Open Track

Judges

List of Judges for our Hackathon

Johnny Lyu

Organization: KuCoin

Expertise Area: Blockchain, CryptoCurrency, CryptoCurrency Exchange

As a true believer in blockchain, Johnny and KuCoin, at the helm of the former, keep challenging and setting record-breaking industry benchmarks. With thorough insights on blockchain technology and profound vision in KuCoin, Johnny manages to greatly optimize the team’s overall capability and onboard top strategic partners. He led the successful launch of Pool-X, which is acknowledged as the first liquidity collateralizing and trading platform. Meanwhile, he initiated the milestone public chain project KuChain. Additionally, as an investor, Johnny has identified many hidden gems, and bridged these great-potential projects to a wide range of strategic resources and capital, which will eventually boost KuCoin’s evolution towards a more diversified new generation FinTech pioneer platform.

Tom Grogan

Organization: Mishcon de Reya

Expertise Area: Technology, Legal Engineering, AI/ML and Blockchain

Tom leads the legal engineering and digital transformation team at Mishcon de Reya. He has a deep understanding of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence/machine learning and DLT, and has advised a full range of clients from start-ups to government entities. A English qualified corporate lawyer, Tom advising clients on strategic, technical, legal and regulatory matters and in May 2020 was ranked the #1 most innovative lawyer in the UK by Legal Technologist magazine.

Laurence Kirk

Organization: Extropy.IO

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Ethereum, Quorum, Developing Decentralised Applications, Zero Knowledge Proofs and Cryptography

After a successful career developing financial applications in the City of London, Laurence was captivated by the potential of blockchain technology and set up Extropy.IO back in 2015, a consultancy working with start-ups in the UK and overseas, developing decentralised applications, and consulting on blockchain technology and cryptography.
Laurence has a Physics degree from Durham University and currently taking an MSc in Software Engineering at Oxford University where he founded the Oxford Blockchain Society. Laurence teaches blockchain and cryptography workshops and often gives talks on Blockchain, Ethereum and Zero Knowledge Proofs at conferences worldwide.

Anish Mohammed

Organization: R2 labs

Expertise Area: DeFi, Governance, Cryptography, Security, Blockchain, Cryptoeconomics, Protocol Verification,AI Ethics , ML (PMML) and Health & Medicine

Anish is an accomplished multidisciplinarian who has worked as a medical doctor, bioinformatician, strategy consultant and cryptographer. Anish has spent over two decades in security and cryptography as a researcher and consultant, he started his career working on security of micropayment systems for Ericsson HP Telecomm.
Anish has spent half his career researching cryptographic algorithms and protocols at three different research groups including Microsoft Research. He has worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture and Capgemini. He has advised and worked for various banks and financial institutions including AIB, HSBC, Lloyds and Zurich.
Anish is an early advisor to Ripple, Ocean Protocol, reviewer of Ethereum Orange paper and was one of the founding members of the UK Digital Currency Association. He has been involved in designing or auditing half a dozen blockchain protocols and more than a dozen distributed applications. He is co-founder of Ethicsnet, an adjutant faculty at Harbour Space and the head of research at the Information Sciences Institute at SRH Berlin.

Juraj Piar

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: RIF Ecosystem, Enterprise systems, Full-stack, React, JS/TS, Python, Java, C#

Juraj decided to follow his long-term ambition to study ComSci with focus on artificial intelligence and enterprise systems development, after years working in hospitality. By the time he got his first class honours degree, he’d have had industry experience building an AI-based market research system for a local business, a year experience working in a public, super-national nuclear research organisation and hands-on experience with the IT and communication infrastructure for schools in Madadeni township (SA).
Since returning back to the rural parts of the UK, where he found his home, he has been improving his software development skills in a software-house, working on various projects, including a medical research software for Exeter university. Finally, Juraj had always been motivated by helping others and global inclusion, refusing to accept authority of those with no natural authority and forced compliance. As cheesy as it is, Juraj was asked whether he wants to change the world and the answer led him to IOVLabs.

