ConsenSys Academy’s first class of Ethereum blockchain developers are graduating this weekend in Dubai.

The second phase of the Developer Program was extremely competitive. Only 56 students were selected for an expenses-paid trip to Dubai for graduation. These 56 students are coming from over 23 countries to participate in the graduation ceremony and the hackathon beforehand.

The graduation ceremony takes place on October 22 and will include dignitaries and leadership from Dubai Future Accelerators and the Smart Dubai Office. Speakers include Joe Lubin, Jeremy Millar, Akshi Federici, Wesam Lootah (CEO, SDO), and Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr (Director General, SDO). Developer Program completion certificates will be issued on the Ethereum blockchain as “Eth-Certs”.

#CADhackDXB

Students have been invited to participate in a three-day hackathon leading up to graduation, from October 19–21. Additionally, students will self-form teams of four to five to work on venture projects and eventual pitches. This venture competition is an opportunity to work collaboratively with other students to put forth an idea with the potential to enhance the Ethereum ecosystem.

Participating teams will present their idea to ConsenSys leadership, including our founder Joe Lubin, during their time in Dubai. Winners have the opportunity to receive funding for their spoke and will give a short presentation at the graduation ceremony. All students are being considered for employment at ConsenSys.

Students will have a wide range of technical, business, and other mentors to assist them during the hackathon. Our wonderful mentors include:

Daniel Novy

Before joining ConsenSys, Daniel founded Basebit, a Bitcoin Exchange based in his home country of Brazil. His entrepreneur career started in 2005 when he founded MobileBR, the first Brazilian company to offer a mobile trading platform. He has a BSc degree in Computer Science and a MBA in Financial Markets. His previous experience includes working with genetic algorithms, data mining, distributed systems and general artificial intelligence. He is passionate about new technologies and is particularly amazed with the possibilities brought by the Ethereum BlockChain.

Mostafa is full-stack software developer. He initially became involved in Bitcoin protocol and application development in 2012, went on to publish the first book about Bitcoin Programming in 2014, then co-founded the first Bitcoin exchange in the Middle East, BitOasis.net. Prior to joining ConsenSys, Mostafa worked as the Bitcoin development lead for WIFI Metropolis. Mostafa is very interested in both Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols, applied cryptography, number theory, and type theory.

Gabriel Barros

Gabriel has a BS in Computer Engineering and hails from Brazil. He is passionate about hacking things and hiking in beautiful places. His interests range from Internet of Things to Blockchain. Although a Pythonist by training, he has an affinity for Golang.

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Joshua is excited about making Ethereum as accessible as possible. He considers himself lucky to be on the Truffle team where he gets to do that for developers every day. Joshua’s name on most platforms is @discriskandbisque, which sums him up very well; he loves disc golf, strategy games, and food, including any kind of bisque.

Ashoka Finley

Ashoka is a political economist and computer scientist by training. He’s passionate about blockchain-based governance systems and creating distributed value mechanisms. He likes to imagine the many ways software can affect the physical world.

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Jordan is a full-stack web and mobile application developer who is deeply passionate about Ethereum and the distributed web. Jordan’s name on most platforms is alwaysbcoding.

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Zac first became interested in cryptography, then Bitcoin, in 2014. He imagined new applications built on top of Bitcoin, but never acted on any of those thoughts until he discovered Ethereum in 2015. Zac dreams of a future with more individual freedoms, and greater social prosperity.

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Javier is a senior software engineer with 10+ years of experience. He enjoys working on full stack applications involving multiple technologies and environments. He has worked for 5+ years in gambling across different products such as lottery, virtual sports, casino games, and sportsbook. Always interested in cutting-edge technologies, he decided to move into blockchain projects last year. Javier holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s degree in web engineering.

Gregory Taschuk

Greg specializes in building concepts into stable systems supporting millions of users. He has worked at several startups, and became interested in Ethereum smart-contract development for it’s potential to create protocol-level solutions to global problems.

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Tim works as a Software Engineer with the Protocol Engineering and Systems group which designs and builds the future of blockchain interoperability & scalability one protocol at a time. He is passionate about open source, developer tools, command line experiences, and API’s. Tim and his friend built an API for Ethereum code-named HappyChain, so they could stop maintaining a local copy of the blockchain for development. Tim has a background in research, day trading, sales, and a degree in Computer Science from the University of San Francisco. Previously he worked at Lawerence Berkeley National Laboratory, Democratize Computing Lab, ADT, and Wells Fargo.

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Studied advertising, did a cool Hobbit centered campaign. If you wanna get distracted for a second check out this video; John is the hobbit with the longish hair. Started a few small businesses, ended up learning to code and working for a SMS startup and wound up learning React + Redux a few years ago while working for a larger e-commerce platform. Started learning about Bitcoin, became enamored with the idea of smart contracts — John has a “slight” libertarian lean — and quickly followed everyone that works for Consensys on Medium because we have the best posts/insights in the realm of blockchain. John will be working on Balanc3, mainly doing React frontend, and hoping to get his hands dirty with some production Solidity code if deemed appropriate.Other than that, John loves his wife Zoe, freestyle wrapping, weird movies, interesting design and cats :)

Make sure you follow ConsenSys Academy on Facebook and Twitter to see updates throughout the hackathon and watch the graduation live! And if you’re heading with us to Dubai, use the hashtag #CADhackDXB.

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