Breaking down GSoC, SoB, Hackathons, & Web3 Education with Mohit | DevStories
Meet Mohit Bhat, a blockchain and full-stack developer who’s been in the Web3 space for about 4 years now. Mohit has successfully done GSoC, Summer of Bitcoin, and participated in and won numerous hackathons. Today, he is working with Singularity, Singapore as a Software Development Engineer 1 in their blockchain department.
Read ahead to know more about Mohit, his accomplishments, and his entire Web3 journey.
How did you discover blockchain technology? What made you step into this ecosystem?
Basically, when I joined my college I was very passionate about coding and other tech stuff. It wasn’t like I was forced into software engineering or something. Software engineering. I was genuinely passionate about it.
So in like my first year, I explored a lot of technologies like IoT, cybersecurity, and all that stuff. And then one day like in my second year, I built a team and thought of starting participating in hackathons. So around that time Devfolio and Polygon had started conducting hackathons in colleges.
We saw Polygon was a sponsor in one of the hackathons and they were asking us to build on Ethereum. So we l picked it for the bounty like let’s try what exactly is this blockchain and all that. And from that day till now it’s like all about like blockchain in my career. So I would my Web3 journey started with a hackathon.
Where are you currently working and how did you land the job?
Before Singularity, I was in Accubits. So I got a full-time role in my third year. Then last year I joined the singularity.
Basically, I found almost all the jobs on LinkedIn. I keep on sharing what I’m doing on social media. I am pretty active on Twitter and LinkedIn both. So recruiters texted me asking if you are open to said roles and stuff like that.
What was your first-ever Web3 hackathon product?
So at that hackathon, I built it was something related to the asset management portal. At that time this NFTDefi was not very popular and it was very hard to find anything about Web 3. I still remember how I was learning this. All these things were from other people’s GitHub. So what they are doing or how they have quoted the smart contracts?
The product I built was an asset management portal where people can manage whatever physical assets they have. They can like put it on the blockchain and they can generate IDs and it was like a government initiative. Later integrated KYC as well.
What was your EthTokyo experience like?
It was amazing.
It was not like I expected that I would win EthTokyo Hackathon but I didn’t expect that we’ll be in the finals either.
It was amazing to be like meeting a lot of people and the Lumos Hacker House was a very fun place to be in. Of course, it was a bit of pressure to make the product work because mostly in offline hackathons you don’t get a lot of time. So doing all that in one day and all that stuff was a lot of pressure. But ultimately it was a peaceful event. An extremely happy moment for me.
What did you build during EthTokyo?
The product that put us in the finals at Eth Tokyo was AbSwapX.
AbSwapX is a smart contract module that enables limit orders and scheduled strategies for decentralized finance (DeFi). It is a completely decentralized and trustless system that operates on any EVM-compatible chain, making it possible for users to trade across multiple chains.
The module leverages Gelato Network to automate the execution of limit orders, allowing users to create a limit order and not actively monitor the market to execute the trade. AbSwapX can also be easily integrated into other DeFi protocols, enabling composability and allowing developers to create more complex trading strategies. Developers can build on top of AbSwapX to enable cross-chain DeFi automation across any EVM chain of their preference by choosing the protocols they want to interact with.
What was your biggest Hackathon win?
I think actually every hackathon for me was like the biggest win. They have all benefited me a lot. But if you ask specifically, I think it was ETH India last year, and before that one was like Chain Link Hackathon and ETH Paris as well.
About all of them, I would say the Eth Paris Hackathon was one of the game-changing moments in my life because after that I got a lot of recognition. My network was larger than ever after that.
You are a GSoC Mentor. How is that experience?
The experience is wholesome. I love teaching all this stuff.
I like to teach about the blockchain and all the other tech stuff. My focus is always to start with the basics. I talk about how blockchain works and what exactly a smart contract is and I then try to connect I to the Web2 world so that it is easier for students to learn.
And it always feels great. For when students say they can start their Web3 journey because of my workshop it only motivates me to try harder and keep at it.
Challenges you most often face at hackathons and in Web3 in general and how he overcomes them.
One of the biggest challenges like finding the right team. It’s all about the team. I have seen most of the people failing just because most devs want to build in the backend only and it is very hard to find front-end developers, especially in the Web 3 space.
You will easily find smart contact developers and backend developers but you will not find front-end developers.
And in Web 3 UI-UX plays a very great role. So I think that is one of the biggest challenges in hackathons. It is very difficult to find frontend devs. Some people will come that they’ll team up with you but later on, they will not even show up at the end.
What’s your favorite chain to be built on and what’s the toughest one?
I would say all the EVM-compatible chains are my favorite because they are in one direction. The toughest chains are Solana, NEAR, and those Casper chains. Because like all these chains come up with like a new set of language and I feel it’s like very difficult to switch between what exactly is going on in the blockchain world and then you are like coming up with something new. So last year I tried to build on Starknet and it was very difficult. I would say that it was totally a raw chain for me.
What are your other interests?
I am very fond of buying gadgets. I don’t know whether it’s a hobby or not, but I keep trying on new gadgets.
And the second one is I like to travel a lot. After every 15-20 days of rigorous coding, my head starts getting heated up and then I plan to go somewhere. Sometimes I plan a hackathon because I want to travel.
Mohit’s strong skill sets, in-depth knowledge, and love for teaching have made him an incredible Web3 Dev and an impeccable Web3 Educator. He is truly destined for greater heights.
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