Ilan Olkies

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: RSK, RIF, DeFi, DID, Economics, Cryptography, Blockchain, Smart Contracts

Ilan is a Technical Lead, Software Engineer and Smart Contracts developer at IOVLabs. He is a Computer Science student at Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Ian has worked at IOVLabs since 2018 participating in different projects, mainly in RIF Name Service, a DNS-like decentralized platform. Currently leading the SSI development team at RIF.

Nikhil Vadgama

Organization: UCL CBT

Expertise Area: DeFi, Economics, Governance, Blockchain, Investment, Fintech, Machine Learning

Nikhil Vadgama is the Deputy Director and a Research Associate of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. He is also an Adjunct Teaching Fellow in FinTech and Emerging Business Technologies at the UCL School of Management and at UCL Department of Computer Science. He has orchestrated numerous educational programmes including the Master’s in Financial Technology and Master’s in Emerging Digital Technologies at UCL and a Blockchain MOOC on the Future Learn platform.
His commercial experience has spanned multiple sectors including Education, Real Estate and FinTech globally. Most recently he has been involved in the commercialisation of and publication of academic research in the AI and Blockchain domains. He has previously worked globally as an Investment Banker for HSBC. Nikhil holds an MBA from INSEAD, an MPhys from the University of Oxford and has passed all three levels of the CFA Programme.

Pavol Luptak

Organization: Paralelní Polis, Nethemba

Expertise Area: Security, Software Engineering, VoIP and IT Security Research. Co-author of the OWASP Testing Guide v3

Pavol Luptak is a Cryptoanarchist and Voluntaryist focused on technology and society hacking. He started his career as a computer hacker with many prestigious IT security certifications. In 2007, he founded IT security company Nethemba focused on penetration tests & ethical hacking, and later co-founded a bug bounty company Hacktrophy. Pavol is responsible for many public security projects (e.g. cracking of the most used Mifare Classic cards, hacking of public SMS transport/parking tickets, hack of e-Kasa).
As a hacker enthusiast, he co-founded Progressbar, a hackerspace in Bratislava and Paralelni Polis in Prague where he is responsible for organizing the international cypherpunk conference, Hackers Congress Paralelni Polis, focused on privacy, cybersecurity and liberation technologies..
With the development of Paralelni Polis, Pavol decided to achieve his vision where he completely opted out of the system and decided to give up his permanent residency, switched from bank accounts to crypto-currencies, started to use global health care and mobile phone companies to become a global citizen.

Solange Gueiros

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, RSK, RIF, DeFi - Decentralized Finance, Decentralized Applications

Solange is a Blockchain (architecture and development) expert, focused in Bitcoin, Ethereum and smart contracts, and provides lectures, courses and consultancy services. Solange has worked in systems, projects and databases for over 20 years and she is also a trader, investing in the stock and cryptocurrencies exchanges since 2011, with experience in exchanges and bots.
Academic background in Computer Science and Pedagogy at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, completes the technical and didactic side. Over the years, Solange has been travelling around the world to learn about Blockchain and in Brazil to teach in her own country.She has been a speaker in many conferences in Brazil and around the world including Spain, Chile, Uruguay, USA and Japan and won awards at hackathons in New York and Berlin in 2019 and Denver in 2020.
In 2020 she was listed in Cointelegraph Brazil top 50, the list of the most important and influential people in the cryptocurrency and Blockchain in Brazil.

Brendan Graetz

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: Blockchain, RSK, Javascript

Brendan is a Developer Advocate at IOVLabs, the founder of the Decentralised Applications Development Club in Singapore, and runs a boutique technology consultancy. He is also a guest lecturer at university courses about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and the author of many NodeJs modules.

