FinTech Month Hackathon

While the crypto markets slumped over December and January, students at Fintech Society @ NUS School of Computing were working hard over their winter breaks on one of the largest ever student-led Fintech events in Singapore, NUS Fintech Month 2022, started from 2nd Jan 2022 and ended on 29th Jan 2022. The event is proudly sponsored by Bybit, Ripple (XRP), and Stellar(XLM) – big names in the blockchain industry.

NUS Fintech Month is the society’s flagship and inaugural event that saw its first iteration only a year ago. This year, the team aimed for the stars, organising the event at more than 3 times the scale of the previous year, while sticking to their goals of incubating Fintech talents and supporting the growth and innovation in the industry.

More than 20 workshops and symposia were held over the first 3 weeks of January, covering a large range of Fintech topics at different levels of knowledge and expertise. It was a culmination of knowledge from high profile industry leaders, professors, PhD students, as well as the society’s own machine learning and blockchain directors, who collectively educated from Asia, Europe and the Americas over 3,000 participants on the industry’s trends, technical skills, and career opportunities.

The highlight of the event, however, was the blockchain themed hackathon held over the last two weeks of January, where more than 100 teams from around the world pitted their wits to grab a slice of the attractive S$50,000 prize pool to be won. The theme of the hackathon was revealed as registrations closed on 15 January — “NFTs: Mint, Market or Monetize”. With the recent craze for NFTs, the goal of the hackathon was to pick the brains of these bright students to uncover innovative ideas to improve the minting, distribution, and monetization of NFTs.

Breaking from the mould of the traditional 2-3 days hackathons, the hackathon was structured into 2 phases – an ideation phase and a prototyping phase. The extra time was given to participating teams to place a proportional emphasis on both the business/market feasibility and technical ingenuity of their final solution. The ideation phase ended with the first round of internal judging to choose the teams with the best and most feasible solutions, who then moved on to hack out their prototype, in hopes of making it to the final demo day. After 3 days of careful deliberation, 10 finalists were selected through the second round of internal judging to attend the final demo day where they would pitch live on stage at NUS Campus to a panel of experts.

The demo day was perfect to mark the end of the event, as the 10 teams enthusiastically presented their solutions to the panel of judges. Each presentation was followed by streams of questions from the judges who were deeply impressed by all the finalists’ unique and innovative creations.

Associate Professor (Practice) and advisor to NUS Fintech Society, Keith B. Carter Quote: “FinTech Month was completely envisioned and run by our student members of the NUS FinTech Society. I am very proud they brought together teaching, community and experiential learning in one go. Even more exciting is that many of the top ten teams plan to make real businesses based on their projects.”

Bybit Quote: “We are heartened to see the spirit of innovation flourishing at the hackathon organised by the NUS School of Computing’s Fintech society. The students demonstrated such talent and tenacity, as well as teamwork, that it makes us at Bybit excited just to think of what they will do next. We are extremely glad and proud to have played a role in the event and look forward to many more such occasions in the months and years to come.” – Igneus Terrrenus, Head of Communications at Bybit.

Ripple Quote: “I was impressed with the quality and wide range of use cases for NFTs that the participating teams covered. The hackathon projects not only demonstrated the applicability of NFTs in many aspects but also included ways to increase the accessibility of NFTs to the broader community.” – Bernard Ginalski, Director at Ripple Singapore.

The winning team was called Wentoken and quote: 

“NUS Fintech Month and the hackathon was an amazing experience for our team, wentoken. Some of us had zero experience starting out – not even knowing what the term NFT stood for. That said, the workshops provided were very helpful in easing the team into being comfortable with working on web3. 

NUS Fintech Month and the Demo Day was awesome as well! It was great to get actionable feedback from the judges – titans in the industry. 

Kudos to the NUS FinTech team for striking the perfect balance between COVID restrictions and hosting this great event!

LFG – Let’s keep building towards a web3 future :)”

NUS Fintech Month 2022 might officially be over, but Fintech Society will continue to host informative workshops and exciting events, so follow them on Instagram @nusfintech to keep updated!

NUS FinTech society organized its first ever annual full month fintech events open to university and poly students from all disciplines in January 2021 at the National University of Singapore. 

The highlight of the event was a hackathon that required participants to address the problem statement provided by BNP Paribas. The theme focused on anti-fraud detection within a multi-market, multi-entity corporate environment, given the increased risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge was to find ways for corporations to detect fraud in a digital or hybrid operating environment.

The hackathon was judged by Mr. Kok Wai, Hon, Director of Product Management, Transaction Banking (Asia Pacific) from BNP Paribas, who also participated in the opening of the event. 

In addition to the hackathon, the NUS FinTech Society organized a series of workshops from 15 to 20 January 2021, covering various topics related to the fintech industry.

The first workshop, titled “Why Crowdfunding is the Preferred Choice for Startup Fundraising,” was presented by Mr. Daniel Lin, Founder of FundedHere. He discussed how modern technology has changed the fundraising process and how crowdfunding has emerged as a viable alternative to traditional fundraising. He highlighted the advantages of crowdfunding, such as instant document verification and multiple payment gateways, which have made transferring money easy and instantaneous.

The second workshop, “Introduction to Decentralized Finance (DeFi),” was shared by Jeff Zhang, Binance Community Manager. He discussed the technology behind DeFi and its challenges to traditional banking. He highlighted the explosive growth of DeFi, with its total value locked exploding from almost US$700M at the start of 2020 to US$15B by the end of the year.

The third workshop, “BSC Stream Transformation with ParsiQL,” was conducted by Mr. Anatoly Ressin, Chief Blockchain Architect at ParsiQL. He shared insights into how blockchain technologies have revolutionized finance and security, and how Parsiq’s stream manipulation language can be used to interpret and transform live data streams.

The fourth workshop,  “Innovation and Design Thinking: Perspective from BNP Paribas,” was conducted by Mr. Kok Wai, Hon, who introduced BNP Paribas’ innovative work in banking transactions and design-thinking labs. He shared various case studies and highlighted the importance of co-creation and collaboration to solve various corporate problems, emphasizing the best ways to access these collaborative tools effectively.

The NUS Fintech hackathon 2021 provided an excellent opportunity for participants to learn about the fintech industry through a range of activities, including workshops and hackathons. Attendees gained valuable insights into the industry, with some getting introduced to fintech for the first time, while others explored more advanced topics like machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The NUS Fintech Society expressed their sincere gratitude to all the participants for their active participation in NUS Fintech month, which resulted in an amazing turnout of attendees. The society hopes that the event was able to provide participants with useful skills that they can apply in their professional careers.

Overall, the NUS Fintech hackathon 2021 was a successful event that brought together individuals from various backgrounds and interests to explore the fintech industry. The NUS Fintech Society looks forward to future events that will continue to educate and inspire participants in this dynamic and rapidly evolving field.

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