How Blockchain is Making Education Accessible for the World
A ConsenSys Labs Relay Spotlight on Team Enable.
Hackers and programmers often describe their first experience coding as ‘magical,’ a transcendent experience that enables them to create and share applications that were once considered impossible. At one time, even something as simple as using code to announce “Hello World” was considered akin to magic itself. Nowadays, we routinely create whole networks, worlds, and digital experiences with the same core technology and processes. However, sometimes when the work is focused on more routine issues that capture the imagination less readily, some of that magic is lost.
Hackathons have proven a remarkable way of recapturing that spirit of innovation and inspiration, while generating those magical moments. And it’s when hackathons and participants focus on helping individuals with real problems that we rediscover the magic and are able to capture lightning in a bottle, that magic moment.
One such moment is exemplified best in the story of Ines Widya Imanesti…
Ines Widya Imanesti is an inspirational and talented young woman who was recently accepted into her dream program at Cornell University. Ines rose from a working-class family in a nation with a developing economy and a patriarchal culture to become a business executive at a multibillion-dollar company. And yet, even with an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the number one ranked school in Indonesia and over a decade of work experience breaking glass ceilings of a male-dominated industry, Ines found herself still unable to qualify for a reasonably priced student loan. If Ines remained unable to obtain a loan, she would be forced to drop out of the program.
Ines is already able to afford half of her tuition cost and. Given Ines’ career background, it’s shocking to believe she’s unable to get a reasonable loan denominated in $USD. 98% of graduates from Cornell’s Masters in Human Resource Studies — the program in which Ines is studying — find employment with a mean starting salary of $86,320, which indicates that Ines should be perfectly capable of paying off a loan over time once she secures gainful employment.
A checklist of Ines qualifications include:
- STEM bachelor’s degree from an excellent university
- Nearly a decade of work experience
- Good credit history in Indonesia
- Sufficient test scores to get into one of the world’s top universities
- Probability of a high post-graduation salary
By all data points, Ines will be extremely likely to obtain a great paying job and eventually pay back her loan; however, moving money across borders is a difficult and costly endeavor. There are large remittance fees, fees for converting different currencies, and credit doesn’t effectively cross borders with individuals. Luckily, emerging technologies such as cryptocurrency and blockchain are beginning to solve many of these real world problems by reshaping existing financial networks, credit systems, and creating the internet of money.
The Ethereum blockchain in particular provides the necessary tools to help Ines achieve her goals. Ethereum initially disrupted the ability to raise funds from individuals to achieve a common goal. As Ethereum has developed, it has created marketplaces, lowered the cost of capital, and created a mechanism whereby any individual can obtain a loan. However, most loan mechanisms in the Ethereum ecosystem require over collateralization of the underlying loan, which makes obtaining a large sum fairly difficult. Luckily, one hackathon team has figured out a way to bypass this requirement and provide Ines the chance to crowdfund a loan.
Enter (stage left): Daniel Onggunhao.
Daniel Onggunhao, an engineer and former founder of a credit company that worked in emerging markets. Daniel, taking time off from his startup, decided to sign up to compete in the Relays-Ethereal hackathon. Relays Hackathons by ConsenSys Labs are distributed, multi-week hackathons focused on real-world problems that are primed for disruption by blockchain technology.
Daniel knew Ines personally and thoroughly understood her situation from his previous experience in the credit industry. Her story gave him the idea to experiment with Ethereum to discover if a better solution existed that could help Ines obtain the loan she needed to continue her education. With this mission, Dan sent out what he described as “a message in a bottle” into the hackathon Discord group chat.
The message: there is an incredible woman who needs help raising a loan to attend one of the top universities in the world and the current financial system is failing her.
Three other engineers (Thomas, Anthony, and Faisal) reached out and they decided to form a team for the hackathon. They named the team Enable with the singular mission of finding a way to help Ines. They developed, hacked, designed, and brainstormed for 15 days and the concept of Enable was born.
The Enable Team
The Enable team is distributed, literally, around the world. Daniel is from Singapore, Thomas Spofford is based in the U.S, Anthony Adegbemi is from Nigeria, and Faisal Amir is based in Indonesia.