Marat Kichikov

Organization: Bitfury Group

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Fintech, Investment, Advisor, Mentor

Marat Kichikov is a serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the financial industry and early stage investor. He is the founder of several successful companies, including a consumer finance bank, several e-commerce companies and investment fund. He serves on the board of his several portfolio companies (Bioloka, Wow Cube, F3 and Relestica Holding), utilizing his knowledge and expertise in Blockchain industry which he joined in 2013 as a partner in Bitfury Group. In both as a fund and as an angel investor, Marat have invested in 30+ fintech, e-commerce, blockchain technology, educational, healthcare and gaming companies, providing business expertise and financial & advisory support to founders. Marat has a master's degree in Finance & Business Management and a Bachelor's degree in Law.

Gaurang Torvekar

Organization: Indorse

Expertise Area: Smart Contracts, Blockchain Standards

Gaurang Torvekar is the co-founder and CEO of Indorse. Gaurang has a deep background in technology and has more than a decade of experience building and leading teams of developers across the various organizations that he has been involved in. Indorse is his second startup in the Blockchain space. Before starting Indorse, he has worked as a Software Developer across various technologies like Data Science, HR Tech and Artificial Intelligence.

Eddy Travia

Organization: IOVlabs and Coinsilium

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Investment

CEO and Co-Founder at Coinsilium and Regional Director Asia-Pacific at IOV Labs. Eddy Travia has been a pioneer investor in blockchain technology companies since 2013. In July 2013, following 9 years as a private equity fund manager in China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), Eddy co-founded the world’s first global incubator of blockchain startups and, in May 2014, was named among the ‘Top 3 Most Influential Investors’ at the Blockchain Awards in Amsterdam. Coinsilium was the first blockchain company to join a stock exchange via an IPO in 2015. Eddy has led early-stage investments in 20 blockchain companies around the world including SatoshiPay, RSK, Blox and Indorse. He has advised several blockchain companies including ICON, MedicalChain and Fantom. Eddy has delivered numerous keynotes about blockchain (including TEDx IE Madrid and TEDx INSEAD) and advises corporate executives and regulators on the transformative impact of blockchain technology.

Further judges to be announced shortly…

Judges

Judges

List of Judges for our Hackathon

Johnny Lyu

Organization: KuCoin

Expertise Area: Blockchain, CryptoCurrency, CryptoCurrency Exchange

As a true believer in blockchain, Johnny and KuCoin, at the helm of the former, keep challenging and setting record-breaking industry benchmarks. With thorough insights on blockchain technology and profound vision in KuCoin, Johnny manages to greatly optimize the team’s overall capability and onboard top strategic partners. He led the successful launch of Pool-X, which is acknowledged as the first liquidity collateralizing and trading platform. Meanwhile, he initiated the milestone public chain project KuChain. Additionally, as an investor, Johnny has identified many hidden gems, and bridged these great-potential projects to a wide range of strategic resources and capital, which will eventually boost KuCoin’s evolution towards a more diversified new generation FinTech pioneer platform.

Tom Grogan

Organization: Mishcon de Reya

Expertise Area: Technology, Legal Engineering, AI/ML and Blockchain

Tom leads the legal engineering and digital transformation team at Mishcon de Reya. He has a deep understanding of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence/machine learning and DLT, and has advised a full range of clients from start-ups to government entities. A English qualified corporate lawyer, Tom advising clients on strategic, technical, legal and regulatory matters and in May 2020 was ranked the #1 most innovative lawyer in the UK by Legal Technologist magazine.

Laurence Kirk

Organization: Extropy.IO

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Ethereum, Quorum, Developing Decentralised Applications, Zero Knowledge Proofs and Cryptography

After a successful career developing financial applications in the City of London, Laurence was captivated by the potential of blockchain technology and set up Extropy.IO back in 2015, a consultancy working with start-ups in the UK and overseas, developing decentralised applications, and consulting on blockchain technology and cryptography.
Laurence has a Physics degree from Durham University and currently taking an MSc in Software Engineering at Oxford University where he founded the Oxford Blockchain Society. Laurence teaches blockchain and cryptography workshops and often gives talks on Blockchain, Ethereum and Zero Knowledge Proofs at conferences worldwide.

