Last night we had the pleasure of hosting our 1st community event in Tel Aviv. In collaboration with Samsung Next and Orbs, we created a new community for the Israeli high tech ecosystem, specifically, the technological Tel Avivians that are looking to learn more about blockchain development.

If you’re part of the high tech scene here in Israel, you’ve probably noticed the mass amounts of high level blockchain events readily available for you to learn about bitcoin, ICO’s and the such, but as developers, we felt there was something missing: real, practical, hands on technological session meant for the everyday developer to learn more about what this magical space of blockchain is all about. And so, Blockchain Academy was born.

250 developers showed up to hear Leonid Beder, our head of Security and Engineering, speak at Blockchain Academy’s first event, “How to Build Your Own Blockchain.” The lecture was an introduction to blockchain concepts and technology and together, we created a simple Blockchain through an interactive code development session. You can see the recording of Leonid’s talk below and the full slides here:

The blockchain Leonid implemented is very basic — now, how about extending it? In case you missed it, we’re thrilled to announce a very special competition with some awesome prizes:

Be sure to read through the repo on GitHub to learn more about the terms of the competition: https://github.com/blockchain-academy/how-build-your-own-blockchain/blob/master/CONTEST.md

In general though, the rules are simple — make our code more awesome and the most interesting creative blockchains (as attested by our committee of blockchain experts) will win the awesome prizes above. In addition, we will be publishing the most interesting submissions (even those that didn’t make the final cut) to give them props and show the world what was possible.

This is an opportunity for you to go wild and be creative. There are numerous ways you can improve the blockchain in creative ways — you can add new features, run thousands of nodes, make it more secure, more scalable, better address its privacy, run smart contracts (we wouldn’t want to give away too many suggestions). In general make it a better more interesting blockchain. There are so many ways you can improve it and make it a better blockchain so we’re excited to see the creative things you pull off.

You can see below the footage of Leonid talking about the competition at the end of last night’s session:

This is a great opportunity, for any developer, interested in learning more about blockchain to take a stab at doing something awesome. We’re excited to see what you’ll come up with, and who will end up winning the awesome prizes.

If you’d like to learn more about Blockchain Academy, be part of our community, our partake in future events, join our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BlockchainAcademyTLV

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SAVE THE DATE OF THE NEXT BLOCKCHAIN ACADEMY EVENTS: