top notch global players just within 48 hours”. Clémence Jabre, on the third prizewinner team and one of Dr. Halpin’s students, said “When I look at the cryptocurrency space, privacy looks likes an Achilles heel.” She added, “but there is hope since technologies like Nym’s platform is trying to fix .”
Dr. Azad sated “The state of cryptocurrency today is a lot like the e-commerce of 2000, we need to go beyond the hype so that ordinary people can understand what crypto is about and how they can adopt it in their financial transactions…that means it is a long road ahead and we have a lot of work to do.”
The hackathon event culminated in four winning startup ideas that are ready to build their minimum viable products including a crypto “scratch card” to make it easier to use Bitcoin for those without digital wallets. The winners were as follow: First Prize: CrypLock—Bringing trustless operations to over the counter crypto transactions via a digital escrow; Second Prize: Cash2Coin—Making the Crypto transactions as easy as ATM operations via stablecoins; Third Prize: Walleti-Increase Mass market adoption of Crypto by offering pre-paid crypto scratch cards and an app; Fourth Prize: D-Bank—Enhancing SME reputation building via blockchain-based networks. They received respectively $15,000 offered by the Gold sponsor Avalanche, $10,000 offered by the Silver sponsor NYM Technologies, $5,000 offered by our Bronze sponsor L1 Digital, and $1,000 offered by NYM Technologies.
Background information: Since late 2019 Lebanon has been hit by the one of the worst economic, financial and fiscal crises in its history, which resulted in a currency devaluation of 95% and a significant increase in unemployment, inflation and poverty rates. Subsequently, the Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship has doubled down on doing activities that focus on local economic problems of import substitution, export promotion and unblocking foreign aid so we can more directly contribute to the economic recovery of Lebanon.
The establishment of Darwazah Center for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship at Olayan School of Business was made possible in 2011 through a generous gift by the Darwazah Family, founders of the largest MENA-based pharmaceutical company with global reach—Hikma headquartered in Jordan. The Darwazah Center’s mission is to transform entrepreneurial thinking and practices within the MENA region and help organizations become innovative. The Center develops and promotes evidence-based approach to establishing, operating and growing ventures and businesses.