- Daniel Onggunhao, @onggunhao (Singapore)
- Thomas Spofford, @tspoff (USA)
- Anthony Adegbemi, @adibas03 (Nigeria)
- Faisal Amir, @urmauur (Indonesia)
More than 500 developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from across the world competed for $67,000+ in total prizes sponsored by 14 blockchain and enterprise software companies. Hackers submitted over 80 projects, ranging from full dapps and blockchain tooling to documentation, legacy software integrations, and cryptographic primitives.
Through diligent work, creative solutions, and a formidable sense of product, purpose, and potential, the team went on to win not only the Labs Relay top prize but also the top prize for the whole hackathon, Best in Show.
The team even donated some of their prize winnings to Ines’ college fund, putting their money where their mouth is and demonstrating how much they believe Enable’s smart contract loan can help Ines and others like her.
Keeping the Magic Going After the Ethereal Win
Immediately after the hackathon the team started gaining traction, both in and out of Consensys. Our venture arm, ConsenSys Labs, quickly went to work trying to find another opportunity to support Enable, eventually leading to Personal Best Relays.
The ecosystem recognized the potential impact that Enable could have on not only Ines’ life, but on many people in her same position. Binance Labs — the venture arm of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange — jumped in to sponsor the team providing the Enable team a few more months of runway for developing their smart contract loan.
Looking forward, Enable plans to apply for Tachyon III to further build out their product and acquire the necessary funding to continue focusing on helping Ines. Tachyon is an accelerator for early-stage blockchain and Web 3.0 startups and applications for the third cohort are due September 16th.
Perhaps the most admirable quality that the Enable team showcased was their dedication to helping Ines. After winning the hackathon for their credit marketplace concept, the team actively collected feedback on Twitter and Github to iterate on their product. While terrifying, it proved to be a great decision as Daniel explains:
“The initial results were quite scary because everybody said that Enable wasn’t competitive against the Compound.Finance loan rates. So we ran back to the drawing board. Immediately, we wanted to scale everything down to the minimum viable product. So instead of thinking about creating a marketplace, we decided on a loan kit which is really just saying that we want to build specifically for Ines. We wanted to use one person and a real-world use case to drive everything else.”
The small pivot after the hackathon has guided the team to ruthlessly prioritize user needs and focus on creating product/market fit, which is why Enable is developing the whole project around Ines and her situation.
By developing as lean as possible and completely open sourcing their product, Enable is setting the bar for creation and development in blockchain and Ethereum ecosystem.
The team should be commended for making their funding stretch further than anyone thought possible. Additionally, the team made noble efforts such as encouraging early product feedback and getting as many people involved with the design and product decisions as possible. The team has successfully used feedback to iterate quickly, such as in the case of their pivot to creating a smart contract loan kit as opposed to a marketplace.
Launching their product: Smart Contract Loan
Moreover, Daniel and the entire Enable team are super cognizant that if they don’t succeed, Ines will be forced to drop out of Cornell.
“If we screw up she’s going to be at Cornell for one semester.”
Talk about pressure. Enable is finally ready to unveil their crowdfunded loan for Ines. Any individual will be able to invest in Ines and will earn a 6% interest rate on their capital.
An Enable crowdloan utilizes an ISA (income share agreement) which is essentially a loan where Ines agrees to pay back a percentage of her income for a fixed number of years instead of a specific amount of debt. An income share agreement provides one of the most mutually beneficial mechanisms to pay back debt while earning interest on an investment.
Enable is officially launching their product on September 12 and hopes to have Ines funded for Cornell by the end of her first semester or she’ll have to drop out.
How can you help?
If you wish, you can participate in the crowdfunded loan for Ines.
If you don’t want to donate, then at least learn from Enable’s success and look for ways to participate in open source development versus traditional venture capital.
We hope that Ines’ story and the Enable team inspire you about how focusing on real work use cases can literally change lives.
If your a hacker, designer, or entrepreneur, join us for Relays in Q4.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author above do not necessarily represent the views of Consensys AG. ConsenSys is a decentralized community with ConsenSys Media being a platform for members to freely express their diverse ideas and perspectives. To learn more about ConsenSys and Ethereum, please visit our website.
