Block, Inc., the global technology company with a focus on financial services, announced the winners of the highly anticipated TBD Hackathon, a competition designed to foster innovation, creativity, and technological advancements in payments across Africa. The grand prize winner, Emmanuel Kufre, built Blink – a decentralized wallet application that acts as a payment processor for freelancers. The event, held in collaboration with the Africa Bitcoin Conference, challenged developers to create novel payment solutions leveraging tbDEX, TBD’s open-source money protocol.
“The level of creativity and technical expertise showcased during the TBD Hackathon has been truly inspiring,” said Angie Jones, Global VP of Developer Relations at Block. “There is so much incredible talent and innovation taking place all over the continent, and the winning teams are truly representative of the future of financial solutions across Africa. They have all demonstrated a deep understanding of the challenges facing a pan-African payment system, and have developed solutions that have the potential to transform the way people transact. We look forward to seeing how these exceptional developers continue to drive innovation in payments and technology overall.”
Participants in the hackathon tackled crucial challenges, including limited access to banking, high transaction fees, and inefficient cross-border payments. Each team made up of 1-2 developers, used the tbDEX SDK to build their payment applications within a sandbox environment.
Blink consisting of Emmanuel Kufre from Nigeria took the top prize of $15,000 in BTC with their innovative solution, a decentralized payment processor that allows freelancers to accept global payments for their services. Their project impressed the judges with its focus on the $28B African gig economy market. Blink is currently in beta testing within 5 countries.
Farida Bemba Nabourema, Convener of the Africa Bitcoin Conference, also stated, “The Africa Bitcoin Conference is committed to building a thriving Bitcoin ecosystem in Africa, and we are thrilled to have served as a platform for the TBD Hackathon. This event has showcased the immense talent and creativity within our community and the innovative solutions presented have the potential to address some of the most pressing challenges facing our continent, such as financial inclusion, cross-border payments, and transparency.”
tbDEX Go consisting of Andrew Glago and Eloke Ikiliagwu and Igbigi consisting of Achego Tamunobelema and Fabari Agbora also delivered impressive projects. tbDEX Go connects Africa with a local payment solution for travelers and tourists, while Igbigi is impressed with its payment application that enables users to instantly make app-to-bank and app-to-app money transfers while preserving privacy. Both teams received $10,000 and $5,000 in BTC, respectively.
Judges of the hackathon included Aaron Suplizio, Tech Partnerships, TBD; Adewale Abati, Staff Developer Advocate, TBD; Angie Jones, Head of Developer Relations, TBD; Ari Coleman, Product Manager, TBD; Chris Maurice, CEO, Yellow Card; Ebony Louis, Developer Advocate, TBD; Kirah Sapong, Senior Software Engineer, Square; Rizèl Scarlett, Staff Developer Advocate, TBD; Tania Chakraborty, Senior Technical Community Manager, TBD; Tony Tom, Head of Product, TBD; and Will Wilkinson, Head of Policy, TBD.
Through this hackathon and initiative, Block reaffirms its commitment to open-source technologies and the developer community. Although the TBD business has now been wound down, its decentralized identity work lives on with the Decentralized Identity Foundation. To find out more or contribute to Block’s ongoing open source efforts, visit Block’s Open Source GitHub organization.
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