Co-founder of Ethereum Shenzhen and HKUST MBA alumnus – Samson Lee (left), and inventor and co-founder of Ethereum – Vitalik Buterin
Blockchain is a term that has gained significant momentum worldwide since the technology was first commercially implemented in 2009, through a well-known digital currency – Bitcoin.
Today, blockchain remains a very hot topic, especially in the investment community, driven by two of the most popular technologies, Bitcoin, and more recently Ethereum. While Bitcoin was designed to be a currency from the start, Ethereum is an open-source, public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform offering a powerful way for developers to tokenize assets and write “smart contracts”. Ethereum was developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit group with contributions from great minds across the globe. The technology has been growingly and widely adopted by corporations, blockchain entrepreneurs and developer communities.
A non-profit group called Ethereum Shenzhen has been set up by two HKUST MBA alumni, Samson Lee and Leon Liang, and a blockchain specialist Jehan Chu, with a view to promoting blockchain and the Ethereum in southern China. The three organizers joined hands with the inventor and co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, to launch Ethereum Shenzhen at a kick-off event held at the HKUST Shenzhen Research Institute.
With the keen participation of over 200 blockchain enthusiasts, the venue was completely filled with people. The event began with greetings and an introduction of blockchain from two co-founders of Ethereum Shenzhen, Samson and Jehan. It was followed by the honourable guest speaker, Vitalik Buterin, talking about the latest and greatest developments of Ethereum. The response from the audience was enthusiastic. Vitalik’s presentation garnered rounds of applause, with lots of probing questions from the audience.
This was followed by insights from five keynote guest speakers, which included William Genovese – VP of Strategy Planning of Banking Financial Services and IT Services Solutions of Huawei, who talked about “Huawei & Blockchain”; Lio Lunescu – Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Enuma.io, who talked about “IoT HW & Blockchain”; Doug Irwin – CEO & Co-Founder of Chain-Of-Things, who talked about “IoT SW & Blockchain” and; Ari Meilich – Founder and CEO of Decentraland, who talked about “VR and Blockchain”. The event concluded with much appreciation from the audience, and they are very much looking forward to the next event in Shenzhen, scheduled for 27 August. For more information about the group, please visit: www.ethereumsz.org.
Vitalik was also interviewed earlier by School Magazine Biz@HKUST, on Blockchain and Ethereum. To read