Anish Mohammed

Organization: R2 labs

Expertise Area: DeFi, Governance, Cryptography, Security, Blockchain, Cryptoeconomics, Protocol Verification,AI Ethics , ML (PMML) and Health & Medicine

Anish is an accomplished multidisciplinarian who has worked as a medical doctor, bioinformatician, strategy consultant and cryptographer. Anish has spent over two decades in security and cryptography as a researcher and consultant, he started his career working on security of micropayment systems for Ericsson HP Telecomm.
Anish has spent half his career researching cryptographic algorithms and protocols at three different research groups including Microsoft Research. He has worked as a strategy consultant for Accenture and Capgemini. He has advised and worked for various banks and financial institutions including AIB, HSBC, Lloyds and Zurich.
Anish is an early advisor to Ripple, Ocean Protocol, reviewer of Ethereum Orange paper and was one of the founding members of the UK Digital Currency Association. He has been involved in designing or auditing half a dozen blockchain protocols and more than a dozen distributed applications. He is co-founder of Ethicsnet, an adjutant faculty at Harbour Space and the head of research at the Information Sciences Institute at SRH Berlin.

Juraj Piar

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: RIF Ecosystem, Enterprise systems, Full-stack, React, JS/TS, Python, Java, C#

Juraj decided to follow his long-term ambition to study ComSci with focus on artificial intelligence and enterprise systems development, after years working in hospitality. By the time he got his first class honours degree, he’d have had industry experience building an AI-based market research system for a local business, a year experience working in a public, super-national nuclear research organisation and hands-on experience with the IT and communication infrastructure for schools in Madadeni township (SA).
Since returning back to the rural parts of the UK, where he found his home, he has been improving his software development skills in a software-house, working on various projects, including a medical research software for Exeter university. Finally, Juraj had always been motivated by helping others and global inclusion, refusing to accept authority of those with no natural authority and forced compliance. As cheesy as it is, Juraj was asked whether he wants to change the world and the answer led him to IOVLabs.

Ilan Olkies

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: RSK, RIF, DeFi, DID, Economics, Cryptography, Blockchain, Smart Contracts

Ilan is a Technical Lead, Software Engineer and Smart Contracts developer at IOVLabs. He is a Computer Science student at Universidad de Buenos Aires.
Ian has worked at IOVLabs since 2018 participating in different projects, mainly in RIF Name Service, a DNS-like decentralized platform. Currently leading the SSI development team at RIF.

Nikhil Vadgama

Organization: UCL CBT

Expertise Area: DeFi, Economics, Governance, Blockchain, Investment, Fintech, Machine Learning

Nikhil Vadgama is the Deputy Director and a Research Associate of the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. He is also an Adjunct Teaching Fellow in FinTech and Emerging Business Technologies at the UCL School of Management and at UCL Department of Computer Science. He has orchestrated numerous educational programmes including the Master’s in Financial Technology and Master’s in Emerging Digital Technologies at UCL and a Blockchain MOOC on the Future Learn platform.
His commercial experience has spanned multiple sectors including Education, Real Estate and FinTech globally. Most recently he has been involved in the commercialisation of and publication of academic research in the AI and Blockchain domains. He has previously worked globally as an Investment Banker for HSBC. Nikhil holds an MBA from INSEAD, an MPhys from the University of Oxford and has passed all three levels of the CFA Programme.

Pavol Luptak

Organization: Paralelní Polis, Nethemba

Expertise Area: Security, Software Engineering, VoIP and IT Security Research. Co-author of the OWASP Testing Guide v3

Pavol Luptak is a Cryptoanarchist and Voluntaryist focused on technology and society hacking. He started his career as a computer hacker with many prestigious IT security certifications. In 2007, he founded IT security company Nethemba focused on penetration tests & ethical hacking, and later co-founded a bug bounty company Hacktrophy. Pavol is responsible for many public security projects (e.g. cracking of the most used Mifare Classic cards, hacking of public SMS transport/parking tickets, hack of e-Kasa).
As a hacker enthusiast, he co-founded Progressbar, a hackerspace in Bratislava and Paralelni Polis in Prague where he is responsible for organizing the international cypherpunk conference, Hackers Congress Paralelni Polis, focused on privacy, cybersecurity and liberation technologies..
With the development of Paralelni Polis, Pavol decided to achieve his vision where he completely opted out of the system and decided to give up his permanent residency, switched from bank accounts to crypto-currencies, started to use global health care and mobile phone companies to become a global citizen.

Solange Gueiros

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contracts, RSK, RIF, DeFi - Decentralized Finance, Decentralized Applications

Solange is a Blockchain (architecture and development) expert, focused in Bitcoin, Ethereum and smart contracts, and provides lectures, courses and consultancy services. Solange has worked in systems, projects and databases for over 20 years and she is also a trader, investing in the stock and cryptocurrencies exchanges since 2011, with experience in exchanges and bots.
Academic background in Computer Science and Pedagogy at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, completes the technical and didactic side. Over the years, Solange has been travelling around the world to learn about Blockchain and in Brazil to teach in her own country.She has been a speaker in many conferences in Brazil and around the world including Spain, Chile, Uruguay, USA and Japan and won awards at hackathons in New York and Berlin in 2019 and Denver in 2020.
In 2020 she was listed in Cointelegraph Brazil top 50, the list of the most important and influential people in the cryptocurrency and Blockchain in Brazil.

Brendan Graetz

Organization: IOVLabs

Expertise Area: Blockchain, RSK, Javascript

Brendan is a Developer Advocate at IOVLabs, the founder of the Decentralised Applications Development Club in Singapore, and runs a boutique technology consultancy. He is also a guest lecturer at university courses about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and the author of many NodeJs modules.

Marat Kichikov

Organization: Bitfury Group

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Fintech, Investment, Advisor, Mentor

Marat Kichikov is a serial entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the financial industry and early stage investor. He is the founder of several successful companies, including a consumer finance bank, several e-commerce companies and investment fund. He serves on the board of his several portfolio companies (Bioloka, Wow Cube, F3 and Relestica Holding), utilizing his knowledge and expertise in Blockchain industry which he joined in 2013 as a partner in Bitfury Group. In both as a fund and as an angel investor, Marat have invested in 30+ fintech, e-commerce, blockchain technology, educational, healthcare and gaming companies, providing business expertise and financial & advisory support to founders. Marat has a master's degree in Finance & Business Management and a Bachelor's degree in Law.

Gaurang Torvekar

Organization: Indorse

Expertise Area: Smart Contracts, Blockchain Standards

Gaurang Torvekar is the co-founder and CEO of Indorse. Gaurang has a deep background in technology and has more than a decade of experience building and leading teams of developers across the various organizations that he has been involved in. Indorse is his second startup in the Blockchain space. Before starting Indorse, he has worked as a Software Developer across various technologies like Data Science, HR Tech and Artificial Intelligence.

Eddy Travia

Organization: IOVlabs and Coinsilium

Expertise Area: Blockchain, Investment

CEO and Co-Founder at Coinsilium and Regional Director Asia-Pacific at IOV Labs. Eddy Travia has been a pioneer investor in blockchain technology companies since 2013. In July 2013, following 9 years as a private equity fund manager in China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), Eddy co-founded the world’s first global incubator of blockchain startups and, in May 2014, was named among the ‘Top 3 Most Influential Investors’ at the Blockchain Awards in Amsterdam. Coinsilium was the first blockchain company to join a stock exchange via an IPO in 2015. Eddy has led early-stage investments in 20 blockchain companies around the world including SatoshiPay, RSK, Blox and Indorse. He has advised several blockchain companies including ICON, MedicalChain and Fantom. Eddy has delivered numerous keynotes about blockchain (including TEDx IE Madrid and TEDx INSEAD) and advises corporate executives and regulators on the transformative impact of blockchain technology.

Further judges to be announced shortly…

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